<p>When it comes to graduate schools I think ‘ranking’ is more than a tad overblown. It’s about fit with a department–whether there are faculty with similar research interests, for example–and if the curriculum fits what you think your grad school experience should be, among other things. If that program happens to be at a world-renowned university, great, but I’d definitely go to a grad department that’s ‘down a peg’ on the rankings if it made more sense for me as a student.</p>
<p>
So which is the unusual institution, Harvard or Michigan? I looked at IPEDS and got this:</p>
<p>Institution Name: 4yr / diff / 6yr / diff / 8yr
CalTech: 0.82 / 0.07 / 0.89 / 0.01 / 0.9
Columbia: 0.84 / 0.09 / 0.93 / 0.01 / 0.94
Cooper Union: 0.76 / 0.07 / 0.83 / 0 / 0.83
Harvard: 0.88 / 0.09 / 0.97 / 0.01 / 0.98
MIT: 0.83 / 0.1 / 0.93 / 0.02 / 0.95
Ohio State: 0.4 / 0.31 / 0.71 / 0.03 / 0.74
Penn State: 0.58 / 0.26 / 0.84 / 0.01 / 0.85
Princeton: 0.89 / 0.06 / 0.95 / 0.01 / 0.96
Stanford: 0.8 / 0.15 / 0.95 / 0.02 / 0.97
UCB: 0.61 / 0.27 / 0.88 / 0.02 / 0.9
UCLA: 0.66 / 0.24 / 0.9 / 0.02 / 0.92
Michigan: 0.7 / 0.18 / 0.88 / 0.01 / 0.89
Notre Dame: 0.9 / 0.05 / 0.95 / 0.01 / 0.96
Yale: 0.87 / 0.09 / 0.96 / 0 / 0.96</p>
<p>As you can see, there are a few elite schools (notably private) that see very little change in 4yr and 6yr graduation rates, while other schools (notably public universities) see a significant percentage taking more than 4 years. I suspect that this is due in no small part to the expectations and funding arrangements at those schools more than anything else.</p>
<p>As an example, Harvard saw 9% take more than 4 but no more than 6 years to graduate, comparable to CalTech (7%), Columbia (9%), Cooper Union (7%), MIT (10%), Princeton (6%), Notre Dame (5%) and Yale (9%). Michigan saw 18%, comparable to Ohio State (31%!!), Penn State (26%), Berkeley (27%), and UCLA (24%).</p>
<p>So whatever the problem is, I do not think it is specifically related to what goes on at any individual schools, and may be significantly tied to the different missions these two groups of universities have. Public universities generally have as part of their mission something about educating the people of the state, while private universities can cherry pick students. Penn State is required to admit all “eligible” students in some capacity or another, and as a result admits a lot of students who are not realistically going to graduate. Harvard has no such requirement.</p>
<p>
I agree, plus “overall” rankings for graduate schools are meaningless to anyone in your field, so really only matter if you plan on taking your degree into business or government.</p>
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</p>
<p>Indeed so, and this argument actually aligns neatly with my 4th point regarding the comparative admissions of the different schools. </p>
<p>But of course if the problem revolves around the missions of public universities, then that raises the question of whether that mission is appropriate. After all, if the Occupy movement has taught us anything at all, it is that many college graduates (or soon-to-be college graduates) do not have the strongest of career prospects, and indeed, plenty may have actually been made worse off by going to college, chiefly by the student debt they incurred in addition to the opportunity costs in not working. And this is regarding college graduates who at least now have degrees. Many of those who merely attended college while never graduating are surely even worse off. </p>
<p>The fundamental operative question then is: what social purpose is served by state schools admitting students who are not realistically going to graduate? After all, they can’t all be Zuckerberg or Gates.</p>
<p>The more insidious problem is that while those students - who, frankly, tend to be unmotivated - may be hurting themselves by going to college, they are also surely also hurting others. Let’s face it - people tend to copy what they see around them. If they see unmotivated students around them, they also tend to become unmotivated themselves. Hence, those students damage the socially-constructed intellectual environment of the school.</p>
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</p>
<p>
If there is any sense at all in the admissions process, of COURSE Harvard admits more talented and motivated students than Michigan! The problem is that the proportion of students who will graduate is only visible as a statistical distribution on the admissions parameters. That is to say, ~90% of those with scores that would get them into Harvard will graduate in 4 years, and ~70% of those with scores that will get them into Michigan will graduate in 4 years, but there is not necessarily any way to separate those WILL graduate vs those who will NOT based on admission criteria. If Harvard could identify the applications of the 2% who apparently never graduate, I think they would do so, and likewise for other schools. Until they figure out how to do so, the only way to get graduation rates like Harvard is to hold all students to that standard… which would mean never admitting most of the 70% who DO graduate from Michigan in 4 years.</p>
<p>Still, the rest of your reply (and, to be honest, most of my statements as well) are off topic for this thread. The OP is interested in graduate study, and these are predominantly undergraduate issues.</p>
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</p>
<p>Uh, sure they could. Specifically, while Michigan might never reach a perfect 100% graduation rate, or even equal Harvard’s 98%, they could surely improve on their existing graduation rate. Every single school - Michigan included - is sitting upon a vast treasure trove of past student data. Using that, it’s relatively elementary for a few well-trained statisticians to devise and program a predictive statistical model that would calculate future graduation rates of potential applicants by comparing them to outcomes of similar applicants in the past, to find which applicant characteristics are most statistically indicative of future graduation. Obviously you could then test and cross-validate that model upon future data for a few years to ascertain whether the predicted graduation outcomes of recent admittees actually conforms to their graduation status. The model would then be constantly dynamically tuned every year as students of another class-year either graduate or drop out. Indeed, you could program the model to be self-tuning. Michigan has a top-ranked statistics department; surely they could develop such a model in the space of a few months. {And I’m sure that they could also then publish a few research papers about it.}</p>
<p>As a simple example, if it was found that grades in high school science courses are far stronger predictive factors in predicting graduation at UM than are grades in high school humanities courses, then the adcom could then weight science grades more than humanities grades. Or vice versa if the humanities grades are found to be more predictive. I’m agnostic as to what might be found in the data. But given that UM has matriculated thousands of new students every year for decades, the dataset that they have accumulated would surely provide intriguing information about which variables strongly correlate with graduation.</p>
<p>Lest anybody find this such a procedure to be offputting, keep in mind that this sort of predictive statistical analysis is being applied to you right now. For decades, auto insurance companies have applied statistical actuarial analysis to determine the price of your premiums, or whether to even offer a policy at all, depending on your age, your gender, where you live, your model of car, your driving record, and any other relevant information. Those actuarial tables are derived from the driving behavior of past drivers. Similarly, marketers are perennially trying to determine the type of advertising that is relevant to each of us, based on how customers similar to us had behaved in the past. Since that’s all happening now already, would it really be so outrageous for
universities to also leverage the data of their prior “customers” (that is, prior students)? </p>
<p>Now surely some of you would object to the notion of data from past students being used to reject current applicants. But let’s keep in mind that plenty of applicants are rejected under the current admissions system. The problem is that the current system ‘inaccurately’ rejects some students who would have graduated while admitting others who won’t. The statistical model would presumably improve upon that process (and if it does not, then that’s a problem with the model). If a university is going to have to reject some applicants anyway, it ought to reject those who could be statistically predicted were not likely to graduate. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>True enough; these issues were raised only because some people raised the side-issue of why graduate and undergraduate rankings differed so strongly.</p>
<p>Sakky, it is difficult to compare graduate rates from one university to another. Graduation rates have a lot to do with a university’s curricular philosophy and mission. For example, Michigan has many programs that require more than 4 years to complete.
As such, one can argue that Michigan should do more to facilitate quicker graduation. </p>
<p>However, two things are certain, and on these points, you are wrong; </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Michigan students do not have to put up with classes that enroll 1,000. In fact, the largest lecture hall at Michigan seats 600 students, and there are only a handful of lecture halls at the university of Michigan that can accommodate more than 300 students. Obviously, as a larger university, Michigan is going to have larger classes than Harvard, on average. But the difference is not as glaring as one would think. Even Harvard has classes that enroll over 300 students. </p></li>
<li><p>Michigan students are seldom locked out of classes due to over enrollment and in my 20 years of following Michigan closely, I have never heard of a single case where a student had to delay graduation plans as a result of administrative inefficiency (be it over enrolling or whatever). </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Could Michigan alter its curriculum to facilitate high four-year graduation rates? Sure, but at the expense of providing undergraduates enrolled in certain programs with the substance that the department feels is required. Students wishing to double major in LSA and the School of Music or LSA and the College of Architecture or Engineering and LSA or LSA and Public Affairs/Policy, to mention only very few popular double majors open to Michigan stuents, will usually require more than 4 years to complete all required courses for graduation. </p>
<p>There are obviously other factors that go into determining graduation rates. Financial need/obligation is the most obvious one. Let us be honest here, there are many students at Michigan who are paying $12,000 in tuition (or less thanks to merit scholarship) and probably just as many students at Harvard who are paying $40,000 in tuition and come from well-off but not wealthy families. The former are not motivated to complete their studies in 4 years, particularly if their program is demanding, or if they plan on applying to graduate programs that require very high GPAs and can afford to pace themselves by taking a more manageable courseload to maintain a high GPA or if they are having too good a time! 
The latter, on the other hand, are under a great deal of pressure to graduate as quickly as possible. </p>
<p>At any rate, I am fairly certain that the OP did not intend to imply that Michigan (or Cal) should be ranked #1 and/or compared to Harvard. Everybody knows that Harvard (along with MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale), is the best. Rather, I think the OP was trying to understand why Cal and Michigan are rated much better at the graduate level than they are at the undergraduate level. The reason is simple; ranking methodologies are one-dimentional, often commercial in nature and almost always dependent on faulty, irrelevant and inconsistent data. If properly and honestly conducted, Cal and Michigan’s undergraduate and graduate programs should be rated equally.</p>
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</p>
<p>Fine, fair enough, so UM students have to put up with 600-student classes. That’s frankly, not significantly different from a 1000-student class. </p>
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</p>
<p>Then clearly something else must explain the fact that UM needs 6 years to graduate roughly the same proportion of students that Harvard does in 4 years. I have enumerated some of the possibilities on this thread. </p>
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</p>
<p>And here I’m afraid I must disagree, for such circumstances could be fixed by an easy administrative tweak. If, as you say, certain cross-school double-major choices are notably popular, then it would be trivial to determine which ones by consulting their immense dataset of past student behavior and then restructure the recommended course sequence of those double-majors so that students are far more likely to complete one of the majors within 4 years (and the second major would be finished later). The student would then have graduated with a degree in 4 years. </p>
<p>Lest you think that that would only serve to restrict student freedom, I would actually argue the opposite: student freedom would actually increase. After 4 years, the student would have a degree, whereupon he could choose to stay and complete the double, or immediately head right to the workforce or grad school. Under the present system, as you said, those students still have no degree at all after 4 years and are therefore have no choice but to stay to complete the double. </p>
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</p>
<p>And this is where I think a version of the “Johnny-Lechner” rule is appropriate. Since it seems that the students you are citing are state residents, hence the $12k figure, UM could simply announce that no student will receive a state tuition subsidy for more than 4 years. Those students who haven’t completed a degree within 4 years (as, for example, in conformance with the new double-major policy above where the student would need to complete at least one of the two degrees in 4 years), would be allowed to stay, but would be required to pay the full (unsubsidized) tuition from then on. I’m quite sure that such a tuition cliff would greatly spur those students to graduate on time. </p>
<p>Again, lest anybody find this step draconian, I would argue that it actually more fair for the state of Michigan at large. After all, there are surely plenty of people who would like to be admitted to UM but can’t get in because the school lacks sufficient space, partly because those other aforementioned students continue to linger without graduating. If these students would graduate in a timely fashion, then UM would be able to educate more students and hence enhance the overall human capital base of the state of Michigan (hence fulfilling the public mission of the state). Students should not be allowed to effectively squat on public educational resources that other people want to use. </p>
<p>I would also further couch the reform in terms of taxpayer fairness. After all, those subsidies are ultimately being provided by taxpayers - including plenty of taxpayers who themselves cannot get into UM. Those students who continue to linger without graduating are effectively abusing the subsidy system. I believe that the implicit social contract between UM and the taxpayers is that state residents are provided with 4 years worth of undergraduate subsidies (and perhaps some years of public graduate school subsidies), but are not allowed to milk the taxpayers by, as you said, hanging out for years while “having a good time”. </p>
<p>Nor would such a system imply that each state resident would receive a lower average total subsidy. Such a reform could be accomplished in a revenue-neutral manner. For example, rather than continuing to provide subsidies for students who linger through years 5+, those subsidies could instead be directed to rebate part of the tuition bill of state residents in years 1-4 (with the amount of the rebate contingent on the proportion of students who stay through year 5+). Hence, those state residents who graduate on time would see their overall tuition (over 4 years) lowered, while those who don’t graduate on time would have to pay much more, and I think that’s entirely appropriate.</p>
<p>Again, lest anybody think that such a policy would hurt those students who can’t graduate on time through no fault of their own, I take you at your word that over 20 years, you have never heard of anybody having their graduation delayed due to administrative inefficiency. I certainly agree that such a tuition-shifting policy would be controversial at other public schools where administrative delays are a significant flaw. But if UM is as efficient as you say, then there should be no problem with instituting such a tuition-shift reform. </p>
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</p>
<p>And that is why I joined this thread in the first place, for that’s a sentiment that I must (sadly) diametrically disagree. To say that Cal’s or Michigan’s undergrad programs should be rated equivalent to their graduate programs categorically neglects the fact that the graduate programs, at least at Cal’s (and almost certainly also Michigan’s), are simply better managed than the undergraduate programs. {Either that, or you’ve just inadvertently insulted Cal’s graduate programs by implying that they’re no better than the undergraduate program, which I’m sure you did not mean to do.} Put another way, I wish that the policies and resources that Cal implements upon its graduate programs could be applied to its undergraduate program, but I absolutely do not wish the opposite: that the undergraduate policies and resources be applied to its graduate programs. I am sure that the same could be said for UM.</p>
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</p>
<p>Are those graduation rates only for students that begin at “main campus?” Otherwise I could see why a lot of the publics have higher rates. In the case of the UCs students could start at a local CC and transfer in, possibly needing to take an extra year due to how curricula work out. At Penn State I know for a lot of programs you start at a local satellite campus and then transfer in for their last two years.</p>
<p>
IPEDS is not clear on this. Graduation rates are provided for difference campuses, but it is not clear how IPEDS handles transfers between campuses.</p>
<p>
And therefore not significantly different than the 300-student classes that can be found at even at Harvard.</p>
<p>
In every school that I have seen, the path you describe would result in severe academic and funding penalties to the student in question. Once you graduate with one degree you are considered a “second baccaleaureate” student and are ineligible for certain funding opportunities including most federal grants. Also, most degree programs prohibit the use of credits earned under a prior degree, so all the “twice-counted” credits normally used in a double major would have to be repeated.</p>
<p>So the result would realistically be an elimination of double majors.</p>
<p>On a more general note, a 4-year graduation time is simply not the most important statistic for most students or schools, and many programs require more than years. At the end of the day, it is more important that the education be complete, in depth, and lead to a satisfactory and sufficiently lucrative career is more important even if it takes an extra year or two! While not all students graduate with such an education, I see no evidence that this particular failure is linked to the amount of time spent in school.</p>
<p>It should also be noted that one of the advantages of public schools is that the cheaper tuition allows students who would struggle to graduate in four years anywhere to graduate without unbearable expense. It also allows for more exploration in picking the degree - at $40k a year, most people are financially compelled to complete their degree in 4 years regardless of whether or not it is actually the correct degree for them, and regardless of what sacrifices must be made to accomplish this. Personally, I would rather see someone take an extra year and graduate with a solid foundation in a field in which they will continue rather than rush through and get a degree that they will not be able or willing to use. Remember that a Harvard degree can take you a wide range of places outside your field, but that is not true of most schools - if you graduate from Michigan with an education degree and no desire to teach, you are pretty well screwed. </p>
<p>In the end, I do agree that we are graduating too many students in certain majors, and would have no problem reducing or eliminating funding support for many students in these fields. I do not feel that enrollment caps should be arbitrarily imposed, however - if someone can afford to pay their own way despite the knowledge that they are unlikely to be employable, then they should be free to do so - I just do not want to encourage people to waste money on an education that will not help them.</p>
<p>Harvard has several classes which are around 700 people per course. I have no firsthand knowledge of this, but I do not doubt the Crimson and Greg Mankiw on this subject.</p>
<p>Thanks for all of your earnest comments here.</p>
<p>After asking some of my friends( one did his undergrad in MIT and now grad in Washington Seatle, one did his undergrad in Stanford and now grad in Stanford, one did his undergrad in UC Berkeley and now grad at Upenn,…) and viewing all of your comments, i reach a conclusion:</p>
<p>— In terms of grad level, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, UCB, UMich seem to have the most well-rounded programs overall. </p>
<p>When i asked my friends about UCB and UMich at grad levels, they both said “phenomenal”. In terms of reputation, UCB seems to be better than UMich in grad level( mainly physical sciences, social sciences, and Engineering).</p>
<p>I asked their ideas about Ivy League’s quality of grad levels. They said only Harvard and maybe Yale can make their ways to top 10 in terms of well-rounded quality of their graduate level. They do not give so many compliments about Yale at grad level in Engineering.</p>
<p>I think that from such large pools of friends from various universities, it should be no bias that even though UCB and UMich are two public universities, their reputation over graduate levels are incredible. I definitely will apply to them in grad level( they are really strong in both Mathematics and Engineering and other majors as well). There are various research groups here that suite my appetite. One of my main advisors is a faculty of UCB. He gave me many stellar comments on the quality of graduate level of UCB and UMich. So far, the best two public schools in Graduate levels with virtually no weakness.</p>
<p>Regarding Private Universities, I lean towards Standford, MIT. I intend to put Yale to my list but my friends told me that i should not. They said regarding my wish, Yale seems not very good. It has an incredible reputation in Law, but not Engineering.</p>
<p>Therefore, i make up my mind now.</p>
<p>For Public Universities, UCB and UMich are my top choices. Obviously, some backup public universities.</p>
<p>For Private Universities, MIT,Stanford and some backup Private Universities.</p>
<p>Again, thanks for all of your time answering my question. I truly appreciate.</p>
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</p>
<p>Fine, then perhaps you could explain why the consensus opinion is that Harvard has a better undergraduate program than UM does - something that even Alexandre readily concedes. </p>
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</p>
<p>Given UM’s lavish financial resources - having enjoyed the the largest endowment percentage growth of all of the larger schools over the last decade - I am sure that UM could provide sufficient stopgap funding. </p>
<p>But more importantly, if double-majors at UM do indeed prevent many students from graduating in 4 years, then that raises the question as to why the same doesn’t seem to happen at the top private schools. Harvard, after all, has plenty of “joint concentrators”, which is their equivalent of double-majors, yet the vast majority of Harvard students are nonetheless able to graduate in 4 years. </p>
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<p>But UM is not “most schools” but rather is an exceptional school, and is free to modify its double-major rules as necessary. </p>
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<p>And even if that were so, I’m still not sure that that would be such a bad thing from a societal standpoint. After all those students who continue to stay longer to complete doubles are effectively occupying seats that could be used by prospective students. How would you like to be the guy who was rejected from UM entirely because a current UM student wanted to stay longer to complete a double? </p>
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<p>And that is a systemic problem with those programs. Those programs that are specifically redesigned to (realistically) take more than 4 years - engineering, I’m looking at you - should either be more efficiently redesigned, or should stop calling themselves bachelor’s degree programs, but rather should instead perhaps grant both bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Call it the MEng if you want to distinguish it from the MS. </p>
<p>Lest you find that outrageous, I would point out that that’s not dissimilar to how MIT runs its EECS department: many (probably most) undergrads in EECS, which is the largest department at MIT, will stay for 5 years to complete the combination BS/MEng. </p>
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<p>And yet this advantage is clearly sundered if those students hang around for 5-6 years while still not having graduated. The lost opportunity cost of staying those extra years while still having no degree ought to be factored into the ‘unbearable cost’, should it not?</p>
<p>
Perhaps I could, but I have not really studied it, so I will settle for pointing out obvious errors in your reasoning. Or, in this case, drawing you attention to points that others have made yet you have ignored.</p>
<p>
So you think that Michigan should make some students ineligible for existing funding and instead deplete its own coffers, simply to improve a questionable criterion that is not actually hurting them or their students?</p>
<p>
Relative costs, better advising, the different characteristics of the different student bodies, tighter restrictions on who can do a double major, amount of pressure placed on students to graduate in 4 years… without doing a real study I doubt that the reasons will be apparent based on a cursory survey of convenient statistical parameters.</p>
<p>
Any school can do so, and if you truly feel that it is in their best interest, encourage them to do so. I suspect that they will have reasons why they will not think it a good idea.</p>
<p>
Most engineering programs can and are realistically completed in 4 years. The 5 year programs that I am thinking of are Architecture and Architectural Engineering. The bachelor’s degree is supposed to represent the basic educational preparation for a given field or profession, with various masters degrees representing a level of education significantly above this minimum. Relabeling degrees based on the time spent instead of the preparation relative to the field helps no one. If Architects feel that 5 years of education is the minimum required, who am I to declare that 4 years is better?</p>
<p>
Someone with an MIT BSEE has a basic level of education and is employable - the MEng is extra. This is not the same situation.</p>
<p>
Sure.</p>
<p>Using the 2010 salary survey results and current tuition levels for both schools as valid for all years (because I am lazy and not expecting huge relative variations), and assuming that the only options are graduating in 4, 6, or 8 years (a gross oversimplification dictated by the available statistical breakdown, and completely ignoring the possibility of not graduating), an incoming EE student would see the following:</p>
<p>Michigan resident, $63,491 average salary, $6662 (yrs 1-2) $8636 (yrs 3+) tuition
Michigan nonresident, $63,491 average salary, $18,904 (yrs 1-2) $21,230 (yrs 3+) tuition
Harvard, $59,074 average salary, $39,851 tuition</p>
<p>As a Michigan resident, you have an 89% chance of graduating, including…</p>
<p>a 70% chance of graduating in 4 years, spending $30,596 in tuition</p>
<p>an 18% chance of graduating in 6 years, spending $47,868 in tuition and forgoing $126,982 in salary, a total of $174,850</p>
<p>and a 1% chance of graduation in 68 years, spending $65,140 in tuition and forgoing $253,964 in salary, a total of $319,104</p>
<p>The expected value is therefore (0.7<em>30596+0.18</em>174850+0.01*319104)/0.89 = $63,013</p>
<p>For Michigan nonresidents and Harvard students, the expected values are $118,345 and $203,865 respectively.</p>
<p>For comparison, the 4 year cost of Harvard (tuition only!) is $159,404</p>
<p>What does this mean? It means that the average Michigan graduate (resident or non) has a better average expense than the best case Harvard graduate. The worst case Michigan students will of course pay more, but then so will the worst case Harvard student (who can lose $555k in 8 years!).</p>
<p>Again, this is overly simplistic as it ignore the cases of students who graduate in 4 years + 1 semester, ignores those who drop out, and completely ignores the incredibly complex nature of Harvard financial aid. It also glosses over the fact that most of these calculations are performed dynamically by students already 4 years in, trying to decide on a course of action.</p>
<p>But it does show that the costs can still favor “non-elite” schools, however poor their 4 year graduation rates may be.</p>
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</p>
<p>So in other words, you will settle for simply criticizing the ideas of others while offering no alternatives of your own. That’s quite the cop-out. </p>
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<p>Actually, it probably is hurting their own students. Or at least, hurting prospective students. The more students continue to linger for years on end accumulating multiple majors, the fewer other prospective students that UM can admit. What about them? </p>
<p>Or, more importantly, what about the state taxpayers? How would you feel to by the typical state taxpayer - who himself can’t himself be admitted to UM at all (as UM is a highly selective school) - to know that his tax dollars are going to support some students who continue to linger for extra years sucking on the taxpayer teat simply because they want to complete some extra majors? I suspect that the taxpayer would respond that the subsidies for the completion of one major is enough. The same argument could be made regarding Federal taxpayers (hence, all of us) with regards to the Pell Grant program. </p>
<p>Furthermore, such a policy provides the great advantage of flexibility for those double-majoring students. They enjoy the tremendous freedom of being allowed to leave with a degree after 4 years, albeit with only one major completed, which makes them instantly eligible for the multitude of jobs that require some degree. Sadly, numerous employers will demand that you have a degree(or be scheduled to have one by the time you join them) before they will even interview you. They don’t really care what type of degree it is, as long as you have a degree. Those double-majors are simply ineligible for any of those jobs until they complete their entire program. </p>
<p>And besides, how much would it really cost UM - one of the richest schools in the world? I’m not talking about necessarily giving students completely free money beyond the 4th year. Rather, that aid would mostly be in the form of a loan, or perhaps work-study. Hence, in principle, UM would not lose much. </p>
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<p>And nobody is proposing to simply conduct a statistical analysis alone. Yet a statistical analysis can provide important clues that would warrant further investigation. </p>
<p>But at the end of the day, the bottom line is that the top private schools are able to graduate their students faster, in spite of also offering double-majors. </p>
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<p>That’s quite interesting, given that engineering-centric universities have long suffered from relatively lower graduation times compared to their peers. The same is often times true even within the same university - for example, students at the Berkeley College of Engineering tend to take longer to graduate than the students in the College of Letters & Science, despite the fact that the former students tend to be more qualified. </p>
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</p>
<p>And like I said, those schools could easily offer an interim 4-year degree. Call it the “Bachelor’s in Architectural Studies” or whatnot. Sure, it wouldn’t be an accredited architectural degree. But at least it would be a 4-year degree. The student could then choose to stay for another year and continue to complete the accredited BArch, or they could leave with the ‘BAS’ in hand. </p>
<p>Outrageous? Well, that’s what Dartmouth does with regards to its engineering program. They offer a 4-year unaccredited BA in engineering. Upon completion, students can stay for another year to complete an accredited BEng. </p>
<p>[Bachelor</a> of Engineering (B.E.) | Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth](<a href=“http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/academics/undergraduate/be/]Bachelor”>Dartmouth Engineering | BE)</p>
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<p>Actually, I think it is. After all, somebody with a single-majored bachelor’s degree is also employable, and any additional majors are extra. After all, let’s face it - double-majors don’t really add much employment value over a single-major. Few if any employers are going to hire you just because you have a double.</p>
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<p>Absolutely wrong, because in addition to the simplifying reasons that you have already enumerated, you made the even more whopping assumption that the person is going to major in EE, or even in engineering in general. Who says that that is so? Only a minority of students at UM are majoring in engineering at all, let alone majoring in EE. The vast majority of UM students are majoring in one of the liberal arts. </p>
<p>So perhaps you would like to redo your cost/benefit calculations of the typical UM student, aggregated across all majors, not just EE. I am certain that you will find a quite different result. </p>
<p>Now, perhaps your implicit point is that people should not be majoring in the liberal arts, or at least that the taxpayers should not be subsidizing the study of liberal arts beyond more than 4 years at the state schools. But if that is what you are attempting to imply, then you need to make that point explicitly.</p>
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In order for me to offer alternatives I would have to consider this a problem requiring a solution (I don’t) and enough of a problem to be worth a noticable amount of my time (it isn’t). Pointing out errors in other people’s logic, however, gets filed under “entertainment”, which has much looser requirements.</p>
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I am not seeing this - what resources are 5yr students using up that freshmen need? It isn’t class space, unless those extra-timers need to repeat English 101 or freshmen are now competing for space in senior technical electives. It probably isn’t dorms, and if they are that is easily and separately resolved. Administrative loads ought to be easy with the additional revenues from the extra-time students. So what is it?</p>
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Who says that double majors make up more than a small percentage of the >4 year crowd? And are ALL double majors unreasonable, and if not, how do we address that issue?</p>
<p>As a side note, at most schools (IME) you have to apply for graduation, so your hypothetical double major could certainly complete their initial major first, and then make the decision as to whether or not they would go on for a second major. I have an undergrad in my research group who is an EE/Aerospace double major. He completed the core curriculum for both majors in 3 years, is going to finish Aerospace this year and then spend his fifth year finishing EE. If at the end of the 4th year he decides that he is done, he can graduate with no obligation to take any more EE classes. Now that requires some planning, but there is no reason one cannot do it.</p>
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- This degree seems useless as anything other than a generic bachelors degree, and since most schools already offer a generic bachelors degree (often called “liberal arts and sciences” or some such), what advantage does this offer?
- As a complete degree leading nowhere, what differences in curriculum must be implemented to make this degree “complete”? That is to say, I would not consider a 5yr BArch program truncated after the 4th year to offer a complete education, so some type of additional capstone courses or focus would be needed… which means that the 5yr BArch gets replaced by a useless 4yr BArchSt and a 5 1/2yr BArch. Who does this help?</p>
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And again, what use is the BA? It isn’t accredited, offers little engineering coursework, and appears useless as anything other than a feeder to business school and the like. It appears that the primary purpose of this program is to serve as a vehicle for Dartmouth’s extremely high liberal arts requirements, not to serve the interest of ones engineering career or financial needs.</p>
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I was talking about comparisons to 5yr programs that you want to truncate at 4yrs.</p>
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No I would not, because (a) Michigan, like many public schools, has different tuition rates for different majors, and because (b) I don’t think it will make a difference. I picked engineering because engineering salaries are widely reported, salaries of English majors not so much. FWIW, the one site that DID reference university wide salaries listed Harvard at $54,100 and Michigan at $50,100, and a <10% salary difference is not going to reverse ANYTHING in my prior calculations, not when there is a tuition differential of 200+%.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/top-us-colleges-graduate-salary-statistics.asp[/url]”>http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/top-us-colleges-graduate-salary-statistics.asp</a></p>
<p>Feel free to run the numbers yourself, however.</p>
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<p>Fine, so this is just a venue of entertainment for you, rather than a forum of serious discussion. Fair enough, at least we now know where you stand. </p>
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<p>Fair enough - then ask yourself why are a strong majority (~60%) of UM applicants rejected, if not for a lack of space? While I can agree that some of the rejectees are simply not qualified and would have failed at UM, surely there are plenty of rejectees who would have successfully passed and graduated. {Maybe not with top grades, but they would have graduated.} </p>
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<p>Actually, if you are correct, then that only makes my proposal even more feasible. If they represent only a tiny fraction of the number of students who haven’t graduated by 4 years, then it would be trivial for UM - with its vast financial resources - to provide stop-gap financing for them to complete their additional majors. </p>
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<p>Seems to me that you’re now even more supportive of my proposal. </p>
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<p>Um, exactly how is it useless? You said it yourself - it’s a bachelor’s degree, no more and - here’s the key - no less useful than the generic liberal arts bachelor’s degrees being handed out now. Let’s face it - UM (and most other universities) hand out boatloads of generic liberal arts bachelor’s degrees. </p>
<p>The value is therefore quite clear: you now have a bachelor’s degree which allows you to compete for the increasing number of jobs or professional school placements (i.e. law/med-school) that require or heavily value bachelor’s degrees. That gives you the flexibility to move forward with your career. If a great job or professional-school placement is available for the taking at year 4, you could take that. Otherwise, you could stay to finish the complete program. </p>
<p>But at least you now have the option. Without that option, you’re truly locked into your program for a complete 5 years. What if you discover by year 4 that you don’t actually want to be an architect anymore? Under the current system, too bad, you still don’t have a degree so you’re locked into your fifth year. But this interim degree allows you to leave while still giving you a degree in 4 years. Sure, it’s a generic degree, but it’s still a degree. </p>
<p>And besides, it seems to me that such a policy would only serve to enhance the efficiency of the labor market by improving the signalling power of those who complete the full-blown professional degree. Right now, there are numerous engineering graduates who don’t actually want to work as engineers, and surely there must be plenty of BArch graduates who don’t actually really want to work as architects. The interim degree would allow these students to leave the program early, and with a degree, thereby preserving the accredited professional degree for only those people who actually intend to pursue those careers. </p>
<p>You keep talking about these degrees as if they are ‘useless’, but they’re surely no more useless (and almost certainly more valuable) than the generic new liberal arts bachelor’s degrees being generated by the hundreds of thousands every year. Yet you’re not proposing that all of those programs be abolished for their uselessness (or are you?). So if you’re not prepared to abolish those programs, then what’s so outrageous about an interim unaccredited engineering or architecture degree? </p>
<p>The real problem is that too many employers and professional schools demand that you have a degree. They don’t really care what type of degree it is, they don’t really care if the degree program really taught you anything, all they care about is that you have a degree. If you don’t have one, they won’t care why. All they will see is that you lack a degree. As silly as that requirement may be, unfortunately those employers and prof-schools are never going to stop demanding degrees. Hence, we might as well give those 5-year engineering/architecture students that interim degree so that, at least, they can compete for those jobs after 4 years. Right now, they can’t even do that. </p>
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<p>Right, the payscale figures that deliberately excludes all students - which is almost surely the majority at Harvard, but not at UM - who never go on to graduate school. Never mind that one of the key attractions of attending Harvard for undergrad is that - because of its strong research resources, brand-name, and grade inflation - it serves as one of the premiere launching pads in the world for admission to grad school, often times back at Harvard itself. For example, generally speaking, the largest cohort at HMS, HLS, HBS, or many Harvard academic graduate programs is from Harvard itself. {For example, I think there was one recent year where the majority of all the new Harvard economics grad students who attended US undergrad programs came from… Harvard College. And every year, on average about 10-15% of all graduating Harvard MBA’s had undergrad degrees from…Harvard College. It is for that reason that Harvard is often times said to be the most incestuous school in the country - as it certainly seems that the easiest way to be admitted to Harvard grad school and later to even be hired as faculty at Harvard is to go there as an undergrad and just stay there.}</p>
<p>Yet sadly Payscale excludes all of those students, which means that - in the case of Harvard and other schools where most of the undergrads will attend graduate school - the Payscale figures tend to measure only the relatively least ambitious and probably least qualified of the graduates. {For example, if you graduated with a 2.1 GPA from Harvard, you’re probably not going to graduate school.}</p>
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No, I take this forum seriously, just not this particular discussion. Big difference. And to be fair, I AM taking this discussion seriously, but am just not willing to invest in it beyond its entertainment value.</p>
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I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they were mostly for academic reasons, and that general limitations on the size of the student body are dominated by other requirements, such as limits on the growth rate of the facilities and faculty. Still, I am sure that if you contacted UM admissions they would be happy to provide an answer.</p>
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No, I am just trying to illustrate why NONE of this is a real issue, and why your attempt to correct this fictional problem would result in a REAL problem.</p>
<p>Interestingly, isn’t this how ALL our discussions end up? Chicken Little trying to convince everyone that the sky is falling down, but really just leading them to the Fox’s den where they are eaten?</p>
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Answer: You switch to one of the already available, generic, and useless degrees of the type you mention. There is no need for a separate degree structure, especially for some one who is essentially abandoning hopes of working in that field.</p>
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Because I am NOT prepared to abolish those programs, and they already provide an outlet for those who will not complete the degree, and those who WILL complete the degree do not need an outlet. The only advantage to the degrees you propose is raising the self-esteem of those who take those escape routes so late in their academic careers that they could not transfer to a useful major.</p>
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I think I already said this was a simplification - a back of the envelope calculation based on the limited data available, not an in-depth comparison examining every student and outcome.</p>
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But it apparently DOES include those legions of Harvard grads going into finance and the like, right?</p>
<p>Nonetheless, if you have a better source of numbers, please provide it, or else acknowledge that your argument cannot be supported by anything other than panic, hyperbole, and hand-waving.</p>