The “top 20” privates usually have lots of money to spend on the student academic (and other) experience, while public universities including flagships are economy class in comparison.
Non-wealthy (“tuition dependent”) privates (LACs or research universities or otherwise) are likely to be significantly different from the wealthy privates in their level of spending on the student academic experience.
But isn’t it just a matter of time? It’s not as though they are NOT doing DEI etc.
Plenty of DEI at LACs, but my guess is that they are not attractive targets because they do not have the same level of name recognition among the general public (and MAGA base).
Agreed. Wesleyan’s president has been loudly criticizing the administration everywhere that will have him. But I suspect Trump has never heard of Wesleyan…which, as a Wesleyan parent, is fine by me!
I hope not!!
Agree with this, the real question to me is how different non wealthy LACs and research universities are to each other in terms of undergrad experience. Do faculty at those research universities have the same incentive structure that rewards focus on research and grad students rather than on undergrads?
Agree with your statement quoted above.
Relevant to note that Honors Colleges of state (public) flagship universities typically enhance a student’s experience in a large, publicly funded university by offering small class sizes, priority course selection, special housing with other honors students, and merit scholarship awards.
In addition to the 4 Ivy League schools that you listed, University of Chicago & Northwestern University are among many other private National Universities which have a strong focus on undergraduates reflected by small classes (although some intro course lectures can be large) and easy access to professors for research or pertinent issues. Columbia University also had reported small class sizes, but Columbia’s reporting method and accuracy has been challenged.
The issue here is not LACs vs. Larger universities but rather the war on higher ed, ie., higher education institutions held up for ransom by the current Administration, forced to pay millions and change some policies.
The Administration however is constrained by the fact they want to protect Hillsdale and small Christian colleges from their policies so they set a threshold of 3,000 tuition-paying students for any levy to apply. In addition, as some have mentioned, “we stopped DEI at CollegeYou’veNeverheardof" has zero media pull.
As long as the Administration protects Hillsdale and hasn’t found a way to target other colleges under other pretexts, LACs are safe.
A side effect has been that colleges with big endowments have found ways to limit their tuition paying numbers to just under 3,000 by offering free tuition to the % they need to reach that threshold, more or less.
They don’t get anywhere near the funding through NIH and NSF so the government cannot control them by threatening to withhold their grant money.
And honestly, Roth is out there fighting by himself. Other presidents are way too afraid to speak up. Roth is old and cranky and absoutely convicted. I love him.
It’s one of the most viewed threads on the Wesleyan page:
Wesleyan vs.Yale? - Colleges & Universities / Wesleyan University - College Confidential Forums
(Sorry, replied to the wrong person–see my next reply) but in agreement with you as well). Same here. We’ll see how the process goes for our younger daughter this year (she doesn’t have a strong preference for a LAC vs a large research university), but the order one is a LAC graduate, and we were so impressed with the level of rigor and attention there.
Same here. We’ll see how the process goes for our younger daughter this year (she doesn’t have a strong preference for a LAC vs a large research university), but the older one is a LAC graduate, and we were so impressed with the level of rigor and attention there. My husband and I are both dedicated teachers at an R1, by the way, as are many our colleagues, so this is not to say one can’t have great instruction at a large research university, but the focus, priorities and availability are at a different level at a LAC.
And it’s not just about the size of classes. Many top private universities, including Ivies, still prioritize research and graduate programs (I know this first-hand).
The tendency that we seem to be seeing of faculty being more likely to send their kids to a LAC may be one the reasons that LACs have a higher percent of graduates going on to do a PhD.
We know that doing a PhD and being a tenure track faculty are both far more likely when at least one parents has an advanced degree. If kids of faculty members are disproportionally likely to attend a LAC, that would account for a good amount of that.
The last article about college choice was from 2006, but it demonstrated that faculty send their kids to LACs at disproportionate numbers. Around 23% of the kids of parents who work at a research university sent their kids to a LAC. Considering that fewer than 5% of all kids going to a 4 year college attend a LAC, that’s a very large percent. And yes, they also attend research universities at disproportionate numbers, but part of that is students attending their parents’ college.
About 50.6% of kids of research university faculty attend a research university and 23% attend a LAC.
Citation: Where do the children of professors attend college? - ScienceDirect
Pre-print: https://users.nber.org/~confer/2003/HIEDS03/getz.pdf
Can we tease out how many of the colleges faculty kids attend are part of a tuition exchange program?
I know lots of “fac brats”. A very high percentage of them (now and previously) either attend their parent’s institution, or go to the “best of” where they’ve been admitted and where they get some of the tuition discount employee benefit.
I don’t see a pedagogical preference for an LAC. I see a STRONG preference for taking advantage of one of the few benefits available to an academic family which values higher education but is often priced out of a wider range of schools. Occasionally the kids win the “merit lottery”- i.e. not the 5K merit award but a truly substantial “Chancellor’s Scholarship” which makes the college a better deal overall than TE would.
Would love to figure out how much of the LAC love is dollars and cents….
But also simple awareness that they exist. Are parents who are college faculty just more aware of the existence of LACs than other parents, resulting in their kids being more likely to know that they exist and hence more likely to apply to them (and attend if admitted)?
R1 universities don’t have a tuition exchange program with liberal arts colleges, and I know quite a few colleagues who have sent their kids to LACs. But of course, finances play a role, too– our kids only applied to LACs that give merit.
That would explain why 50.6% of kids of research university faculty attended a research university. The same article says that around 15% of faculty kids attended their parents’ university, so you’re right about campus brats. I would guess that a kid attending the school in which their parent/s is/are faculty is more common at low admission universities and at public universities that are extremely popular in their own state (like OSU).
The 46.3% of LAC faculty kids who attended LACs likely did include a good number who are getting discounts, similar to the 50.6% of the kids of research university faculty who attended a research university. The 23% of research university faculty kids, though, were not getting any discounts at LACs.
Not just knowing they exist, but knowing LACs worth way more than most parents too. Most people, even many college educated parents, just give a blank stare when one mentions most LACs. UCLA impresses people in a way Pomona just doesn’t. Even UCLA of old that was way easier to get into than today’s version. Prof parents see the value in each better than most.