<p>Some comments:
-It would be difficult to make the claim that the public flagship is better than the private elite university. Certainly, the overall strength of student body is better at the private university. A student also might encounter fewer adverse educational factors at the private university than at the public university, e.g., difficulty getting into needed/desired courses, bureaucracy, larger classes, less access to faculty, fewer opportunities or more competition for research/internship slots, a greater number of less motivated and less qualified students, etc. So, when a top student attends a public university it often is a trade-off between lower cost vs. greater likelihood of those sort of adverse educational factors. It becomes necessary to mitigate those factors, and that is what programs like honors colleges are designed to do. The extent to which these factors are mitigated successfully varies a good deal across different schools and varies according to a particular students ability to seek out his own opportunities. Clearly, it takes less effort to get what you need at a private elite university.
-While it is difficult to make the claim that the public flagship is better, you cannot assume that the teaching quality for undergraduates is necessarily better at a private elite university.
-You also cannot assume that the public university is necessarily worse. In many instances, you will find there is relatively little difference in educational quality. In certain fields, e.g., classics or Slavic languages, departments at public universities will be relatively small and attract very self-selected motivated students. Across a range of disciplines, a public university often has a much stronger faculty than you will find in comparable departments at many private elite universities. Except for a handful of private elite universities that are highly rated in almost every discipline, you cannot assume that just because a particular school is an Ivy or otherwise highly ranked on USNWR that it is strong across all disciplines. Quite often, in most disciplines, there are a fair number of departments at public universities that are ranked higher, and this is not just limited to departments at the so-called public Ivies. Quite often, the quality of departments at many private elite universities actually is fairly uneven.<br>
-I have a hard time believing that a top student at a flagship public university who majors in psychology, for example, is necessarily any less well-trained than a student an elite private university. The same goes for most disciplines. And, yes, this includes the humanities. One poster commented that within it’s more more than a matter of just conveying content to students, implying that at a private university professors are more likely to engage their students in critical thinking about the methods, theories and controversies in their disciplines. This is a ridiculous comment, of course, as though public universities are all about lecturing and rote memorization, but private universities are all about discussion and higher-order thinking.
-For some programs/departments at public universities, e.g., engineering, it actually would be a reasonable claim that the public university is better than all but a handful of private elite universities.
-Apart from a students major, it also would be difficult to make the claim that a private elite university necessarily offers a better general education than a public university without being able to cite specific differences that support that claim.
-On this forum, the frame of reference of some posters seems to be the tippy-top universities, whenever the term elite or private university is used. So, in their minds, it becomes a comparison between the Harvards or Princetons or MITs vs. the random public flagship university. In almost all cases, however, those are not the choices under consideration. Rather, it more likely to be a matter of Vanderbilt or Emory or Rice or Boston College or USC vs. a public flagship. On the other hand, other posters seem to have the assumption that the a only valid comparisons with a private university would have to involve one of the so-called public Ivy flagships, e.g., North Carolina, Michigan, et al. Well, the fact of the matter is that for many major fields, Minnesota, Indiana, Ohio State, and yes, Kansas State, are fully credible options, too.
-Its a good thing for these discussions to occur on this forum. I think its important for prospective students and their families to realize that public universities are a viable option in many cases for academic as well as financial reasons. I see a fair number of posts on this forum from students who are about to go deeply into debt to attend private schools (including some relatively mediocre ones) based on their erroneous beliefs that their future career prospects are doomed or that their education necessarily will be second-rate if they attend a public university. Unfortunately, it seems that the negative view of public universities is more prevalent in parts of the Northeast, and, these views adversely skew the college choices of many students who may not realize the many great options available outside their region, often at lower cost.
-Making these kinds of comparisons doesnt mean its a matter of sour grapes or Ivy-bashing. Apparently, such comparisons are a bit too challenging to some posters unquestioned assumptions about public universities, imho. (And remember, realistically, the option that most students have to consider is not a comparison of tippy-top outliers, like Harvard or Princeton, vs. a Kentucky or Tennessee.)
-One previous poster mentioned the potential de-motivating effects some serious students might experience in the face of the drinking and fraternity culture prevalent at some public universities. While that is a factor to consider, a serious student certainly can find other social niches at a large university. In my view, Id find the greater number of social choices available in a larger, more diverse setting preferable to the limited choices in a private school setting like Hamilton, or Colgate with their pervasive drinking cultures or the strong fraternity culture of a Vanderbilt.</p>