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<p>Yes. I know boat loads of PhDs from top ranked universities who are faculty at state flagships. Excellent, world class faculty, often on par with the best of the best. Guess where most of them send their kids to college? Hint: Not at the flagship. </p>
<p>I recently asked one such professor whether he would encourage his son to attend the flagship where he holds a senior, tenured position. His response “over my dead body”.</p>
<p>^^^Perhaps a case of familiarity breeding contempt.</p>
<p>I know such profs, and I also know some who encourage their kids to attend their own public institutions, but that was not my point. I think someone suggested earlier in this thread that the ‘quality’ of the profs at state schools was inevitably inferior to top privates. I was just pointing out that, more and more, both groups of schools are fishing in the same waters.</p>
<p>Education is not like taking a vacation, or buying a watch or a car. If I bought a Fossil and decide that I don’t like it, I have the option of getting a Rolex the next day. Of if I chose a less expensive hotel and decide that I’d rather go to a high end resort, I can either check out or try the resort the next time. Not so with education.You only get one undergrad educational experience in your lifetime. If you chose your state flagship and decide you don’t like it, you can’t transfer to an Ivy easily. That window of opportunity may be forever lost.</p>
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To be clear: that example was intended to be analogous to the process of making a choice, not to the exact choices themselves. That isn’t to say that we couldn’t make this comparison, but perhaps we can do better.</p>
<p>I think the best possible analogy might be the comparison between a fairly good, moderately upscale chain restuarant like a Cheesecake Factory or CPK and a AAA five diamond restaurant. In this scenario, their will be a variety of food at both restaurants. The food will provide adequate nourishment at both restaurants. The five diamond restaurant is more likely to have a star chef, the food will be more stylish, and the service will be more dedicated. However, the chain likely offers larger portions, a more casual atmosphere, and cheaper prices. Is one of these options universally preferable? No. Will one be better for a given individual? Perhaps. Might cost outweigh personal preference in many cases? Of course.
A fair point. However, I think it is important to note that along with the increased gravity of the decision comes the potential for dramatically increased cost differences.</p>
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<p>Of course it doesn’t. However, you can pick virtually any set of metrics you like, other than cost, and the numbers overwhelmingly favor Harvard. It does not matter whether you compare average SAT scores, faculty salaries, the number of books in the libraries, alumni salaries, Nobel prizes, student-faculty ratio, alumni giving, or the average age of the bricks in the buildings. It all overwhelmingly favors Harvard (even the out-of-pocket, after-aid costs in some cases). The major rankings are not completely arbitrary.</p>
<p>The one major undergraduate program ranking that does favor public universities is Washington Monthly. Their criteria include social benefit factors (such as social mobility and public service outcomes). Their academic measures do not normalize for instiitutional size, so they tend to reward large schools. As a result, even if you sort on their “Research” scores, the results show a relatively balanced mix of public and private schools.</p>
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<p>But I don’t see why you think people aren’t already doing that. In our family, we weighed it and said, yes, without a doubt, we will fund whatever college education our children want / can get into, and indeed our choices / decisions were made completely irrespective of cost. (I would have hesitated to pay an OOS price for a mediocre state flagship unless there were some compelling reason or program available nowhere else, but I don’t hesitate to pay full freight for an elite school.)</p>
<p>And yet all around me, I see plenty of families who immediately look at the calculation of U of Illinois versus other schools and say, “Yep, U of I it is.” Or for some, community college or a directional state u for 2 years and then transfer to U of I. Obviously they don’t value the experience the way that H and I do. Oh well! Not my problem.</p>
<p>So I guess I am sort of perplexed that you are “advocating” for something most people intuitively do anyway – determine whether an extra expenditure on something is worth it given their family’s financial situation and how much they value that extra.</p>
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<p>Again, it gets back to <em>experience.</em> When we were touring a college campus with my kids, my need for a hotel fell under safe, basic, convenient shelter and I wouldn’t have paid extra for the hypothetical waterfront Hyatt over the just-fine-for-my-purposes Hilton Garden Inn. If, however, this was a long-awaited family vacation where the hotel was part of the experience, yes, I’d pay for the Hyatt.</p>
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I think this is a pretty good analogy. A couple of points about it:
<p>The title of this thread is “when will people recognize that state flagships can be better than the Ivy League.” That implies that the OP wants other people to recognize / accept / validate his or her choice. And I think it’s perfectly feasible for me to say, when reflecting on someone else’s choice, that their state flagship is a great choice because (insert mix of social, financial, whatever circumstances) but at the same time feel that if I were making that choice for my family, I would be very hard-pressed to send my kids to our state flagship over an Ivy League school – and it would likely require some pretty extenuating circumstances, such as health considerations requiring them to stay near home, a unique major / program, etc.</p>
<p>And honestly? While I think I have a good state flagship here (not one of the UVA/Michigan/Berkeley types, but pretty good, all things considered), I think my kids can do better than it. And I see no reason not to shoot for the “better.” Other people – most people around here! – are perfectly content with U of I. Good for them! Their evaluation of my choices, and my evaluation of their choices, really are irrelevant to anything.</p>
<p>Top ten reasons to choose UNL over MIT for Business:</p>
<ol>
<li>Better sports teams!</li>
<li>More girls!</li>
<li>More F-U-N !!</li>
<li>I don’t like to study ten hours a day</li>
<li>I’m used to getting A’s</li>
<li>I feel more comfortable in Lincoln</li>
<li>If I need a big city there’s always Omaha</li>
<li>I don’t want to rely on Wellesley for my social life</li>
<li>My parents won’t pay for MIT</li>
<li>I can’t get into MIT</li>
</ol>
<p>Hey! Don’t you dis those Wellesley girls, NewHope! :-)</p>
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<p>Exactly. This thread, and a large portion of C.C. is full of people who want to validate their own choices.</p>
<p>To be fair, it cuts both ways. There are people who want to validate their choice to send their kids far away at great cost to an elite private, and there are people who want to validate their choice to save some money and send their kid closer to home. </p>
<p>I say, if something worked for you and your kid, that’s great. If something worked for me and my kid, that is great. There is no reason for me to feel superior to you or you to me.</p>
<p>^^ PG, just my way of providing a smile to insiders! Fabulous place, Wellesley … no “better” than UNL of course, but fabulous just the same.</p>
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And that’s precisely my point. You have claimed that your family made the decision completely irrespective of cost. That is not at all what I am advocating. The substance of post #271 is that rational cost-benefit analysis needs to be undertaken when comparing schools.</p>
<p>I really do have to ask: what is the brightline between “mediocre” and “elite” in your system? How did you communicate that to your children? How much OOS cost would have been too much?
I guess I’m going to post my comments from post #131 again:</p>
<p>"Let’s be very clear: arguing whether a school is “better” is futile and stupid. It is a waste of your time, my time, and everyone else’s time. The more constructive question is whether the ROI from the Ivy (or MIT) is worthwhile compared to a flagship. In some cases, there may not be a price difference . . .</p>
<p>. . . BTW, trying to gauge the exact “point” of a thread from the title can be tough, especially given that the OP was very likely being satirical. The first post mostly addressed bball, which leads me to believe that this was not intended to seriously answer that question."</p>
<p>I have to run right now, but I’ll address the other posts since last night this afternoon.</p>
<p>“Let’s be very clear: arguing whether a school is “better” is futile and stupid. It is a waste of your time, my time, and everyone else’s time. The more constructive question is whether the ROI from the Ivy (or MIT) is worthwhile compared to a flagship.”</p>
<p>Uh, no. Equating education with ROI … as a universal measurement tool … is foolishness. With that as social policy, we’d all be driving Corolla’s and living in trailer parks.</p>
<p>^^not that there is anything wrong with that…</p>
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<p>I don’t mean this to sound snotty, but why should someone who can pay full-freight “have” to undertake rational cost-benefit analysis if they don’t want to?</p>
<p>For example, I have a friend whose daughter got a very significant scholarship to USC, and also got into Vanderbilt. The family had experience with both schools, as mother went to USC and older sister was at Vanderbilt. Similarly rated schools, no major differences in the area that the student was interested in that would have tilted the balance one way or the other. They instructed their daughter to make the decision based on what SHE wanted, and not let the scholarship impact her, since they were able to pay the full freight. Why shouldn’t they have done that? Yes, other families might say “Wow, I can’t turn down a very significant scholarship for full freight at a similarly-rated school - go with USC, kid.” But so what? What do other people’s financial circumstances have to do with it? </p>
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<p>In general – and not as an absolute cut-line - I would say somewhere in the neighborhood of top 40 universities / top 40 LAC’s, I would be indifferent regarding costs. As an example - D’s top two choices were Wellesley and Bryn Mawr. I would have been equally happy with either decision despite the fact that there are probably 20 ranking points between the two, and I would not have said I’d pay for W but not for BM. </p>
<p>S’s top choices were NU, Kenyon, Tufts, Georgetown. I am indifferent between those 4 sets of costs as well and would have said to him “Go to whichever one you like best.” (Actually I would have pushed him towards Gtown, but that’s me, LOL) </p>
<p>As for OOS at a public? I, personally, would have paid OOS for UVA, Berkeley, Michigan, UNC, and maybe a few others if mine had been so inclined towards larger schools. I’d have a harder time paying OOS for an Iowa, Kansas, Ohio State and would have had a really hard time if we were talking something like Nebraska, unless there were some truly extenuating circumstance such as a unique program only available there.</p>
<p>How did I communicate that to my children? I think they just always knew.<br>
Why does my personal line between mediocre and elite matter, though? To you, that is.</p>
<p>Noimagination - H and I saved ever since we were first married to be able to fund our kids’ education. Using my example above, and pretending my kids didn’t get into their schools ED, let’s suppose my S got into both NU and Georgetown. Both great schools, right? Gtown probably even a bit better from his ultimate set of interests in history / IR / politics, but can’t go wrong with either choice.</p>
<p>We would have said to him, “Pick whichever one you like best, that you see yourself at, that you think you’ll be happiest at.” And that would have been the case whether NU was $40K and Gtown $60K, the other way around, or both were $50K. Or whether he had a scholarship at one and not the other.</p>
<p>At one point, you <em>can’t</em> make a rational cost-benefit analysis at this kind of level. For some families, they’d say $40K is doable and $60K isn’t, so go with the $40K. But if I don’t have to, why do I need to?</p>
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<p>I don’t mean to sound like a dittohead for Pizzagirl here, but yeah, ditto.</p>
<p>Do you do a complete cost-benefit RoI analysis for every product you consume? Do you always buy store brand garbage bags? Do you always shop around for every item of clothing or footwear? </p>
<p>People need to realize that for some families cost is not a factor that goes into the equation. At least not at current levels of cost. The difference between $0 and $50,000 /yr is not significant enough for some families.</p>
<p>I’m with Pizzagirl and vicaroius. There were a few schools I think my kids knew were not ones I would willingly shell out $$ for- but for the most part it was up to them to make a responsible choice.</p>
<p>Sevmom- You seem to persist in singling me out. Do you disagree that even UTexas (I now live in a state where UT is a different school) has a bottom part of the class? I think Texas is a great public university- one of the best- but after 28 years in Texas, many family members who are graduates etc., I KNOW that not every student chose UTx over a highly-selective private.</p>
<p>Perhaps another analogy would be deciding what neighborhood to buy a house in. Determining “return on investment” for this–even if you look at it in those terms–is complex. It’s not just about how much you expect the house to appreciate in value. It’s also about how much you will like living there, how long the commute will be, what the schools are like, and lots more. Some of those things are very hard to quantify in dollars, but they may make a big different to your long-term quality of life. But you know that if you have the money, you’ll most likely want the neighborhood that has bigger yards, better schools, better services, etc.</p>
<p>I think one point of disagreement in this conversation is probably how much one values the less quantifiable elements of a college education. Perhaps that’s proportional to how much money you have–the more money you already have, the less likely you may be to evaluate the decision in terms of ROI. Really rich people don’t choose their cars based on how well they retain resale value, for example.</p>