It has been said you can get the same amount of education from a community college compared to an ivy league, if one applies themselves. My main question is why do people on a global scale put so much emphasis on status from a college instead of knowing more from another place?
While the thought is in the right place, it’s not true. The resources and assets placed towards most Ivy schools and community colleges are not comparable, and as such, neither is the education you receive.
The same is not more.
@boolaHI so you are basing your assumption on resources/connections?
No community college offers anywhere near the educational opportunities that my mid tier state flagship does. A student at a community college simply will not have access to the same resources that students at many well respected schools take for granted. These resources, which range from on campus art museums to industry funded trips to mountains, to access to multimillion dollar teaching labs, greatly enhance a student’s education.
That is to say nothing of the comparative rigor, even in the same classes. I studied for chemistry by watching MIT’s chem lectures on YouTube. They were much harder than the videos put out by a community college. Different caliber of students, different expectations.
There are several reasons.
Students go through a major vetting process to get into college. Their entire life (academics, test scores, ECs, etc. etc) are analyzed by college admissions committees.
It’s not a perfect process, but being admitted to a highly selective college (i.e., Ivy League) says a lot about the student. They are generally going to be a top 5% student, standardized test taker, and also has some kind of compelling ECs and a certain level of well-rounded-ness.
Someone from a CC has demonstrated none of this. There is no vetting process for a CC.
Second, you can judge a student’s accomplishments at an Ivy League school. Someone who finishes at the top of his class at an Ivy League school is going to be a genius. Being in the top half means something.
You can’t really do that with a CC. Getting straight A’s at a CC doesn’t really mean much. People do that all the time.
That saying is basically to tell you that you can succeed down many paths … but not saying the paths are equally nice or equally efficient.
If one applies oneself and attends at state flagship, they can likely get 90% of what an Ivy League offers. Ivy Leagues vs top 40 + LACs might be suble and may be more based on type of school and your interests .
Even at a flagship, labs will be older, classes will be larger, advising and tutoring unavailable or mediocre, and social connections will be with a more middle class crowd … compared to an Ivy League. There are also some differences between an average flagship and Ivy in terms of intellectual stimulation from your fellow students as well as from the competition with people that are of your caliber or higher.
Community colleges vary wildly in quality, with some being basically feeders to 4 year state schools and some being pools of remedial students with no likelihood of graduation. The former could possibly replace a flagship, but I;d remove another 20% for labs, and maybe give a few points for class size. Also you will likely not have PhD faculty but more adjuncts …
You may really have to apply yourself to learn enough to be competitive in junior year classes, which can be brutal in some majors. Again, if you can go to a top CC that is feeding 50% of their students to state flagships (UCs, etc), that is a different thing, but it isn’t Harvard.
The cost of total actual instruction, say at a place like Yale, is close to 150k. Many different things go into this number, one being a constant monitoring of students by masters of each college, who oversee such matters, it is high touch with high results. It’s costly, but it is also why they have a 98-99% graduation rate.
@whenhen Well you need to consider factors of the student willing to study on their own time by picking various resources such books and lecture videos from other institutions without attending them, in college we cannot sole rely on the lectures to learn, don’t you agree?
@okthenyeah @boolaHI Yet again another reason why their is the factor of the 98-99 percent graduation rate for Yale is the amount of scholarship the give to their new incoming students based on socioeconomic premise.
Huh, not sure if I understand your point–can you clarify?
I really like this discussion
@boolaHI Hang on, if you were to go onto Harvard’s financial calculator you can put in the range of income you are currently living off of and they will give you the amount of how much they will give you. The rest of the ivy leagues do the same thing. What I really find interesting is that if you are making less than 60k you are not expected to pay any amount due to the bountiful amounts of endowment these ivy leagues have to sustain itself.
@boolaHI That is the same for children as well. Take Stanford, although not an ivy league but still a top school, If you have 2 kids in college you get a massive break on tuition.
Actually that amount is closer to 75k. And H, Y and P, follow the basic same guideline. Further, all aid is via grants, and no loans are included in the package.
To a certain extent, you answer your own question. That is to say, the status of some institutions is so profound, is related to the vast, vast amounts of knowledge on a wide array of subjects a single university might offer students.
@boolaHI Well I know I answered my own question, I was just in a mood for a discussion is all and try to elaborate on various acquisitions.
:)>-
How about changing status to the actual universities’ expectations for their graduates?
Let me give an example we are currently struggling with. Our 11th grader has a high level of proficiency in French and is taking her 3rd yr of Russian. We have been interviewing depts trying to find one that will meet her needs as a student while being a realistic option in terms of affordability. We met with one dept and the French professor told us that their graduation objective is mid to high-intermediate and he gave examples of what they want students to be able to do at graduation. Our dd can already do most of what he was discussing and she has close to 2 full yrs of high school left. By the time she graduates high school, what would that dept have to offer her if she choose French as a major? Russian flagships have superior as the objective for their students. The avg Russian dept has mid-intermediate as a graduation objective. If that is the dept’s objective and the student body is small (which most are) who is the student going to be conversing with to progress to a higher level? (Not even discussing the fact that Russian as a major is not readily accessible everywhere.)
Fwiw, we did not find this type of discrepancy as insurmountable for our kids pursuing STEM majors. Engineering and hard sciences seem far more standardized across schools. Entering college with advanced or superior foreign language goals, however, is quickly eliminating affordable options.
At least where I live, it’s a status symbol. Why do people put so much importance on having a nice house, a nice car, nice clothes? A modest house offers a roof just as much as a mansion does. A Toyota gets you from point A to point B as much as a BMW does. A purse from target holds your things no better than a bag from Coach. However, kids where I live want to prove how smart, how hardworking, how talented they are through their school. They want something with wow factor. I think every kid to a certain degree wants a bit of that.
The question arises, who would you prefer to reply to your post, the “we” who attach status according to the collegiate dichotomy as you’ve proposed it, or the “we” who don’t?