And it’s not just the affordability of the elite/tiny sliver schools- it’s the outrage that accompanies those discussions, followed by a description of all the trappings of upper middle class life that the family would have to forgo “U Penn wanted me to sell my beach house, can you imagine?”. As if U Penn cares whether you sell the beach house, take out a HELOC, keeps the beach house but liquidates your Microsoft stock…
Would be nice if we cared about the waitress at the local Waffle House trying to figure out how Susie or Johnnie can get to and from classes at the local CC when the bus stops running at 7 pm but the chem lab isn’t over until 8– and her shift doesn’t end until 10 pm.
I actually had a neighbor respond to a story like this in the local newspaper (we don’t live in Waffle House territory but the other details are real) with “Why can’t the kid just take an Uber home?”
You know you are living in privilege-territory when the notion of a $15 uber (and not the subsidized 75 cent bus fair), multiple times a week, is your “go to” reaction about someone’s transportation difficulties.
Once you put a minimum out there, kids who are at the 75th percentile will start to think their chances will be enhanced (which, most likely, won’t be true) and lawyers will sniff out potential lawsuits.
State geography matters in terms of how large a population can be within reasonable commuting range of a college. For example, putting a college in mountainous rural Pennsylvania does not give it much of a population that can commute to it. So it is not surprising that Pennsylvania has many small state (including state-related) colleges that are too small to offer a decent range of programs and majors (and probably have substantial administrative inefficiency), but much of rural Pennsylvania is still outside of reasonable commuting range of them.
Would Pennsylvania be able to spend its higher education budget more efficiently by closing the small rural state(-related) colleges and using the money for in-state financial aid that includes living expense coverage at fewer larger state colleges offering full ranges of programs and majors? I.e. something that it appears that Wyoming is doing (University of Wyoming’s NPC suggests financial aid coverage of living expenses for low-money Wyoming residents).
Another geographical quirk are the border cities/towns.
U Conn Storrs is closer to many parts of Massachusetts than it is to its own residents (taxpayers). Sticking the flagship in a rural part of the state must have seemed like a good idea when land was cheap!
Something to note is that UCs mostly do offer financial aid coverage for living expenses, which varies on whether the student is a commuter or residential student, but the CSUs do not, given their original mission of being broad-access universities available to a wide range of students, including place-bound ones. There are also 23 CSUs that put a large percentage of the state population within commuting range of one (versus 9 UCs), but there are still some parts of the state that are long distance from the nearest CSU (or UC), and some places where the nearest CSU (or UC) is too selective to be considered “broad-access” (e.g. southern San Luis Obispo County and northern Santa Barbara County, where the nearest state universities CPSLO and UCSB are highly selective).
There are other issues though even in high population areas. We have 2 publics within reasonable commuting range, 3 at a stretch - Cal, CSU east bay and then SFSU (which would take over an hour during rush hour). Cal is obviously super competitive and neither of the others offers my kid’s major. And as noted above, some areas only have highly impacted CSUs or CUs reasonably nearby.
I think you have nailed the problem statement precisely. When Yale is tuition-free for up to the 89th percentile of American household incomes, it is truly not right for the media to spend so much (disproportionate) energy covering the issues relevant only to these super-wealthy elite schools, which BTW produce only a tiny fraction of college graduates.
To the very real problem of “two Americas” written about upthread, I have no expectations that these super-elite schools should even try solve this very difficult problem which has roots across so many facets of American life. As parents, we try to teach our kids pretty early on that life isn’t fair and more importantly that it shouldn’t affect their happiness: some families ride around in a new BMW every year, other families make do with a very old Subaru. Some kids get to attend fancy colleges and study liberal arts; other kids must be much more conscious in choosing a major that leads to an immediate ROI. Expecting a place like Yale to close the “two Americas” chasm is neither necessary nor a good outlet for our legitimate angst about the society we live in.
Seems like that can be an issue with any less common major. For example, architecture or architectural studies is available at only 2 of 9 UCs and 3 of 23 CSUs (BArch at 2 of the CSUs, BA/BS at the others). Nuclear engineering is offered at only one state university campus in California, and not one that is easy to get admitted to.
It’s even more restrictive than that as the arch major at ucla is junior year entry only, and if you are referring to Fresno as the 4-year csu, that’s housed in the construction management department and that shows in the curriculum - it’s not going to appeal to the average arch student and of course has a limited commuter base too. And Cal is well, Cal, and both Cal Polys are very hard to get into for architecture This may be kind of niche as an argument /subject but it still goes to the point that it is very difficult for a CA student without a CU/CSU wgpa of over 4.0 to get into architecture instate, which undercuts the argument about state colleges being.available to a wide range of students. And the point made earlier about the impacted CSUs applies to a much wider range of majors.
For context, consider that Wesleyan is located about 30 minutes away, shares many “overlap” applications with Yale (indeed, probably loses more yield contests to Yale than to just about any other college in the country.) For most of the 19th century and well into the first quarter of the 20th, they were highly visible icons of Protestant Christianity, Wesleyan as its name suggests and Yale by virtue of its founding by Puritan Congregationalists in 1701. Neither has been particularly religious since the modern era, but as this response from President Michael S. Roth suggests, the acorns don’t fall far from the tree:
It’s the recommendation to shrink the mission of the university that caught my eye. The committee claims that in 2016, “departing from its traditional emphasis on the creation and dissemination of knowledge, Yale expanded its mission statement to include ‘improving the world today,’ educating ‘aspiring leaders worldwide,’ and fostering ‘an ethical, interdependent and diverse community.’”
That is incorrect. It is true that Yale shifted its mission statement a bit in 2016, but the underlying ideal of cultivating people who would, as the language now says, “lead and serve in every sphere of human activity” had long been among the university’s goals. In fact, that cultivation has long been among the goals of many universities in the United States, adopted as these institutions sought secular replacements for their founding denominational creeds. Leaders of colleges and universities thought they had a duty to defend the freedoms that allowed higher education to thrive. My own school’s founding documents, written in 1831, spoke of furthering the “good of the individual educated and the good of the world.” We still cite that today when we speak of our mission to produce graduates who will use their educations to make a positive difference.
Honestly, my cynical reaction was, “Gee, I wonder if this committee was made up entirely of research faculty?” And then the very next paragraph, they recommended adopting the mission statement from the Faculty Handbook. Ah, yep.
If you’re a valedictorian and have 1600s, you’ll still do really well in admissions. I know that there may have been one anecdotal case here or there, where someone like that didn’t do well, but 99% of them will do well. In my hs class, back in the day, the valedictorian with 1530,did get rejected by Harvard and Stanford, but did get into Brown and MIT. The salutatorian with 1480 got into Princeton. The person who didn’t do much at school is now a doctor. In fact, if a pre-med prioritizes a club over studying for organic chemistry, guess what, they won’t be doctors.
Agree to disagree for the most selective schools that do “holistic” admissions. But there are many other amazing schools and some give merit for stats.
