Forum: Story Discussion and Feedback

In a story on SOL, a character asserts that Harvard is NOT the best college in America, arguing that there is no one "best." I no longer recall the name of the story or the name of the author. What should determine the "best college" anyway - the college where the graduates were the most successful in later life, though the students were already wealthy and among the elite before entering - or is the best the college that can take a student who is below par in both wealth and where he/she went to high school and turn them into productive citizens who work hard and play by the rules?

As ML said, no one college is the best. A college that might be the best for one person might actually be the worst for someone else. MIT is good, Harvard is good, UC Berkeley is good, Michigan is good. Each is good for different reasons, and different academic disciplines.

ML has a valid point,but the first thing that jumped into my mind was that was that most major universities seem to have a specialization, like archeology or computer science, etc.,etc.

I saw a comment about a decade ago from a news commenter along the lines that there are about a dozen universities in the US that could be considered the top from different points of view and then there are 7,000 schools who are tied for second place.

There are advantages to going to certain schools, especially for certain jobs. For example, if you want to be a lawyer, you not only need to take your bar exams in the state you want to practice but part of your school experience is networking. So if you want to live and practice in Chicago, going to Yale Law isn't going to help you much immediately. OTOH, going to Yale (or Harvard) Law will help a lot if you have political aspirations.

But the actual teachers or degree at Yale aren't necessarily any better than University of Illinois, it's the social cachet that matters.

There are 3,982 are degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the US. Of those about about 200 are selective. The rest either take everybody or almost everybody who applies.

The real difference between the two categories is the type students. Almost everybody who goes to a selective college is smart and interested in learning. They aren't just there because mom and dad forced them to go to college. Having taught at a non-selective college I think a large percentage of the students have little interest in actually learning.

If you're interested in learning you can do it at any college but you will find it a lot harder to do at a minimally selective college. There isn't the quality of other students to drive you to excel. There isn't the same quality of classroom interaction.

If you get into the top 10 or so - those with admission rates of less than 10% of applicants, you are likely very smart and were always at the top of your class. High school was easy for you. When you arrive at college you find out that everywhere you look you find people who are as smart, or more likely, smarter than you. That makes a difference.

My daughter, who is definitely not an intellectual snob, went to one of the perennial "top 10" colleges in the country. In her junior year, she spent a semester at a school ranked by Forbes at #28. She chose it for because the school is considered one of top couple in what she hoped to be her career path. She had actually considered going there when applying out of high school. She had a great time at the school but was amazed at the difference in the students, the quality of the class discussion and how much less rigorous the academics were. Overall, she was disappointed in the experience.

It has been a while since my first year in college, which I admit was flop cause I wasn't mentally prepared or grown up enough to succeed. I did return four years later and completed a BS in Chemistry. What I find difficult to comprehend today is the cost of getting a degree. I find it difficult to imagine the number of years to recover that cost and have a decent quality of life. So to me some where along the line a consideration of a degrees cost needs to enter in the consideration. The fact that universities promote student loans leads me to wonder whether they make any effort to control overhead costs other than shortchange the support staff.

Just think of all the "professional" students. A few years back, I had a 38 year old client that had several bachelors degrees, 4 or 5 masters degrees, a PhD, and was still attending college classes. He had never held a full time job, didn't own any real estate, and lived in an apartment over his grandparents garage. He only earned about $8K, but since he had to do another FAFSA, wanted to collect the Earned Income Credit, and get his withheld taxes, he needed to file another tax return. He owed almost $400,000 in student loans that were all deferred since he was still a student. He said he was planning to file bankruptcy when he could no longer get them. Good luck.