Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Choosing School
Thomas Sowell recently sang the praises of the lesser university to high school seniors.
My professors at Butler were almost universally far better teachers than anyone I encountered in a classroom at Vanderbilt. Also interestingly, when I finished undergrad and entered the working world, I found myself instructing recent grads of other, more prestigious institutions in laboratory basics because Butler's small size and student/prof ratio meant I had a wealth of experience that they had witnessed once in a film.
Education, in any field of study, is something that one gets - it is not something that is given to you. The education is available at any reasonable institution, if you are willing to work for it.
So what advantage the elite? Networking - that's it. For some things, like say public service, the elites are necessary to build the contacts to make a go of it. But consider this, in some fields, the important network is in colleges you have never heard of. For example - if you want to make it big in pharmacy, particularly retail pharmacy, the two most prestigious universities in the nation are Butler and Ferris State in Michigan. Both schools benefit from proximity to and endowment by major pharmaceutical manufacturers. There are even spill over effects. Butler's incredibly strong for its size Chemistry department exists, in part, because of the funds it gets to build the foundation for the pharmacy school.
I loved this Sowell column, and if you are a high schooler, or love one dearly, I would take it's words to heart. The need for Ivy League is very limited, and if you do not have that particular career path in mind, why feed the beast?
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One of the consequences of taking these tests is that, if you do well, you may be deluged with literature from colleges and universities all across the country.I really want to "ditto" this sentiment as it was very much my experience as a graduate of the "lesser" Butler University. It is worthy of note that I left the elite and prestigious Vanderbilt University for Butler, and it was NOT because I was not cutting it academically.
Some students may feel flattered that Harvard, Yale, or M.I.T. seems to be dying to have them apply. But the brutal reality is that the reason for wanting so many youngsters to apply is so that they can be rejected.
Why? Because the prestige ranking of a college or university as a “selective” institution is measured by how small a percentage of its applicants are accepted. So they have to get thousands of young people to apply, so that they can be rejected.
[...]
Lower-level courses are usually left to be taught by junior faculty members or even graduate students. Yet these courses are often the foundation on which higher level courses are built.
If you don’t really master introductory calculus, physics or economics, you are unlikely to do well in higher level courses which presuppose that you already have a foundation on which they can build.
By contrast, at a small college without the prestige of big-name research universities, the introductory courses which provide a foundation for higher courses are more likely to be taught by experienced professors who are teachers more so than researchers.
Maybe that is why graduates of such colleges often go on to do better than the graduates of big-name research universities.
My professors at Butler were almost universally far better teachers than anyone I encountered in a classroom at Vanderbilt. Also interestingly, when I finished undergrad and entered the working world, I found myself instructing recent grads of other, more prestigious institutions in laboratory basics because Butler's small size and student/prof ratio meant I had a wealth of experience that they had witnessed once in a film.
Education, in any field of study, is something that one gets - it is not something that is given to you. The education is available at any reasonable institution, if you are willing to work for it.
So what advantage the elite? Networking - that's it. For some things, like say public service, the elites are necessary to build the contacts to make a go of it. But consider this, in some fields, the important network is in colleges you have never heard of. For example - if you want to make it big in pharmacy, particularly retail pharmacy, the two most prestigious universities in the nation are Butler and Ferris State in Michigan. Both schools benefit from proximity to and endowment by major pharmaceutical manufacturers. There are even spill over effects. Butler's incredibly strong for its size Chemistry department exists, in part, because of the funds it gets to build the foundation for the pharmacy school.
I loved this Sowell column, and if you are a high schooler, or love one dearly, I would take it's words to heart. The need for Ivy League is very limited, and if you do not have that particular career path in mind, why feed the beast?
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