<p>Another devil's advocate thought: A high PHD production stat could actually be viewed by some potential applicants as a negative. Does it imply that the Bachelor or Master's degree candidates from a particular institution have an educational background and skills that are not "marketable" ?</p>
<p>Just another perspective. :)</p>
<p>Carolyn, are we talking about the academic quality of the school or the academic quality of the students?</p>
<p>You don't think a 90% rate of kids going to college reflects the students? You think it is the school?</p>
<p>I like this basketball analogy.</p>
<p>Phil Jackson is a great basketball coach.
When he has a team with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippin, or when he has a team with Shaq and Kobe, he wins championships.</p>
<p>When he doesn't have these caliber of players, he doesn't win.</p>
<p>Sokkermom, so what is your take on high school going-on-to-college percentages? Useful measure or not?</p>
<p>Carolyn:</p>
<p>I don't really see the correlation between the two. I can't see the apples to apples thing.......</p>
<p>I also like this when talking about percentages. </p>
<p>I have a choice between going into 2 rooms. In one room I have a 20% chance of being shot randomly. In the other, a 10% chance of being shot randomly.</p>
<p>I, of course, choose the 10% room. Less chance of being shot.</p>
<p>Now that I have survived this test:), I have another choice to make...</p>
<p>I get to go to college. 2 rooms. In one room, students go on to get PHDs at a 20% rate. In the other, a 10% rate.</p>
<p>Which should I choose? </p>
<p>Answer: It doesn't matter based on this criteria. I'm not going to get a PHD anyway. :)</p>
<p>In the first example, my actions don't matter. So the percentages are important.</p>
<p>In the second example, the percentages don't matter. My actions matter.</p>
<p>You don't think a 90% rate of kids going to college reflects the students? You think it is the school?</p>
<br>
<blockquote> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>Dstark, until recently, I might have agreed with you. But in my college counseling credential program, two of my teachers are high school guidance counselors at schools that both have over 80% low income and minority students. Both schools send 90% on to college - 60% to 4 year, 30% to two year. When I expressed surprise at this, several other GC's from similar low income schools listed comparable college rates.</p>
<p>Yet my local high school, as well as those in surrounding areas, are 80% middle and upper income students with probably less than 20% minorities --- and actually send lower percentages on to college (4 year and two year).</p>
<p>Many would argue that kids from the middle-to-upper income families are overall better prepared for academics (i.e., they have educational advantages that income provides) yet that doesn't seem hold true in this admittedly tiny and ancedotal sample.</p>
<p>What is different about the low income schools sending high percentages to college? Simple, they both have amazing college counseling programs that start in 9th grade and keep kids (and their parents) thinking about and preparing for college. There is simply no comparison to the college counseling (if you can even call it that) available at our local middle-to-upper income schools.</p>
<p>So, yes, to a certain extent I think you do have to consider academic environment, including support and counseling, when comparing college rates among high schools. It is not <em>just</em> about individual ability or achievement (although I would definitely agree with you that does play a role). I think you can argue the same about percentages going on to graduate programs (not just doctoral programs) at colleges. Of course, we have no way of measuring the importance of each.</p>
<p>(And again, this is just a very small sample, more ancedotal than anything, but it blew my mind to hear this from GC's at low income schools because, like many, I'd just assumed that the odds were always stacked against low income students when it came to going on to college)</p>
<p>... BUT, I will admit that when we looked at high schools for my S, we knew that he wanted to go to college and be prepared for college. My daughter is in eighth grade, and we will be deciding what high school she will be attending in a few short months. She would also like to attend college and be prepared for college, so the college prep courses offered will be a consideration. </p>
<p>However, when S looked at colleges, he wanted to be prepared for his next stage of life. (Whatever it may be.) He did not enter college thinking that he necessarily needed or wanted to be prepared for the pursuit of a doctorate degree. Again, the number of PHDs produced by an institution was not a factor in his overall decision making process at all. Life after undergraduate school for him may or may not consist of additional academic studies. He knew that life after high school would definitely include college.</p>
<p>For this reason, I still do not see the correlation. Sorry. :)</p>
<p>In the first example, my actions don't matter. So the percentages are important.>></p>
<p>But that totally discounts factors OUTSIDE of your actions, such as whether one room has a lock on the door, or windows, or a security guard. :) Same thing with doctoral programs --- yes, your actions matter, but to say that they are the ONLY factor that influences whether you will go on to get a doctorate discounts that there may indeed be factors OUTSIDE of your actions that matter. And, some kids enter high school with no intention of going on to college but we still look at those pesky percentage-going-on-to-college rates as a measure of a high school's quality.</p>
<p>I personally believe that doctoral program grad rates - like high school college rates - are a COMBINATION of personal and educational environmental factors, not just one or the other. Of course, as I said, we have no way of knowing from looking at the percentages ALONE which weights most heavily at any particular school.</p>
<p>However, when S looked at colleges, he wanted to be prepared for his next stage of life. (Whatever it may be.) He did not enter college thinking that he necessarily needed or wanted to be prepared for the pursuit of a doctorate degree. Again, the number of PHDs produced by an institution was not a factor in his overall decision making process at all.>></p>
<p>Good point. And that goes back to what I made last night: the percentage of doctoral grads may only matter to those who hope to eventually get doctorates. Just as the percentage going on to college may only matter to those who hope to go on to college. But, still, that doesn't tell us whether either is an effective measure of a school's quality, even for those who start high school planning to go to college, unless we can somehow weight individual and outside factors. </p>
<p>So, therefore, pointing to high school college rates is probably as useless as pointing to college doctoral rates as an overall measure of academic quality. If statistically you have no more probability of going on to college if you go to a high school that sends 90% on than you do if you go to a high school that sends 50% on, then we should stop using that as any indication of an INDIVIDUAL's student's chances of going on to college. There are just too many variables involved.</p>
<p>Carolyn, I think your analogy makes perfect sense. If you had a kid and wanted to send them to college, you would want them to go to a HS where a high percentage of kids went on to college. This would indicate the kids were prepared for college and they were in an environment where they were encouraged. If you sent a kid to HS and had little expectation that they would go to college, you might be interested in different HS's. You may be more interested in a HS which provided trade/technical skills. You might not care if the HS offered AP calculus and you might be more interested that they provided basic math skills needed to balance a checkbook and handle everyday tasks.</p>
<p>I think the same is true for college. If you expect your kid to have a lifelong interest in learning and it is very likely that they will persue an advanced degree, then the rate of enrollment for advanced degrees would be very important. If you view UG college as a terminal degree, then you might be more interested in how the college prepares the students for careers. You might not care if they offered highly advanced courses, research opportunities and they encouraged and expected the students to persue an advanced degree.</p>
<p>Carolyn, I do believe that people do well in certain environments. Some people like small. Some like large.</p>
<p>My next door neighbor went to Ohio Wesleyan (a Loren Pope school).
He did miserably there.
After a few years, he transferred to Principia where he did much better.</p>
<p>Was Principia a better school?</p>
<p>Or did he mature?</p>
<p>As for these PHD percentages, if you take out income bias, and educational bias of parents, I bet you would see the percentages change. Who knows? Maybe Berkeley would be number 1 in percentages too. :)</p>
<p>I think at D high school we look at students going on to further education,whether it be vocational training, a 2 or 4 year college.
As long as their high school edcuation has been meaningful, and by that I mean the assumption that they have taken high school math and can read & reason at a post high school level, I don't think it matters that much if they go on to a 4 year college or right into the workforce as an plumbers apprentice. ( of course if you are looking at private day schools, where parents are paying $20,000 and up, they are looking at not only percentage of students going to a 4 year college, but want to know what colleges)</p>
<p>I also think that for some jobs, in lieu of vocational training, a BA has taken the place of a high school diploma- entry level jobs often require a BA to be hired, not that you need one to do the work, but they like to say ____ in our dept have college degrees. If you are going to work at an insurance company or in medical records, you really don't need a degree- its great that you have one, because I think an educated population should be a goal for society, but you are going to get training on the job.
And since in some fields a higher degree is required eventually, you aren't going to get a tenured job as a professor of history unless you have a PHd, and you have a better chance of doing scientific research if you have a Phd so just as you look at colleges that have a strong dept in your major, you probably also want to consider colleges that give students the background to attempt a terminal degree</p>
<p>As long as their high school edcuation has been meaningful, and by that I mean the assumption that they have taken high school math and can read & reason at a post high school level,>></p>
<p>Oh, absolutely true Emerald. There are, unfortunately, no exit exams or even exit standards for what "post college level" attainment means for students graduating from college. (Although I have recently seen that there is a push to put them into place by the Bush administration). So, we are forced to compare less-than-ideal measures of academic quality/preparation like percentages going on to graduate school and percentages getting a job right after graduation (another statistic colleges/universities love to tout) and even percentages graduating at all. </p>
<p>Which is really depressing because the truth is we have no way of comparing how College A's educational effectiveness compares to College B's. The one exception might be if we compared test scores on graduate-level application scores. But, again, not all students are motivated to go on to graduate school, so that is probably a poor indicator of overall educational quality for ALL students.</p>
<p>Maybe the proposal to have an exit exam for college students makes some sense after all. :)</p>
<p>And, one more thought, to use individual school college rates or doctoral rates effectively, don't you have to be able to compare how they stack up to the median rates of ALL schools? If a high school sends 60% on to college and the median rate of all high school students going on to college is 50% (I'm just making these up as examples - I have no data on what the rate actually is), then is that high school really so bad? It's still above the median. And the same for doctoral rates, or medical school rates, or graduate school programs in general. If a school sends only 5% on to doctoral programs, but the median rate for all schools is 1%, then it still does a better job than most at preparing students (or, if you want, possibly attracting students likely to go on to doctoral programs).</p>
<p>By the same token, we probably should also try to group schools by where students start --- maybe use median SAT scores as a measure of the "quality" of students who attend. And, then, would a school with a median SAT score of 1200 sending more students to graduate school be <em>better</em> than a school with a median SAT score of 1400? Should we ask how many students start college wanting to go to doctoral programs, or medical school or graduate school in general and then see how many actually do? Seems then you are taking inputs and outcomes into account a little more.</p>
<p>This method "rewards" small schools, per post #14 above.
It rewards small homogeneous, schools with non-diverse student bodies. </p>
<p>The fact that a particular school has, say, a large College of Architecture, or a School of Nursing, or whatever pre-professional programs for which a phd is not as common a terminal degree</p>
<p>in no way makes that university a less suitable school to pursue undergraduate studies in its College of Arts & Sciences, leading to a PhD in, say, Philosophy.</p>
<p>A college consisting of 5 students had 2 of them go on to get doctorates in Economics. Does that mean that it is a better place to study Economics than Harvard? I don't think so. How many Courses does it offer in that major? If you get interested in a particular sub-area in your junior year, will your school have any faculty that are interested in that particular sub-specialty? Or offer courses in it? Is it "better" for you to be in that cohort of 2 students, though it is a large percentage of the school, than to be in a cohort of 15 like-minded students at a school that has a smaller percentage? Because it has a separate school of nursing or something? OR because more students there are interested in going to law school? When all of these 15 students will be sharing the same upper-level classes, and so will actually share in a cohort experience even though the university is large?</p>
<p>The high school analogy does not follow because there are many paths after college that are typically considered to have merit for a bright student, not just one.</p>
<p>This is not a particularly good measure of quality of a school's program in any particular discipline IMO. For the reasons I stated above. It might be a good measure of how small and non-diverse a particular student body is, in terms of future vocational interests. If that's important, great.</p>
<p>The high school analogy does not follow because there are many paths after college that are typically considered to have merit for a bright student, not just one</p>
<p>I think that is what I am saying though
If I want a college that is going to go to the Rose Bowl, where I can attend school in a cohort if I want and socialize with people just in my major- if I want, and have a wide choice of indepth classes in my major then I am going to want to attend a school like the UW, where I can count on a huge alumni network and very specialized classes like astrobiology.</p>
<p>If I am more interested in a broader based education, where I want to attend a school that is small enough that the same people who are in my sophomore chem class are also in my music theory study group, where I don't care if they have a competitive football team ( or even a football team at all) where the Greeks are Aristophanes & Ovid not Kappa Kappa Kappa, then I would be more interested in a lac like Reed. BUt Reed doesn't have astrobiology, they don't have geology they don't have a lot of classes that students who want further study would want to take, so students pretty much have to go to grad school if they want to continue in their field.</p>
<p>Paying attention to phd rates isn't saying that one school is doing a better job at preparing students for a BA, but it would be acknowledging that the combo of students who may be interested in further study and the support the school gives results in more students who pursue academic studies.</p>
<p>"Paying attention to phd rates isn't saying that one school is doing a better job at preparing students for a BA, but it would be acknowledging that the combo of students who may be interested in further study and the support the school gives results in more students who pursue academic studies."</p>
<p>No, it doesn't.</p>
<p>
[quote]
A college consisting of 5 students had 2 of them go on to get doctorates in Economics. Does that mean that it is a better place to study Economics than Harvard?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>So I take it that you discount the fact that Harvard is among the country's largest per capita producers of future PhDs across a very wide range of academic fields?</p>
<p>Or, could it be that Harvard's per capita PhD production is a measure (however imperfect it may be) of its high educational quality?</p>
<p>so if a higher percentage of students who recieve phds at one school- * doesn't mean* that the students at the school are more interested in further academics* or that* the school gives support to students who are considering further academics, are we then saying that when one school has 500 graduates and 5 go on to receive a phd and one school has 50 graduates and 5 go on to recieve a phd, the difference in percentage is meaningless?</p>
<p>Emeraldkity4, might be meaningless.</p>
<p>From Interesteddad's post 11, UW is 26th. Where is Reed?</p>
<p>If you use PHD's as an academic indicator, how can you say there are more academically minded kids at Reed when comparing that school to UW?</p>
<p>There are more academically minded students at UW than Reed.</p>
<p>Read posts 11, 31 and Coureur's posts, especially 14.</p>