An interesting op ed discussion on attending elite colleges/worth

[musicprnt]

<p>There are always discussions on here about the benefits of elite colleges (or lack thereof), here are a number of perspectives. What I find interesting is that the discussion of these so called experts pretty much mimics what we have seen on here and other places in terms of viewpoints on going to elite schools.</p>

<p>My one problem with what is written here by some is using a comparison of the 'elite' schools versus the bottom (generally community colleges and the like), that is not a fair comparison at all IMO. What about comparing the elite to the next tier down? I suspect if anyone bothered to do that, they wouldn't find that much of a difference. Comparing the ivies to the lowest tiered colleges is like doing a Car and Driver test comparison comparing a Ferrari to a Trabant and then proclaiming how the Ferrari is the clear winner......In any event, enjoy. </p>

<p>The</a> Specialization Trade-off - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com</p>

[noimagination]

<p>I might write more later, but my first thought is that he provides very little in the way of warrants for his claims. I’d love to see a few more citations.</p>

<p>EDIT: I was only referring to the linked entry. I didn’t read the others, but I will do so when I get back this afternoon.</p>

[emilybee]

<p>Music, I had the same thought when I read the articles this morning. They did use the word “selective” a lot but gave no specifics on what that means. For instance, my kid is applying to several small LAC’s scattered throughout the top 100 LAC. While there is a difference between the ones closer to the top than the bottom, there is not that much of a difference and none of them should be mentioned in the same breath as a community college.</p>

[Bay]

<p>

If these highly selective educational institutions send clear signals that the best way to be admitted is to focus on running wind sprints rather than learning Chinese or solving equations, then savvy grade school and high school students will conform their behavior accordingly.

</p>

<p>Wind sprints?? This author lost all credibility with me after using this 70s term. Does anyone still say “wind sprints” anymore? In the running world today, its intervals, speed work, repeats, fartleks and tempo runs, but not wind sprints. And he supposedly co-authored a book on college athletics (!). Then again, maybe its a regional usage thing.</p>

[originaloog]

<p>James Schulman is an acknowledged expert in the field of collegiate athletics and its impacts on the college sports in America. Op-ed pieces do not use citations but are opinion pieces based on the knowledge of the author. They are not scholarly articles.</p>

<p>The primary point of Mr Schulman’s article is to comment upon the choices elite colleges make when assembling a freshman class. With more that 10 highly qualified students clamoring for each admission slot, is it wiser to accept a student interested in languages or math vs the student expert in making a slapshot from the wing.</p>

[EMM1]

<p>“James Schulman is an acknowledged expert in the field of collegiate athletics and its impacts on the college sports in America.”</p>

<p>More precisely, what he is is one of the haters. I don’t wish to start this debate again, but I would simply make two points.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>He suggests that the best way to improve their chances of getting into an Ivy League school is to focus their efforts on athletics rather than academics. In fact, the possibility that any student will reach a Division I school through athletic prowess is almost vanishingly small (even assuming that they keep their grades up) no matter how hard they practice.</p></li>
<li><p>The reality is that the single best predictor of success after college is participation in intercollegiate athletics. That is a matter of documented fact. If the goal of our “best” colleges is to prepare the leaders for the future, the implications of that reality are clear.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>The James Shulman’s of the world should grow up and stop whining.</p>

[Bay]

<p>^Ah, that explains it. Revenge of the nerds, in other words?? Jk</p>

[bchan1]

<p>The link between athletics and academics is a well established part of the liberal education model of the west. Only time will tell whether this will continue to provide the kind of teamwork/networking edge that propells a student into higher leadership opportunities. The educational model in other parts of the world does not equate throwing a ball with solving an equation and the quality of American education is more and more likely to come into question as the value of ‘nerdiness’ is on the rise.</p>

<p>Foreign students don’t necessarily come to the US because they think the education is better - frequently they come because they can’t get into the university back home, it is too competitive.</p>

[zapfino]

<p>There’s a recent CC thread on this topic:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1037827-explosive-ivies-other-top-schools-recruit-more-atlhletes-than-jock-schools.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1037827-explosive-ivies-other-top-schools-recruit-more-atlhletes-than-jock-schools.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Also see:
[Ivy</a> League Football `Mafia’ Gives Wall Street a Talent Pipeline - Bloomberg](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>

[Bay]

<p>

Foreign students don’t necessarily come to the US because they think the education is better - frequently they come because they can’t get into the university back home, it is too competitive.

</p>

<p>Really? I didn’t know that. I assumed that the international students here wanted an American education.</p>

<p>Its too bad those countries can’t figure out how to open more universities and educate all of their citizens who want to go to college.</p>

[bchan1]

<p>Bay - I’m sure they will. After adopting capitalism, dominating the graduate school enrollment at our elite engineering/quantitative programs and luring their American educated prodigees back to Asia it will only be a matter of time before those educational opportunities become more available, and they won’t need us quite so much.</p>

<p>When the University of Singapore published its list of prestigious educational programs last year it looked a lot different from USNWR rankings. And until recently - who cared what billions of Asians thought about the world ranking of an academic institution? Most Americans still don’t care - but in global terms the impact of Asia rising is not dependent on what Americans think. </p>

<p>We are outnumbered, our K-12 education has not kept up with the rest of the developed world. It is only a matter of time before the poor quality of our K-12 programs begins to be reflected in the reputation of our higher education system as a whole - when all the foreign born stay closer to home we will suffer repercussions for decades to come. And much of America will still be wondering how to improve their school’s football team and its chances for the state championship.</p>

<p>Just my $.02.</p>

[gadad]

<p>Do elite colleges that have many times the number of academically-qualified applicants as available spots for new students favor athletic applicants? Yes, they do. They also favor singers and musicians. And debaters. And kids who have started their own non-profits. And Siemens and Intel competition winners. Given an applicant pool with many academically-qualified prospective students, these schools don’t just take the top scorers on tests but seek to craft well-rounded classes that incorporate a broad spectrum of talents, passions and accomplishments. And that’s what makes the prospect of attending them so appealing.</p>

[Bay]

<p>

Most Americans still don’t care - but in global terms the impact of Asia rising is not dependent on what Americans think.

</p>

<p>So what are you saying, bchan1? We should get rid of sports so we can be just like China? That football is the cause of Asia’s rising? That we can’t be both academically strong and athletically fit - we must give up one to have the other?</p>

[noimagination]

<p>

James Schulman is an acknowledged expert in the field of collegiate athletics and its impacts on the college sports in America. Op-ed pieces do not use citations but are opinion pieces based on the knowledge of the author. They are not scholarly articles.

The introduction contains some fairly bold claims that do not directly pertain to athletics:

Highly selective colleges and universities represent liquid pools of opportunity. Even after controlling for differences in preparation and background, students who get into these schools graduate at higher rates and have clear advantages over peers in getting jobs on Wall Street, earning Ph.D.s in philosophy, or doing medical research.

These claims are not presented as opinion but rather as fact and therefore require some sort of support.</p>

<p>Malcolm Gladwell has some interesting information on the subject of athletics:
[gladwell</a> dot com - getting in](<a href=“http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_10_10_a_admissions.html]gladwell”>http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_10_10_a_admissions.html)

In the 2001 book “The Game of Life,” James L. Shulman and William Bowen (a former president of Princeton) conducted an enormous statistical analysis on an issue that has become one of the most contentious in admissions: the special preferences given to recruited athletes at selective universities. Athletes, Shulman and Bowen demonstrate, have a large and growing advantage in admission over everyone else. At the same time, they have markedly lower G.P.A.s and S.A.T. scores than their peers. Over the past twenty years, their class rankings have steadily dropped, and they tend to segregate themselves in an “athletic culture” different from the culture of the rest of the college. Shulman and Bowen think the preference given to athletes by the Ivy League is shameful.</p>

<p>Halfway through the book, however, Shulman and Bowen present finding. [size=2]Male athletes, despite their lower S.A.T. scores and grades, and despite the fact that many of them are members of minorities and come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds than other students, turn out to earn a lot more than their peers. Apparently, athletes are far more likely to go into the high-paying financial-services sector, where they succeed because of their personality and psychological makeup. In what can only be described as a textbook example of burying the lead, Bowen and Shulman write:</p>

<p>One of these characteristics can be thought of as drive—a strong desire to succeed and unswerving determination to reach a goal, whether it be winning the next game or closing a sale. Similarly, athletes tend to be more energetic than the average person, which translates into an ability to work hard over long periods of time—to meet, for example, the workload demands placed on young people by an investment bank in the throes of analyzing a transaction. In addition, athletes are more likely than others to be highly competitive, gregarious and confident of their ability to work well in groups (on teams).</p>

<p>Shulman and Bowen would like to argue that the attitudes of selective colleges toward athletes are a perversion of the ideals of American élite education, but that’s because they misrepresent the actual ideals of American élite education. The Ivy League is perfectly happy to accept, among others, the kind of student who makes a lot of money after graduation. As the old saying goes, the definition of a well-rounded Yale graduate is someone who can roll all the way from New Haven to Wall Street.[/size]

</p>

[gadad]

<p>From noimagination’s quote:</p>

<p>

One of these characteristics can be thought of as drive—a strong desire to succeed and unswerving determination to reach a goal, whether it be winning the next game or closing a sale. Similarly, athletes tend to be more energetic than the average person, which translates into an ability to work hard over long periods of time

</p>

<p>In the article, Schulman critiques the values of elite colleges and wonders whether their chief objective is to beat Yale in swimming. That was an ironic example to me. My D graduated this spring from Harvard and one of her friends - a classmate and housemate of hers - swam for the varsity team there. In July, he won the 25 km Open Water Swimming world championship. It was the culmination of a goal that he’d pursued for years. He’s a good student and according to my D, a great guy, but now he’s also the best in the world at an endeavor that is as demanding and grueling as anything I can imagine. My D was thrilled for her friend’s accomplishment and inspired by his drive and dedication. As a parent, I’m thrilled that she’s had the opportunity to interact with and be inspired by that kind of dedication.</p>

[limabeans]

<p>All this discussion about the importance of athletics to get into elite colleges is making my head spin. I’m thinking of one of my students. He’s a really good looking kid and an amazing athlete. </p>

<p>He throws a football or a baseball like a pro (long and straight and exactly into the arms of any receiver he aims for). But he’s also a struggling student. Math is hard and reading is even harder. I so much want to see him in 9 years, heading off to the college of his choice. They’d snap him up. But sadly, he’s also from a disadvantaged family, getting free breakfast and lunch. I doubt he’ll know how to take advantage of the opportunities that he richly deserves, given his talent, that some less gifted kids figure out how to get.</p>

[bchan1]

<p>Bay - I don’t want America to be like China. But I long for the day when kids from other developed countries come here and think of our education system as equal to theirs - instead of a long holiday as a high school foreign exchange student. I think most parents on CC would like to see the US ranked near the top instead of the bottom in academic competitiveness. I support being academically competitive and athletically fit - however, the rest of the world hasn’t married these ideas to each other under the umbrella of a single institution called school, and the rest of the world is ahead of us in educating their students for a competitive world. If you know of some study that demonstrates the US student population excelling academically compared to their peers in the developed world please share. </p>

<p>I have a rather vivid personal memory of a prominent scientist at an Ivy going into complete meltdown over the fact that he didn’t have a single American candidate qualified for his graduated program in the incoming applicant pool - he was very upset about the fact that instead of becoming his professional colleagues, his graduate students were going back to country X (about 85% to China) and taking that wealth of knowledge with them.</p>

<p>I recall a talk on global education including a tidbit about the number of high school students in China’s top 10% being equal to our entire high school population. If that statistic was even close to accurate - what does that mean for the future if you suppose that a critical mass of talent will eventually become the leading edge of progress? Technologically China is held back by their unwillingness to play by the rules of intellectual property law recognized in the west - but even that seems to be under rapid change.</p>

<p>I think the money spent at US colleges and universities on sports should be spent on educating undergraduates. Fitness should be a part of life - everyone’s life, not just recruited athletes - but I think it’s a poor companion to world class academics. I would support club sports and activities at college, but I don’t think professional sports needs a college to develop its talent base. Club teams could do this for those who want to pursue athletic careers without perpetuating a system that equates basketball with botany. </p>

<p>Why should any high school kid have a class for basketball, or baseball or football during the school day? That should be an after school activity.</p>

<p>Why should a kid with a 2.0 gpa get a full ride to college because he can throw a ball when a smart kid has to struggle to stay in school full time if his or her parents can’t pay? </p>

<p>If professional sports is such a big and important business then there should be no problem launching a system of training facilities for those who want to compete at that level. </p>

<p>The current system doesn’t insure athletic fitness - instead it guarantees that most kids are not athletically fit. Most kids aren’t able to make the cut to be on the sports teams at their public high schools, who are busy grooming the best athletes for athletic scholarships and fielding a winning team rather than making everyone a winner with a healthy activity/lifestyle choice. The American mystique of the scholar/athlete doesn’t always turn out well even on its own terms - when you compare the overall performance of US academics with the rest of the world it seems we should take a long look at anything that is distracting us from the process of education.</p>

<p>I suspect that if we had an objective measure of being good looking, the statistical data for good-looking employees being promoted to high paying positions in sales and managment would be equal to those of athletes, in much the same way that there are statistics that show tall people make more money, get more promotions etc. These are overlapping measures of same thing - physical attractiveness.</p>

[Bay]

<p>bchan,
While education is extremely important, it is not the only important thing in life. Imo, happiness is the most important thing, and while Denmark, with not one single claim to “highly-ranked” university status, ranks #1 in happiness, China ranks a pathetic #125 in the world for happiness. The U.S, which holds the majority of top ranked universities in the majority of polls, ranks #14 in happiness.</p>

<p>Numerically, there is no way we can produce the number of highly-educated intellectuals as China, and that is assuming China can ever increase and bring its universities up to par with ours. China has population of 1.3 billion, compared to our 3 million. So why sweat it? I’d rather work on figuring out how to improve our happiness factor and cultivating an environment that values individuals for all types of achievements rather than just studying and test taking. As much as you would like to ignore it, the fact is that there are plenty of American scholar-athletes who perform stellar-ly in life after college. What is too bad is that not every scholar can also be an accomplished athlete.</p>

[Bay]

<p>*I meant to write “our 300 million”</p>

[bchan1]

<p>Bay - No wonder the people of Denmark are happy - college is free to all who qualify. While in America we have scholars taking out student loans to support athletes - a different set of priorities to be sure.</p>