Emulating the European model, public colleges might institutionalize what they are already doing on a case by case basis, ie offer 3 year BAs and BSs focusing on the students major (that you apply for), and generally waive one year’s requirement of gen eds for the usual selection of AP and IB classes.
Students who were unable to get those out of the way due to their high schools not offering the full selection (though there could be federal funding for that) or due to lack of academic readiness could get those done more cheaply by commuting to a community college, as DE students before or regular students after high school graduation.
Another model in that vein might be Quebec’s CEGEPs, for something closer to home.
This would of course not work at all for the top privates research Us and LAcs who rely on the liberal arts model, with gen eds or even a core required at true college level, which really requires the for years if you want to actually squeeze a major in, too.
This model, already unique to the US, might become a true luxury model for an academic and/or financial elite, even more so than it is now.
It seems ill advised to post an article like this (and then to link it to a thread here) potentially scaring students and steering them away from many schools that may survive just fine. Not my idea of good college advice, sorry to say.
So we should filter content? That works well. I completely disagree. Maybe if we’d scared a few more students there wouldn’t be $1.7 Trillion in student debt and countless stories of how it’s ruined their life.
It’s an article from an NYU professor. Agree or disagree with the content but it’s not some average joe with with a blog.
So we should use what may not be the most reliable publication , with some author’s “opinion” , and post discouraging , perhaps inaccurate information to students? Not my idea of how to be helpful. Better to read the original thread where it was posted http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/2180028-school-in-the-fall-coronavirus.html#latest and read the discussion about the article. Not clickbait.
From what I understand of Germany, your school path is determined at the age of what in the US is around middle school. Some continue on to university-prep and university, while others continue on to vocationally-based high school that is more optimized for better jobs and any needed vocational education after high school (in contrast to the US, where a high school diploma by itself usually does not get beyond a bottom end unskilled job with marginal career possibilities, so additional post-secondary education at the student’s expense is typically needed).
On the other hand, the early tracking from middle school age may not assign kids to what could be their optimal education and career path if their abilities and interests at late high school age were known.
Just a quick glance, since these two schools are located in CA and I recognize them.
These two universities from the “Perish” list are also on the NACAC list of schools still accepting freshman apps. I’m sure there are many schools, which would make both lists, including the “struggle” list too.
It’s just information that requires college bound HS students and their parents to take a 2nd look and research for more info.
@ucbalumnus We had an exchange student from France stay with us last year for a little bit. You do pick a path earlier and entrance exams to move forward after high school (I’ll call it that) are stressful.
I’ll have to talk to some friends of friends who are German. We usually talk about beer, wine and food and how Santa Claus is scary.
Sadly, given this year’s college planning mess, there are 777 colleges on the NACAC list of schools with openings. Clicking further on their categories, 758 of them have openings for freshmen; 765 for transfer students . Interestingly, looking at their tables from previous years, there have been 4-500 colleges with openings around this time of year.
I have written this elsewhere, but I’ll repeat. Galloway has been living in his little bubble of theoretical economics at NYU for decades. He has little to no understanding of how academia works, and insists on pretending that colleges are for-profit entities which need to grow and make a profit in order to survive.
I’ll repeat what I wrote there:
Because for-profit models have always worked so well for academia, and because the state and federal governments have always been so generous with funds for higher education.
So his “plan” is that universities should use a failed strategy to run, using non-existent funds.
The only reasons that the for-profit “universities” have not all collapsed is that the federal government continues to allow students to take out loans to pay for degrees that they students never finish. It is the sub-prime loan bubble all over again.
Students do not graduate, and those who do have sub-standard training.
Yet Galloway says that the for-profit higher education model, which fails miserably in educating students even in the best of conditions, is the model which we should use for all academia in time of crisis.
For the past decades, the federal and state governments have been slashing funds for academia.
Yet Galloway behaves as though the federal and state governments are happy to increase the funds that they are sending to higher education by orders of magnitude.
I don’t know what world Galloway is living in, but it must be a parallel reality to that in which the rest of higher education exists.
I mean
First of all, not only are most faculty not full professors - only about 30% of all tenure track faculty ever reach the rank of full professor.
Second, only 40% of all faculty are tenured or tenure track, and full professors are maybe 30% of all faculty, so that means that those $140,000 salaries are only enjoyed by fewer than 6% of all faculty. However, reading Galloway, you get the idea that faculty are all rolling in cash.
More than half of all faculty are part time, living on salaries of less than $40,000. Of the TT/tenured faculty, only 30% are full professors, and fewer than half make $140,000 a year or more.
So Galloway is also being dishonest, and presenting the top 6% of faculty by compensation as though they were representative of the hundreds of thousands of mostly underpaid faculty.
If that is quality of his “research” I feel that I can safely ignore his “conclusions”.
@MWolf , I believe Galloway’s $141,475 number was an error - he used the figure for full professors at Ph.D. granting universities. He has since corrected that (I think the correct number was something like $104K?), but I take it as further evidence that his work is pretty sloppy.
Hasn’t been true for decades. Among high school students who eventually gain higher education entrance qualifications in Germany, about half have come up through the vocational route. And higher ed participation has quite levelled out across the OECD as a whole, again, different from what it was decades ago when the US was head and shoulders above other industrialised countries in higher ed participation.
The range of programs they can apply to is narrower, as they will have studied a narrower choice of subject. Anyone can choose to add those subjects at later points in their schooling, though, to broaden their qualifications. And yes, there is always a school for that, and government support for low income students. The problem is, that the longer you go without earnings, the less attractive the proposition, so it’s somewhat self limiting.
Note that entry into college prep track is predicated on a B- average in elementary school over a full years worth of assessments, not a high stakes exam. There is still an exam route for any kid to take if they’ve got a C average (or have gone to a Montessori or Waldorf school without regular assessments). In that one, you need three Ds. Yup, the hurdle is that low, to give as many kids as possible a chance, but by high school graduation, the attrition rate will be around 50%. It’s a weed out model rather than a gate keeper model.
I’m not a fan of how tracking is currently handled because I think it’s way too inflexible and does perpetuate a caste system, but it’s not the bogeyman opponents of the system like to build it up as.
Thanks @user4321 - comments about Galloway were really good. You don’t have to take all of his frameworks to reallize this is a massive reset. I like this discussion @Publisher and @Tigerle comments help me realize I am not alone in thinking we must rethink our approach to higher education.
Doesn’t it depend on whether these schools are actually at risk? Students that are stuck in a school that closes shop will have their education plans disrupted. So this is something students should consider when they make their decisions. Even before COVID, [there were schools closing](How many colleges and universities have closed since 2016? | Higher Ed Dive).
Now there does seem to be a risk that schools that end up on lists like this could be hurt because students avoid those schools. If those fears are unfounded, wouldn’t the best thing be to have that conversation? It’s not like CC is the only place students are getting their news.
I guess my agenda is to encourage on-topic conversations about college admissions to happen on CC rather than some other place on the internet. I’m happy to consider other ways to phrase the post and title. Unfortunately, many people won’t read much more than that, so it’s a fair criticism to say our framing of the issue is tipping the scales by being too clickbaity.
For anyone who wants to compare the schools listed on Galloway’s blog to some other measures here’s a link. You can find the financial letter grades for the private schools on the Forbes page. Lots of variation from Galloway’s picks but it’s an honest discussion.
Financial stability is definitely a consideration. I’ve seen posts on CC where kids had to transfer because the budget was cut for their programs. Definitely on S21’s list of questions for prospective schools.