Are liberal arts colleges perceived as second tier?

<p>I don’t know about that, I attended Cornell, and wherever I’ve personally gone it’s seemed to have pretty good name recognition.</p>

<p>I remember after I started my first job in the lower midwest, my boss asked “isn’t that in the Ivy League? we don’t get too many people like that around here”.</p>

<p>Then he asked if Rutgers was in the Ivy League, because he’d met some guy who went to Rutgers and it sounded like it might have been in the Ivy League also.</p>

<p>But the point is, even there, he’d heard of it, with a positive association. At least at some level. And yes, there the state U’s dominate, but he was thinking Cornell was “better”.</p>

<p>There were a lot of other things that were probably a lot more germane to the hiring decision though, I would imagine.</p>

<p>And I’m not just talking about that guy, that was just a particular incident. My feeling is that people in my circles there generally, on some level, had heard of it, with a positive association. However vague.</p>

<p>We actually had a Cornell Club (alumni group) there, as has been the case in everyplace else I’ve lived as well. They manned the desks at college fairs, sponsored lectures/ events, etc.</p>

<p>We know students who have gone directly into graduate work while still in HS or upon matriculation into college as freshmen. Generally speaking, they turned down HPYSM for the opportunities to do substantive coursework/research at schools where the faculty were willing and eager to take them on.</p>

<p>S1 loved the LAC model and and the opportunity to take gave a significant number of courses outside his traditional comfort zone. Ultimately, part of his decision was based on early access to grad courses, not taking half of his major as independent study courses and s substantive, intellectually challenging core. For him, this led him to mid-size research universities where he could really drill down into his focused area of study, but still get the other goodies he was seeking.</p>

<p>My younger S’s college list is fairly evenly split between LACs and mid-size research universities. Different kids, different interests, different needs.</p>

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<p>Like I said, everyone can point to their favorite exception. For every LAC fan who says yeah, but undergraduates don’t get to do much research at universities, I can point to exceptions in my own or my daughter’s experience where any undergrad who sought it got to do research at universities. </p>

<p>But a Battle of the Anecdotes or a contest of who can tell the biggest exception story tells us nothing. I’m interested in overall trends. So to get some real data, this morning I took the first three scientific journals from different disciplines off the stack on my desk and flipped through and counted up the papers, the authors, and their affiliations. The three journals at the top of the stack were the June 1, 2009 issue of Cancer Research, the June 5, 2009 issue of Science, and the March, 2009 issue of Clinical Chemistry.</p>

<p>These three journals had a total of 76 papers written by a total of 606 co-authors publishing original research. The breakdown of the authors’ affiliations is this:</p>

<p>Universities: 432
Research Institutes: 105
Hospitals: 27
Government Labs: 22
Commercial Companies: 20
LACs: 0</p>

<p>That’s what I’m talking about. This is the same trend I’ve seen month after month, year after year, in journal after journal for my entire 30 year career. Little or no output from LACs. But in this particular exercise even I was suprised that the LACs couldn’t scare up even a single co-author. No Reed. No Swarthmore. No Bryn Mawr. Nothing.</p>

<p>So LACs may have great research labs, but I don’t see what they are doing with them. Certainly not publishing their results in the top journals.</p>

<p>Perhaps it’s because LACs are a training ground rather than a performance field. Their goal is to prepare to send students out in to the world as erudite individuals, and students come to them for that purpose. They don’t come with the expectation of emerging at the top of their field coming out of undergrad, and professors come there not to find research aides, but to teach. That by no means renders them inferior, however.</p>

<p>“So LACs may have great research labs, but I don’t see what they are doing with them. Certainly not publishing their results in the top journals.”</p>

<p>They’re training the future researchers!</p>

<p>Can you give the undergrad affiliations of the authors? That’s the proper metric.</p>

<p>coureur: You should publish that study. Especially if you work at an LAC :)</p>

<p>IB- agree 100% but kids should know the drill to tailor their expectations accordingly. I’ve heard for years that MIT is a terrible place for an undergrad (not my kids experience but for sure there are kids who would have a rotten experience there) and one of the key reasons cited is the intense competition for research opportunities. These experts claim that because of the powerhouse faculty and size of the graduate programs, an undergrad can’t hope to compete unless he or she is at the very top of their department or class.</p>

<p>Patently false. Research spots go begging- there are more opportunities than there are undergrads. Professors have a lot of capacity either in their labs or on specific grants; they are thrilled to get undergrads whether for a term, a summer, or longer. Grad students are both mentors and coaches in research settings so students can ask the dumb questions to the grad students and save the less dumb questions for the professors.</p>

<p>We had many friends and acquaintances tell us not to be blown away by MIT’s sophisticated labs since our kid would spend 4 years sitting in huge lecture halls being taught by TA’s who spoke no English. Again, patently false.</p>

<p>So for sure there is a place for kids interested in doing research at an LAC- and kids should thoroughly explore those options. But large, well funded projects at universities have a life of their own. Lots of talent. Lots of stuff. Lots of opportunity. NASA isn’t going to wake up tomorrow and decide that since their budget was cut 10% for R&D they’re going to eliminate MIT and CalTech and spend all their money at LAC’s with aero/astro labs.</p>

<p>Interesting thread LOL </p>

<p>Glad my kids are engineers. Easy decison</p>

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<p>Exactly. So why is “prestige” confused with “what the greatest majority of people think is the best school”?</p>

<p>For the record, this division between LACs and research universities has been propagated by USNWR. Yes, there is a difference among colleges and universities, but when all the current CC parents were high school students, there were just excellent schools, great schools, good schools, etc. We chose based on fit – something that included school and class size, strength of various departments, selectivity, and location. Amherst and Williams were not seen as being inherently different from Dartmouth and Princeton; all were seen as having great faculty with an emphasis on undergraduate teaching. Of course, the reason USNWR had to separate the LACs from the rest has to do with their metric since the strengths of a large university cannot be compared to those of an LAC.</p>

<p>GELLINO you are absolutely correct. The point I was making in my example was that even though all 3 schools are considered top tier the only ones with both name recognition and considered “most selective” were the 2 universities mentioned. The top tier 50 Universities listed in USNWR rankings certainly carry a bigger “wow” factor than the smaller LAC’s. The original question was “Is there a general perception of LAC as inferior to universities” and the answer is a resounding yes. Some of the top 50 LAC’s may also be considered “Most Selective” like the majority of top 50 universities but Bowdoin, Haverford, Oberlin, etc do not compare with the likes of Duke, Tufts, Lehigh, etc. as far as name recognition among the “general population” who would also therefore consider them “inferior” to the Tier 1 top 50 universities. The majority of these LAC’s are probably great schools but there is no changing the general public’s perception of them. It is what it is.</p>

<p>Speaking of Tufts, it was mentioned in an article my mom was reading the other day and she asked me if it was a college. So if you want to go by on the street name recognition, nobody knows about tufts, lehigh, yeshiva, barnard, etc either. It is the same as with LACs. People know HYPMCC and then sports powerhouses. That is generally it.</p>

<p>Right. Most people really only have heard of the biggies (HYP et al), sports powerhouses, their state flagship (and neighboring states) and then their directional state universities and colleges / universities local to that area. Their ratings of “what’s good” are influenced by sports prestige and people they generally know (“my nephew went there, it’s got to be a good school”). Unless they’re in education, unless they’re really in to colleges in general, they don’t know and they don’t care. So why are their opinions the determiners of “prestige”? It’s hilarious.</p>

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<p>And, AGAIN, that’s regional – average people out here in the midwest really don’t know Tufts and Lehigh, and they know only generally that “Duke is a good school” but half of that is through sports. So what they might consider “inferior” or “superior” or “prestigious” or “not prestigious” is just of so little importance to anything.</p>

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Exactly!!!</p>

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As opposed to undergrads from big U who come out as non-erudite individuals in performance field? You are hilarious.<br>
At LACs, research opportunities are too readily available. For mine last year, I was trying to replicate something that was published in 2005. How’s that for cutting edge?<br>

Cornell clubs are like scientology centers, they’re everywhere.<br>

Weren’t you thinking out loud top Lacs are way more impressive than UC-whatevers a day or two ago?</p>

<p>I think top LACs are more impressive than UCs. That’s my personal opinion. Such an opinion in no way precludes my conclusion that different people have different needs in schools; what is “impressive” is not always what is best, and in any case, why would anyone else care what I think?</p>

<p>“As opposed to undergrads from big U who come out as non-erudite individuals in performance field? You are hilarious.”</p>

<p>im sorry, did i say that?</p>

<p>i don’t think i did.</p>

<p>lac’s ftw.</p>

<p>The point is that although LACs may give undergrads opportunities to do research - it’s not research the top journals are interested in. My husband has made the same observation - not just about publications, but also about who attends scientific conferences. At least in science he feels very strongly that LACs aren’t the way to go. That said, I don’t think he did research during the school year at his university, and he worked at NIH every summer not at his university. His PhD. class at Caltech had a mix of kids from well known research universities both public and private and a few smaller LACs.</p>