I honestly can’t think of a single selective LAC that offers “sports management”. That’s a major mostly larger universities (but also some mostly regional schools) came up with to attract kids who like sports and think it’s a route to a career in managing a team or something. I also know a kid with a similar degree (I think it’s sports training or something more like that) but he got it from our second largest state U. He’s got the debt to go with it, too. That is NOT a LAC thing, that’s a niche major thing. At least they have degrees, so they can get past that job filter, but beyond that I think they got a raw deal.
But all of them have computer science, applied math/statistics, the sciences.
And a very smart kid I know whose dream school was Cornell for engineering, instead took the money and went to a midwest not-that-selective LAC with great merit and majored in physics and math. After graduating in four years, he is now at a top U doing an accelerated double masters in aerospace and mechanical engineering.
@EyeVeee@rwmannesq My opinion is the choice of major is what has contributed to very low paying jobs out of college. The English student is very bright, loved her LAC education and wanted to work a bit before going to law school. However, the job market has been very tough and she is now working as a barista. She can’t afford law school because of her high student debt and her mom is also saddled with loans putting her D through college. Would the same happen with an English major going to a state school? Probably but their debt isn’t as crippling. I have two friends who got their English degrees at state schools. Both very bright and ambitious ladies who found that their career and pay were limited with their degrees. They went back to school for nursing. One even got her BSN paid for by her employer.
@Chembiodad it is a small university very similar to a LAC. It was once a college but retains a lot of characteristics of a LAC: It’s undergraduate focused, focused on teaching and not research, taught by professors, small in student size, emphasis on a liberal arts curriculum but not exclusively. This kid did land a major-related job but eventually the position was phased out. He is now an uber driver living back at home, saddled with lots of debt.
My point is that if one wants to study liberal arts, it’s much less expensive at a public school plus there’s wiggle room financially for a change in career/schooling if the LA degree doesn’t yield the career and financial expectations. The job market is way more competitive nowadays that I believe it’s wise to take into account the cost of an undergraduate degree because more college graduates are pursuing grad degrees to stay competitive, so there is that additional cost to consider for your child. I’m not knocking LACs at all. We have visited plenty LACs with our rising junior so we are not ruling them out as a possibility as long as it’s an academic and social fit for him. It will boil down to OOP costs for our final decision when the list gets narrowed down though.
First off, this is the most interesting active thread on CC right now. I’ve been lurking for a while and the discussion is great. From what I’ve read I see several underlying themes when it comes to the topic of LACs and Universities.
The first is direction. Many replies seem to say that LACs are a great option for students that are either undecided or all-in for a LA education and that universities may be the preferred path for students with more directed goals. Seems reasonable. Now things get tricky…
The second is money. I think that everyone can agree that if a family is in a position to completely fund an education that any path they decide is fine. @TheGreyKing is looking forward to being able to completely fund a pure-play LAC education for her son. Awesome. I too will be paying full price for my two kid’s university experience. Our oldest just finished his first year at a highly selective university (studying computer science) and I can honestly say it’s been worth every penny. However, for most people loans come in to play, and here I think it totally reasonable to debate the pros/cons of going into debt and educational ROI. Additionally, considering ROI makes more sense the more debt you are considering taking on. If, in the end, you want to go $50k into debt for any degree that’s fine just do so with eyes wide open.
The third is the whole STEM vs LA debate. On one side is the “STEM misses out on the true-learning that only a LA education can provide argument. On the other is the “I like LA majors, my barista is great”. Neither argument holds water.
The simple truth (and I think that someone already mentioned this) is that there is a great education out there for everyone who is willing to work for it. What that education is will be defined by individuals – what they value, what their goals are, and what financial realities they need to work with.
Displaced. First it was in-house, then internally out-sourced to India, then internally outsourced to Eastern Europe, then, after firing all the IT people, externally outsourced to an American company who maintained offices locally and in India and Eastern Europe.
That’s just not true for all students. My kid is at a private LAC for less than our state U would cost. She also has no debt, so far, as the school doesn’t package loans in FA (but they can take them to meet EFC if necessary). The kid I described in #220 also took his best financial deal and it was a private LAC, cheaper than our in-state options. In his case it was a large merit award. I know quite a few local kids who chose their cheapest option and it was not always one of our state schools.
What is true for some can’t be generalized as true for all.
Most STEM subjects are offered at LACS just as often as they are offered at universities. The exception is “E” which, as has been pointed out, is less available at LACs. But S: Science? All of them. T: Technology? Really almost all of them. M: Math? All of them. Science and math ARE traditional liberal arts and CS has become part of most math departments or, more often now, its own department. I can’t think of a top LAC that doesn’t offer it.
@circuitrider rider - Of course they were not pulling down six figures. You seem to be confusing what I referenced as IT people with programmers or computer scientists. The firms I worked for would never hire the latter. The IT department was typically headed by someone with a Management Information Systems (MIS) background which may be described as a blend of management and a little bit of computer and network science. Those people probably pulled down six-figures, but were only found at the corporate level.
The local IT people either self-learned or attended technical schools. Think of people at the level of Best Buy’s Greek Squad. Their primary job was setting up new computers, maintaining a network, removing viruses from computers, etc. etc. One does not need a CS degree for that.
The best one started out as an admin, and learned how to setup and maintain networks and computers on her own. Whenever corporate IT culled the local workforce, local management would shift her to the administrative side. Whenever corporate IT’s changes failed, local management shifted her back into IT.
@OHMomof2 – there’s a poster here, b@ri!um, who posts on the international forum, who cautions that many LACs don’t offer the large selection of upper division math courses desired by the top graduate programs. She went to Bryn Mawr (and then to Stanford, so she’s no slouch) and felt the course selection was limiting even at this elite LAC. She feels students who want to major in math with the idea of going onto PhD programs would be better served academically by large universities.
And most LA subjects are offered at universities. The difference is depth (as noted by @katliamom) but also facilities, culture, and history. So there are trade offs if you are pursuing STEM at a LAC or LA at a university.
@CALSmom, not certain which LACs you have visited, but many of the top STEM graduates in the country are coming from LACs; as has been noted on many other CC’s threads, these same LAC’s are top feeder schools for Medical School, Law School, careers on Wall Street, etc.
In my opinion, the issue is the amount of money expended on mid tier private regional universities or LAC’s (below USNWR #75); if that was the likely outcome for my DD’s, I would have nudged towards a strong affordable state school alternative.
@katliamom, Bowdoin, Carleton, Hamilton, Swarthmore, Williams, amongst others, have very strong math programs with as many as 10% graduating with math degrees and many of those going on to very successful careers on Wall Street.
Maybe that’s true in the Midwest. But, in New York, someone fitting that job description would need a bachelor’s degree and I’m thinking most of them are programmers who can’t find jobs. They are as ubiquitous as English majors.
So… she wasn’t an engineer, an MBA, an accountant, an actuary or a management consultant and still managed to hold on to her job by learning to do something new. Sounds like the essence of a liberal arts major.
I’m sure that’s true that the number of courses varies widely and I do not doubt that larger schools offer more. I don’t know how many math majors plan on continuing math in grad school, I’m guessing that’s a minority, but if that’s the goal it should be taken into consideration.
I think it’s @circuitrider who has a lists of top feeders to math PhD programs and as I recall LACs are very well represented but I may not remember that correctly.
@i012575, let’s make it simple and look at the average ACT scores from the top-30 universities and LAC’s - you will see both well represented, but HYPSM are not the top-5
California Institute of Technology 34-35
2 Harvey Mudd College 33-35
3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 33-35
4 Columbia University 32-35
5 Harvard University 32-35
6 Princeton University 32-35
7 Rice University 32-35
8 University of Chicago 32-35
9 Vanderbilt University 32-35
10 Johns Hopkins University 32-34
11 University of Notre Dame 32-34
12 Washington University in St. Louis 32-34
13 Stanford University 31-35
14 Yale University 31-35
15 Amherst College 31-34
16 Brown University 31-34
17 Carnegie Mellon University 31-34
18 Duke University 31-34
19 Haverford College 31-34
20 Northeastern University 31-34
21 Northwestern University 31-34
22 University of Pennsylvania 31-34
23 Williams College 31-34
24 Bowdoin College 31-34
25 Hamilton College 31-33
26 Cooper Union 30-34
27 Cornell University 30-34
28 Dartmouth College 30-34
29 Georgetown University 30-34
30 Pomona College 30-34
I don’t know if she had a college degree or not, and if she did, what it was in. Most of the admins were in their 20’s and 30’s, and had college degrees. This particular lady was older than I was, so she was of the generation of admins that did not have college degrees. Frankly, her job was not that complicated, and I imagine a technically savvy high schooler could have done it.
This brings up another issue. When I started working 40 years ago, very few admins had college degrees. Now it seems that at a corporate level, a college degree is a necessary requisite for the job.
@OHMomof2 – here are b@rium’s insights about math-LAC-vs-university from a 2016 thread. I thought it was interesting.
"Financial considerations aside, I would first make a choice between LAC or research university. If you think you may want to focus on one major, such as math or physics, LACs are a poor choice because you will run out courses very very quickly.
At research universities, it is common for the stronger math and physics majors to start taking graduate-level courses in their junior year. That’s simply not an option at a LAC. Math + physics majors at LACs also fare notoriously poorly in admissions to selective PhD programs; PhD programs use the advanced-ness of an applicant’s coursework as a proxy for their potential in graduate school, which puts students from a LAC at a huge disadvantage.
On the flip side, LACs may work much better for you if you consider yourself shy. In my experience, all of the opportunities available at LACs are also available at a research university, but they are much easier to come by at a LAC. A few examples: At a LAC, professors will notice you and learn your name just because you’re in their class. At a big university, you may have to make a point of going to office hours if you want to be noticed. At a LAC, professors may approach you about summer research opportunities. At a big university, you’d have to approach your professors. At a LAC, you will naturally get to know your classmates because you’re taking all of your major courses with the same group of 10 students. At a research university, you may have to work a bit harder to make friends.
I personally attended Bryn Mawr, another LAC not too far from Swarthmore. I really enjoyed the LAC-feeling for the first two years, and then I wished I was at a larger university with more opportunities. I ended up spending most of my junior and senior years at Penn taking graduate courses, for which professors at Bryn Mawr gave me independent study credits. However, I should point out that this is NOT a standard arrangement and Swarthmore would NOT allow it. (Swarthmore is much stricter than Bryn Mawr about breadth of coursework.) On the other hand, I am grateful that I started out at a LAC. I was painfully shy when I started college and I would have gotten lost in the crowd at a big university."
