<p>^ I’m sure Swarthmore has a number of great courses. I’m arguing against Yurtle’s implication that large research universities offer courses that are equivalent to the blind, rote time-wasting of AP Lang.</p>
<p>Anyway, I don’t think there is a right or wrong side to the teacher vs. researcher debate. I’ve honestly found that I learn best from reading textbooks. Nothing else works. I would take the opportunity to be inspired by a great researcher over a great lecture or class discussion leader.</p>
<p>^Ah, we’re arguing sideways. I was giving an example of a course that is much more likely to be found at an LAC than at a large university–i.e. a first-year non-humanities seminar course.</p>
Since neither of us are taking this course at Swarthmore right now, I don’t feel comfortable trying to ascertain what they are doing. However, I doubt that the whole “seminar course” concept is really so different from a small lecture course with lots of discussion. This is especially true when the material being covered is fairly basic, fundamental stuff that really all needs to be covered before proceeding (as is the case with linear algebra.) For what it’s worth, the UAlberta course I mentioned before currently has 20 students enrolled in its second-semester incarnation. That’s for a lecture course at a 30,000+ student research university.
<p>At Yale they allow students to review professors at the end of each course semester and the professor I am referencing has consistently gotten poor remarks and is not very amicable. I opted out of the intro bio class for a higher level one so I don’t personally have him, but my friends who are in the class are constantly complaining about his didactic methods so I assume he must be terrible.</p>
<p>Wrt to the Swarthmore course, there is also an Honors Linear Algebra non-seminar version (and a non-honors, non-seminar linear algebra course, to boot), and it came highly recommended by an upperclassman who had taken the class to one of my fellow ED’ers. FWIW.</p>
<p>Uh…Then I really was misunderstood. I didn’t mean to imply rote learning so much as more er…practical than theoretical? Not to extremes, but enough to make the generalization. Or as I like to say- For Lang, you have to know how to see and define things, and then use that- that still takes creativity.</p>
<p>…I don’t really count “Yale” as a BigU, by the by. Class size? maybe, but if we’re talking about educational outlook, Yale began as a college that pushed the notion of the liberal arts over vocations.</p>
<p>Myth: “There is a huge shortage of … [fill in the blank] … just graduate as a warm body & you will have no trouble getting a great job!”</p>
<p>In this economy, it’s really tough for many kids to get jobs–summer jobs or full-time jobs or any job. Nurses in HI who have been told there will be LOTS of jobs due to shortages are now being told that there are no openings and no one is hiring, repeatedly. Ditto for many other fields where there are “shortages.” There has to be funding to hire and industry/private sector is very nervous about hiring right now, while trying to make payroll for those already employed. This includes folks with BA and BS degrees, two-year voc degrees (like respiratory therapy), and most fields. Unemployment and underemployment is extremely high here, with many having paycuts and furloughs.</p>
<p>The difficulty getting hired in nursing was the situation in HI even before the current economic downturn. It will likely get worse before it gets better as many will continue to work long past the age they wanted to because they can’t afford to retire.</p>
<p>“You appear to think that because Reed is a “top-notch college” it is too far in the stratosphere of educational bliss to be mentioned in the same breath as some state university. Seriously, what’s the big deal? That poster’s whole point was that it is possible to succeed at any school…”</p>
<p>I agree: what’s the big deal? Carleton, Grinnell, Oberlin, Reed, Swarthmore, etc., are unlike any state university, and graduates of all state universities prove over and over that it is possible to succeed at any school.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that success is a measure of the college you attend because it isn’t. If you want to earn a billion bucks and have what it takes, you’ll earn it even if you dropped out of school in the fourth grade. As much as we’d like to think Harvard made Bill Gates or David Rockefeller; Reed made Steve Jobs; University of Texas made Michael Dell or (insert some other successful alumnus/alumna), the truth is these people’s (monetary) success had very little to do with where they went to college. Even the obscurest college will have people who are successful as alumni, but that isn’t a measure of the college, it’s a measure of the person. So in that regard, I agree. However, it also raises the question of how one defines “success”. By my personal definition, a college like Reed or Carleton or a similar college leads to different results than a Harvard or University of Texas. In effect, my “big college truth” is that there is a discernible difference in the quality of education and preparation for life you receive amongst the variety of institutions in America; not all institutions lead to the same results. That’s just my belief though, and everyone is entitled to their own.</p>
<p>^My personal belief is that they also lead to different RESULTS for SOME people, because different personalities will react differently to different environments and it’s fallacious to just assume that the final “result” (how are we defining result, anyway?) will be the same.</p>
<p>Ah, the old forks in the road conundrum… If I’d gone to college A instead of college B I wouldn’t have met <scintillating and=“” possibly=“” uber=“” successful=“” colleague=“”> but I might have instead met <love of=“” my=“” life=“”> who then spurred me on to a life that was everything I wanted it to be.</love></scintillating></p>
<p>In college I met my first husband. We were married right out of college, and I think that disaster lasted less than a year. Talking to a guy after the divorce I was ruing the decision to marry the jerk when he said “But if you hadn’t married him, you would have married someone else, and you wouldn’t have been single right now, when I am also free, and available to have met you.” And yes, me and that guy got married, and lived the charmed life one would dream of. (Okay, right up until he died way too young…) </p>
<p>My point is, the choice of college is one of a myriad of big and tiny decisions that shape our futures. One could attend the most prestigious university imaginable, run across future captains of industry daily, but spend most their time with a group of friends that will end up happily ensconced in a comfortable but not especially notable life. One could be sitting at their local CC, and choose/be chosen as the project partner of the most driven student in the class, and end up their wingman in life as they change the world.<br>
In general, the exceptional human will be exceptional where ever they go. They have no worries of making it in the world.</p>
<p>Isn’t the experience a subset of the result though? The experience will ultimately cause the result, I think.</p>
<p>Also, “result” is not the amount of money they make you earn or the job they get you at Wall Street or the graduate school they get you into (at least not in my opinion). The “result” is how much they change you as a person, and particularly the way you think.</p>