<p>This is indeed a search for truth, and is the crux of our difference. So I would then ask, if you dispute the notion that college academic performance can be predicted by high school grades and test scores, then why even bother using those criteria for admissions purposes at all? Why doesn’t Berkeley or any other top school just admit everybody who graduated at the bottom of their high school class and had terrible test scores, if those characteristics don’t actually predict college performance? Are these schools just being dumb? Conversely, why should kids bother to earn top grades in high school and score well on their SAT’s if doing so means nothing? Are they being dumb? </p>
<p>Now, what you might argue is that perhaps high school performance and SAT scores may not be as predictive as some people think. Fine. So then that simply shifts the question to finding out what are the predictive factors, and then predicating admissions decisions on those factors, whatever they happen to be. Ultimately, you would like to build a statistical model that predicts, with reasonable accuracy, how likely a particular applicant is to actually successfully graduate, and from that, you can decide whether to admit that applicant in the first place. Why admit people who you can reasonably predict aren’t going to graduate? </p>
<p>Granted, the model won’t be perfect. Nor does it have to be. It just has to be better than the system that is in place now, and let’s face it, the present system ain’t that great. Right now, lots of students are admitted to schools in which they don’t fit in and in which they do poorly, or later find that they can’t afford to complete. Those students would have been better off going to a different school, or in some cases, not going at all. The present system wastes a tremendous amount of resources and time.</p>
<p>Reed, St. John’s, and Chicago have 3 things in common. They all have graduation rates lower than many peer colleges (Chicago’s is a little lower than the Ivies’ but still high; Reed’s and St.John’s are much lower than at many other top LACs). They all are known for very demanding academic programs. Nevertheless, they still have graduation rates significantly higher than their state averages. </p>
<p>Reed’s academic program is especially demanding. It includes a year-long introduction to classics of western literature in year one. It includes comprehensive oral exams at the end of year three, which can address material covered in any course taken in those three years. This hurdle is followed by a demanding senior thesis requirement.</p>
<p>Another feature they share is that they all have admit rates higher than many of their peers. If they are taking risks on some students, I’m not sure that’s a sign they are are being remiss. Again, their graduation rates are all higher than their state averages (and Chicago’s, really, is absolutely high at 90%).</p>
<p>Reed and Chicago seem to be moving their admissions profiles closer to those of their peers. Not everyone is happy about this.</p>
<p>Well, first off, I don’t think that Reed deserves extra credit for a graduation rate higher than the state average. After all, Reed is not supposed to be just an average school. It’s supposed to be a top school. Hence, it should be able to meet high expectations. </p>
<p>Nor do I view the fact that Reed has such a demanding academic program as an excuse. After all, both MIT and Caltech run programs that are demanding as any, yet both of them graduate a few higher percentage of their students than Reed does. They seem to do a better job than Reed does of admitting students who are able to handle the rigor. </p>
<p>Regarding the notion of taking risks, that would indeed be perfectly fine if it was just the school that was taking the risk. But clearly that’s not the case: the students bear the risk. It is the student who doesn’t graduate who ends up wasting time and money at Reed. It’s the student’s permanent academic record that is ruined if he can’t handle the demands. To ameliorate these problems, Reed could simply not charge (or charge less) those students who don’t graduate. Reed could also cloak their grades from their permanent record - after all, if you’re not going to graduate from the school anyway, who cares what your grades were? Let the student walk away with a clean slate. But Reed doesn’t do that. </p>
<p>Think about what we’re talking about here. These are just high school seniors who are thinking of going to Reed if they are admitted. Few if any of them have ever lived on their own or have ever taken any significant responsibility in their lives, many (probably most) of them don’t even have the right to vote or sign a legal document at the time they have to make the decision to matriculate at Reed. Yet you’re asking them to take the risk to come to a school that might ruin their futures permanently, with no recourse? These are not mature and savvy adults here, they’re just kids. </p>
<p>By that I don’t mean to overly criticize Reed. I recognize Reed as a school that offers a tremendous academic experience for those students who do well. My question is - what about those students who don’t do well? What happens to them?</p>
<p>Since I have two children, one of whom went to Reed ('07) and the other to MIT ('07), I think I can actually address this Reed/MIT dichotomy with some perspective.</p>
<p>First off, Reed is in Portland, OR, a city with a relatively low cost of living. Many Reed students arrive in Portland and decide to stay there–and discover they can do that without getting their diploma. Not so Boston, which costs a LOT more. For example, their respective senior years, both of my kids lived off campus. My son shared a two-bedroom apt with 3 other people (he actually lived in a closet), and paid $650/month (before utilities). My daughter’s share of a LARGE two-bedroom apartment (two bathrooms, dishwasher), shared with one other person, was $450/month (including utilities). After graduation, she found a place in a four-bedroom house for $300/month. (My son went to California to work in high tech and is paying $1200/month.)</p>
<p>Second, Reed is a demanding school; so is MIT. I’d actually say they’re about equally hard. But Reed has a smaller endowment (by quite a lot) and fewer on-campus jobs, so that students who are barely managing with their scholarships often decide to take a few years off, or go finish at a state college. </p>
<p>Third, there is the west coast/east coast culture clash. Frankly, the west coast simply doesn’t value college as highly as the east coast. </p>
<p>And to answer Sakky’s question: students who don’t do well at Reed often transfer somewhere else and shine there. At least that was true of my daughter’s friends who chose to leave.</p>
<p>My first observation is that these two effects should cancel each other out: Reed has less endowment money to provide scholarships, but Portland is cheaper, making it all a wash. </p>
<p>That also brings up the issue I stated before: Reed should not be admitting students for whom it knows it can’t provide proper financial support. Why bring in students who probably aren’t going to be able to afford to stay and graduate? By bringing in fewer students, you could provide better financial support to the students you do bring in. Better to admit only one student and provide him with sufficient financial support to carry him to graduation, than to admit two students, both of whom them later have to drop out because they run out of money. </p>
<p>Secondly, I would argue that, if anything, I would expect more students to voluntarily drop out of MIT than from Reed. After all, EECS is by far the most popular major at MIT, and software/IT is one of the few industries in which you don’t really need a college degree, as discussed by BCEagle91 and myself on this very thread. Furthermore, Boston is clearly the 2nd most prominent center for high-tech entrepreneurship in the world, trailing only Silicon Valley, another career path for which you don’t really need a degree. It is entirely reasonable for students to study at MIT for a few years building tech skills and then drop out without graduating to take a lucrative tech job, or start their own company. I myself know quite a few MIT students who’ve done that. On the other hand, unless you happen to be an tech design entrepreneurial genius such as Steve Jobs, it’s hard to see what sort of career is available to somebody who starts at Reed but doesn’t finish. </p>
<p>But the truly relevant issue is not regarding voluntary dropouts, who I regard as at worst a minor issue and arguably not an issue at all. Every school has voluntary dropouts. The problem is with the involuntary dropouts - those students who actually want to continue but cannot because of difficulties academic or otherwise. </p>
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<p>I would argue that she probably actually did well. At least, well enough to be admitted as a transfer. Let’s face it - if you’re flunking out of Reed, no decent school is going to admit you as a transfer applicant. Not when they have other transfer applicants who aren’t flunking at their home schools. The transfer adcom isn’t going to care why you’re flunking at Reed. All they’re going to see is that you’re flunking.</p>
<p>Sakky, I think the urban legend of the kid who dropped out of MIT and ended up a dot.com billionaire ended with the tech bust in 2001. Although my son knew MANY kids who did summer jobs and term jobs which theoretically could have turned into something full time, no degree, virtually all of these employers (even the three guys in a garage ilk) encourage, urge, insist on a degree.</p>
<p>As a practical matter, you can be the biggest tech genius in the world, but when you sit down with the suits from the VC company, being a college drop out doesn’t hold the same cred with the financial community as having a degree. Attending MIT and graduating from MIT are not the same thing and you can be adorable and brilliant but nobody is betting the farm (let alone millions of someone else’s money) on a bunch of drop outs. And those lucrative tech jobs to drop-outs? Where exactly are those? Not at Google, not at Yahoo, not at Facebook, not at IBM, not at Microsoft, not at Dell. So you’re back to two guys and a garage.</p>
<p>I don’t know Reed well enough to comment- although I’ve known some fine Reed graduates over the years who do them proud. I still think that MIT’s culture, faculty, staff, support systems help create a culture where it’s ok to ask for help, seek out intervention, or raise the red flag when you’re starting to circle the drain.</p>
<p>Do we know from the attrition/graduation rates how many kids are flunking out vs. dropping out vs. transferring? Of the dropouts and transfers, do we know how many are leaving for financial reasons and how many are leaving for other reasons? Or are we just making some assumptions?</p>
<p>I don’t think comparing Reed to MIT is reasonable. They are too different. The right comparison would be to other selective, high quality, expensive LACs. To me, one plausible explanation remains that Reed is simply harder, especially for students at the lower end of the admission pool. How many other LACs have pre-thesis, comprehensive orals? But cultural issues between Portland and other regions might come into play too.</p>
<p>It’s easy to say that Reed should simply raise its admissions standards. Not so easy to do. Not that many schools command the application rates of the top New England LACs. If you asked all the kids who did not finish if they wish Reed had rejected them, what do you think they’d say? But yes, if Reed could figure out how to attract more of the best applicants who are being rejected by other top LACs, that might be a good outcome, if it could do so without completely changing its character.</p>
<p>Then that means that lack of financial support is not a valid excuse for the low graduation rate. See below. </p>
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<p>Uh, I’m not sure that that 2nd-to-last sentence really helped you, considering that fully half of those companies you just named (Facebook, Dell, and Microsoft) were founded by college dropouts. Seems to me as if venture capitalists had no problem betting the farm to fund them. </p>
<p>But nevertheless, for the purposes of this discussion is not how truly feasible a particular career path is, but rather whether the students think it is feasible, as entrepreneurship has always been fostered by psychological overconfidence. I know quite a few MIT students who have loudly proclaimed that if somebody like Mark Zuckerberg can drop out of college to start a tech company and become a billionaire, why can’t they do the same, particularly Zuck went to a local college that is actually less prestigious when it comes to technology. This is particularly so when they realize that the early version of Facebook, frankly, wasn’t that hard to build. {The later versions were more difficult, but by that time, Zuck had already secured funding.} Far from an urban legend, Zuck is living temptation for MIT students to drop out to start their own company. </p>
<p>The other living temptations are now, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams, all college dropouts, having secured millions upon millions of venture funding for what is arguably the sexiest tech company in the world right now, one that is extremely popular with the techie youth crowd of which MIT students clearly belong, and with technology that, again, frankly, isn’t all that hard to build. In fact, Dorsey and Stone have said that it took them only about two weeks to build their first prototype. </p>
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<p>Well, according to vossron, the number who drop out of Reed for financial reasons should be precisely zero. Either that or Reed’s vaunted financial support is not as encompassing as it has been made out to be. </p>
<p>Regarding the involuntary flunkout rates, I obviously can’t say for sure. But given Reed’s reputation for rigor, I would imagine that the rate would be quite high. After all, you said it yourself, Reed is one of the few schools that has pre-thesis comprehensive orals, and I would have to imagine that many students simply aren’t able to pass them and are hence involuntarily forced out. {Which then leads to the question of what happens to the transcripts of those students? Are they marked with the scarlet letter of failure that signifies that the student flunked out because he failed the orals? Or can those students just leave without anybody really knowing why?} </p>
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<p>Uh, actually, I don’t see what the issue necessarily has to do with attracting more applicants. You don’t need that. You can simply attract the same number of applicants as before - but just admit fewer of them, and in particular, only admit those who are actually likely to do well, based on a retrospective statistical regression analysis of the outcomes of former students. Again, why admit somebody who is probably going to perform poorly?</p>
<p>Reed alumnus here, I confess to skimming this thread. I was glad to see that tk21769 brought up the point that Reed takes chances on students. Remember, some of those students end up being really successful at Reed. When I was at Reed they struggled with the high rate of students transfering out. Reed is not for everybody. When I talk to people who are considering it I emphasize that they should visit, it has a strong personality.</p>
<p>Reed’s curriculum is hard, but college is hard anywhere. The only students I knew who flunked out were the ones who quit studying and going to class. Everyone I knew who put in the effort made it through. Some of the people I knew who transfered didn’t consider their time at Reed wasted. They had found a specific area of interest and they needed a bigger school to pursue it.</p>
<p>Reed isn’t for everyone but for the right student it can bring out the best in them.</p>
<p>Perhaps the bottom line with folks in the Reed community is that, except for the current recession-induced problems, Reed is doing fine, and we have to wait and see if the graduation rate improves. Since 2001, applications to Reed have doubled, and the acceptance rate gone from 74 percent down to 32 percent in 2008.</p>
<p>Well, I think the question is not whether Reed is doing fine. Obviously Reed is doing fine, in fact, better than most other schools. But that’s to be expected, for Reed is supposed to be an exceptional school. Reed is therefore supposed to outperform relative to the average.</p>
<p>I think the more pertinent question is whether Reed is doing well relative not to the average school, but rather to its peer schools. And the fact is, graduation rates have been increasing at almost all of the top schools in the last few years. Even Caltech - a school infamous throughout its history for flunking out boatloads of students - now boasts a near 90% graduation rate. </p>
<p>Couple that with the ever-increasing importance of the degree in the modern economy. I would strongly hesitate to send my child to Reed if he could get into a comparable peer school, for what if he/she performs poorly? At some other school, you are far more assured of getting the degree. Like I said, if you lack a degree, employment screeners aren’t going to care why. All they will see is that you don’t have a degree. {It’s quite the sad state of affairs - but what are you going to do? That’s increasingly how the employment game is being played.}</p>
<p>Hasn’t it been suggested (if not established) that few kids who leave Reed are flunking out? It sounds like most are transferring, and a few are dropping out of their own volition. Maybe the latter aren’t parent-pleasers and employer-pleasers, but are finding their own way just fine.</p>
<p>And are the kids who’d be having serious trouble at Reed the same kids who could get into a comparable peer school? Until recently,that usually has meant a more selective school. Or are they kids whose more likely alternative would have been a school like Evergreen State? And of the kids whose only other choice was such a school, how many do in fact wind up thriving at Reed?</p>
<p>This is all very speculative. Graduation rate is one of those metrics, like yield, that does not necessarily tell you that much without a lot of background information to help interpret the number. I’m glad the country has a few outstanding schools like Reed and St. John’s where both the adcoms and the students seem to be willing to take some risks. It may be that the country has many, many kids who really don’t belong in college at 18 or 20, and that many of those who leave one of these schools do so because the experience helps them develop the self-knowledge and the courage to recognize that fact.</p>
<p>In other words, these schools are not just “hard”, they are questioning, as the best colleges should be. They make it impossible to sit in the back of a lecture hall and scribble. For some (possibly even some high scorers), the conclusion may be that they are not ready for that process. Whatever fraction of the attrition rate it is, it may be the right number.</p>
<p>At the best schools, the faculty is in command when it comes to addressing these questions. At too many other schools, professional administrators are in command and their overriding concern is the bottom line.</p>
<p>Again, you assume that the difference in behavior (i.e. whether or not a student graduates) is a function of the college, not the school. This is not only an unsupported assumption, it is probably wrong.</p>
<p>Take the example of Reed: It is equally (probably more) likely that Reed attracts strong students who are likely to be “searching” for themselves, and therefore more likely to drop out no matter where they go. So their dropping out has little to do with Reed itself, other than the fact that Reed is willing to accept such students (and to give even this level of involvement to Reed assumes Reed can identify such students, which is doubtful.)</p>
<p>To go back to Berkeley, much of your past argument is based on the assumption that Berkeley and similar schools accept marginal students. But most evidence says this is not true. It may well be true that Berkeley accepts a higher percentage of students with a propensity to drop out no matter where they attend. So what?</p>
<p>Sakky, it is one thing to base arguments on unsupported assumptions. It is another thing entirely to extend those same arguments to the bashing of a particular school with no factual basis: "I would strongly hesitate to send my child to Reed if he could get into a comparable peer school, ".</p>
<p>tk21769: You hit the nose right on the head. I didn’t know of one person who flunked out of Reed who was putting in the work. The only ones who flunked out had stopped going to class and stopped studying. I know they have a high transfer rate and I guess it doesn’t concern me because it’s the choice the student is making. After a couple of years some students needs a bigger selection of classes that they can only get at a bigger school or they just didn’t like Reed or they want to take a year off and then come back and finish.</p>
<p>I’m with you about St. Johns. I heard about it a few years ago and I thought it sounded like such an exciting curriculum. Again, that kind of curriculum isn’t for everyone, but for some students it is a really good fit. In fact for some students the curriculum at St. Johns probably serves them better than the curriculum at a more traditional school.</p>
<p>It seems to me that in general the increased graduation rate is marching hand in hand with the increased difficulty in being accepted to a school. That makes sense, as the applicant pool grows in size the applicants who are ultimately accepted are of a higher caliber and therefore more likely to graduate.</p>
<p>It has been established, but certainly not established. I would like to see somebody establish it.</p>
<p>After all, think of it this way. The strong implication in this thread is that Reed is a school that institutes harsh grading standards, which also means that many students must end up with bad grades, and in particular, failing grades. As others have said, Reed takes admissions risks, which means that Reed admits some students of possibly marginal status (defined below) and then weeds out the ones who don’t make the cut through a well-etablished policy of grade deflation. The question then is, exactly what happens to those poor-performing students? Where exactly can they transfer? They can’t stay at Reed because they are flunking out. No respectable school wants to take a transfer applicant who is flunking out of his current school. Heck, no respectable school wants to take a transfer applicant with merely mediocre grades. </p>
<p>Now, if you want to argue that Reed actually doesn’t have that many failing students because the grading standards are not that harsh, then we have to revisit just how Reed can truly be a rigorous school in light of its historically relaxed admissions standards. Is anybody prepared to argue that Reed grading is easy? </p>
<p>So let’s consider the following thought exercise. I go to Reed for a few years. I don’t do that well, but I don’t perform absymally either. I get a 2.5 GPA at Reed, which is below, but not vastly below, the average Reed GPA (which I believe is ~ 2.9). Nevertheless, I am clearly not doing well, and I may not even pass the comprehensive orals, and my struggles indicate that I should probably transfer. But where could I transfer? Does any respectable school really want to take a transfer applicant who holds just a 2.5 GPA, even if from Reed? </p>
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<p>Then I’ll repeat to you my real life example. I knew a guy who went to Berkeley and then flunked out, which meant that he couldn’t even transfer to UCDavis - a lower-level school that had originally accepted him out of high school. That’s because Davis didn’t want to admit a transfer student who was flunking out of his previous school. Davis didn’t care that Berkeley was a harsh school. All they cared about is that he was flunking. The guy would have been better off if he had never even gone to Berkeley at all - i.e. if he had gone straight to the workforce right after high school - for then, he could have applied to Davis as a new college student and been admitted purely on the strength of his high school record (as he had before). But as it stands, his sundered Berkeley record is the albatross that he’ll have to wear wrapped around his neck for the rest of his life. Going to Berkeley made him far worse off. </p>
<p>I have to imagine that going to Reed and performing poorly would do the same thing, for now you have ruined your academic record for life. Because you have actually attended a college, you can no longer apply to any other college as a freshman admit, but rather as a transfer. When an organization (i.e. an employer, a grad school) asks for your full college academic record, you have to include your poor performance at Reed. That’s a ‘negative signal’ that is bound to hurt you, such that it would have been better if you had never attended Reed at all. </p>
<p>This leads back to a proposal I tabled before. If Reed wants to take chances on some students who then perform poorly, then Reed should simply wipe their academic records clean. The philosophy is that if somebody isn’t going to graduate from Reed anyway, who cares what their Reed grades are? Let them walk away with a clean slate. But that’s not what happens - your Reed grades because part of your academic record for life. And you’re going to then be judged on those poor grades. I wish it wasn’t true, but it is true. Just like how the guy who went to Berkeley and flunked out has marred his academic record such that he now can’t even get into Davis. </p>
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<p>It seems as if you would then support me in providing support to those students who don’t do well. What happens to them, especially the ones who flunk? It seems to me that they really are relegated to a far lower-ranked school…or worse. An optimal solution really would be to cleanse their academic records so that nobody knows they performed poorly. </p>
<p>Again, I return to a basic question. We can all point to success stories - of those students who go to Reed and do well. But what about those students who don’t do well? What happens to them?</p>
<p>S1 is at UChicago and knows several very good students who transferred in from Reed. They all did so because of the greater opportunity to follow a particular subject in greater detail and they chose Chicago because it was, in their thinking, closest to Reed. Those students may not factor into Reed’s graduation rate in a positive way, but Reed definitely had a major influence on them. None have a bad word to say about the school.</p>
<p>I agree that maybe those students are ‘searching for themselves’ and possibly would have dropped out wherever they might have gone. But the question then is, why do they necessarily have to implement that search function at Reed? For example, you can search for yourself at your state school at a far cheaper cost. </p>
<p>Consider it from the eyes of a parent. Most parents don’t send their kids to college just for the sake of sending them to college. Most of them send their kids to college in order to obtain a degree. Certainly, most of them wouldn’t pay much for college if all the kids were doing was simply ‘searching for themselves’. {For after all, college ain’t exactly cheap.} If that’s what the kids wanted to do, then the parents would probably send them somewhere cheap. Whether we like it or not, a college degree has been marketed to parents as a utilitarian investment product that boosts overall career salaries. </p>
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<p>Uh, no, every school accepts marginal students, in that the term ‘marginal’ is relative to the rest of the school. After all, every school has to have some students in the bottom x% of its class. The questions then are, how large is x, and what happens to those students in x?</p>
<p>Furthermore, every school has differing academic standards. We have already established that Reed is a school with a high level of rigor that not every student will be able to meet. Clearly some students who fail at Reed would have passed if they had simply gone to an easier school with easier standards. That is, after all, what it means to be a rigorous school. {If the standards are the same, then Reed isn’t really a rigorous school then, is it?} Hence, somebody who flunks out of Reed or Berkeley may have successfully passed elsewhere. </p>
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<p>Interesting, for it seems as if all of your arguments are based on assumptions that you have conceded are unsupported. For example, we don’t know that lots of students at Reed are searching for themselves. That’s merely an assertion on your part. I’m willing to work with that assertion, but it is merely an assertion. </p>
<p>Besides, I don’t think this is a matter of bashing Reed. It’s just a simple opinion that I don’t think I would want to go to Reed if I had the option of going to another top school. Am I not allowed to express that opinion? </p>
<p>Nor is it not a problem of a lack of factual evidence. The relatively low graduation rate is a fact. The rigorous reputation of Reed is a fact. The grade deflation of Reed is a fact. All of those facts constitute a case against Reed, at least for me, because they indicate that Reed is risky. Sure, you might go to Reed and do very well. But what if you don’t do well - what happens now?</p>
<p>Contrast that with what happens at other schools, where students can stop going to class and stop studying… and still pass and hence successfully graduate.</p>
<p>To take some historical examples, take a look at George W. Bush and John Kerry. Both of them have freely admitted to being deeply unmotivated students while at Yale - with Bush actually earning a slightly higher GPA than Kerry did (although both were mediocre). Bush freely joked about his irresponsibility during his college days, and Kerry admitted that he spent more time on other pursuits, such as learning how to fly, than on his studies. But they both successfully graduated anyway. They both then went to graduate school and then had highly successful political careers. </p>
<p>Now, if Bush and Kerry had gone to Reed instead of Yale, then they probably would have flunked out because of their lack of motivation. And while that might have been better for the country’s future, it wouldn’t have been better for them. </p>
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<p>As to your last point, I have no concerns about people taking a year off and then returning to finish, nor does this discussion tackle that issue. The figures I am quoting are 6-year graduation rates, which provides students with plenty of slack time to temporarily drop out and then return. </p>
<p>The other concerns are more troubling, however. While it may be true that some Reed students do find that they need a larger school with a wider selection of courses, one has to wonder why the same doesn’t happen at other LAC’s. Williams, Amherst, & Swarthmore all graduate well over 90% of their class despite being just as small as Reed. Even Caltech graduates nearly 90% of its class and Caltech is a tiny (undergrad) school. None of them seem to have such a severe issue with students transferring out, despite similar limitations on course availability. </p>
<p>Finally as to whether some students simply don’t like Reed, again, that speaks to another problem - why don’t they like it? Why do students seem to like Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, or Caltech more (or at least, by enough so to stay and graduate)? Perhaps that indicates that Reed is not doing an optimal job of admitting students who will fit into the culture, but the answer then is to do that. </p>
<p>This all leads back to the original question: why should a school admit students who aren’t going to graduate? I would argue that they should not, considering the great costs it entails. The only question then is whether we can determine who isn’t going to graduate, which is where a retrospective statistical analysis of past students becomes handy.</p>
<p>Mr. Fang observes that it’s not just Reed that produces many students who are worse off for having attended. Plenty of students at lots of schools are worse off having attended for four years, graduated with a liberal arts degree for $200,000 and moved on to unemployment and loan payments. And what of acting schools? Most students who go there, especially full-pay students, are arguably worse off after graduation.</p>
<p>But who are we, and who is Reed, to decide the value of a college experience for a student? Maybe those two years at Reed are worth an immeasurable amount to the student who flunks out. We can’t know. Let the student decide. </p>
<p>I applaud Reed for taking chances on applicants. Let the prospective students decide whether to take the risk.</p>