Not sure how many kids from any college end up in what you term elite society-defining positions. Sounds like a tiny group. Back to OP’s original question, given how many kids are applying to a handful of elite universities, and the substantial advantages some of them already have in applying, I think it is quite rational for many talented but un-
Privileged students to avoid that rat race and aim for top standing at a local public instead. Most jobs will still be open to them anyway.
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Maybe the focus on “elite society-defining jobs” has thrown this discussion off track? I see where you are coming from and definitely sympathize with the idea that college is now so expensive that most people (other than the children of the wealthy) have to think primarily about a route to a stable job. In comparison, when growing up I was encouraged to do what I was most interested in (and best at).
But was it better for society that back in the 1970s and 80s a lot more kids had a degree in history rather than a degree in STEM? Was that history major a better path to an “elite society-defining job”? Perhaps for some, while others didn’t have particularly marketable skills (though the degree itself perhaps differentiated you more when fewer people went to college).
And so what should be the aim of university reforms? Is it to make college free or low cost for poorer kids so they can tick the box of a degree needed for a “stable” job? If so that is more likely to be your “more-beer” get the average kids out the door model.
That seems a lot more plausible than funding programs that encourage kids to seek “elite society-defining jobs”. I can’t imagine many voters, who are under economic pressure themselves, wanting to fund kids to just do whatever they enjoy in college. Maybe the answer is that “average state U” therefore can’t, and perhaps even shouldn’t, be aspiring to get kids into “elite society-defining jobs”? But if parents don’t know about that world, and universities can’t show it to them, there may well be a bunch of poor kids who never even know what they are missing out on.
I can also see that being a pretty depressing experience for many faculty at “average state U”. But are we really going to provide hundreds of billions of dollars to make their lives better and their jobs more satisfying? That in itself feels like a demand for advantages from those who are already in what by many definitions would be considered “elite society-defining jobs”.
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I do not doubt the stresses of the untenured academics, but it is difficult to understand why tenured professors with lifetime job security would feel so overwhelmed. Most universities seem to have added a great many administrative positions to deal with students’ emotional, visa, financial or housing problems, and would not expect professors to offer that support. There are plenty of job applicants for each open faculty position, I am told. Most public universities have plenty of undergrad applicants to enroll. As an institution, higher education is much more sheltered from economic realities than most industries.
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I suspect OP is right about the state U’s she’s referring to. They aren’t the well-endowed privates and the elite publics that have the additional resources for these services. Most colleges have added these administrative positions but they probably fail to keep up with the much increased demand at these state U’s.
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Yes, I believe staff have increased at run-of-the-mill publics but so has enrollment. And some of the staff would be for services that wouldn’t necessarily help faculty much (study-abroad, counseling, etc.).
And the rich privates would have ramped up staff numbers by a lot more comparatively over the same time period.
There seem to be parallels here with local newspapers (another “elite society-defining job”), which previously provided a stable job with plenty of resources and ability to progress up the ladder to wider recognition, and now are desperately squeezed by changes in the economy, including the more widespread awareness and dominance of elite national publications like the NYT and WSJ. We can bemoan the loss of local news all we like, but no one credibly proposes giving them billions of dollars of taxpayer money to restore them to their former glory.
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I don’t agree. The U of Colorado, which I assume you’d consider average and a ‘more beer for everyone’ school, had two Rhodes scholars in the last 2 years. Both were instate students who I’m sure could have gone to more prestigious schools but took the scholarship money and stayed in state. One was a Boettcher scholar, which gives a lot more money to stay in state, and the other was from Boulder, so went to the ‘hometown college’. Both seemed to be from middle class families. Both were in A&S (social sciences, not STEM).
Somehow these two average students at an average school stood out. I agree that UC has to focus on getting students in and out, has to focus on the funding, has to pay attention to the alums and the football team, but that doesn’t mean they are ignoring students or just passing them through to make them alums with the hope that they will then donate money. Students are still the main business of the university. I think the school DOES care what happens to their grads, that there are jobs or more schooling or even that they are happy traveling the world with a backpack.
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Something does need to replace the local newspaper, however. Malfeasance grows when there are fewer watchdogs.
Higher ed is actually way behind print* media on the path of disruption, however. Which means there’s a lot more coming. A winner-take-all world isn’t great for average flagships (though a lot worse for unselective privates and regional publics). We could see all sorts of models for publics. Something for everyone like the ASU model. Or states converting their publics in to a hub-and-spoke mode like PSU (a ton of small not-very-selective branch PSU’s with a limited number of majors but feeding in to a main campus; Wisconsin is actually set up well for this). Or a lot more online classes/degrees.
*Really should just be called written media is print is fast disappearing.
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The Arizona model mostly works due to geography – ASU is in commutable range of probably a significant majority of the state population, while UA and NAU are in commutable range of much of the rest of the state population. Other states with much of the population concentrated in one or a few regions (e.g. Hawaii) can have a similar model.
Pennsylvania geography, on the other hand, limits the commuting range of a university. In addition, the PSU branch campus model is mostly like having an expensive version of community colleges dedicated to PSU as the transfer target, though they may offer a limited number of BA/BS degrees as well.
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I’m curious as to whether and how much more expensive the branch PSUs are compared to CC’s. I would think too that at some point, PSU would start utilizing PSU World as a feeder to PSU Main as well.
The tuition at PSU branch campuses is at least double the tuition at PA community colleges.
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PSU branch campuses have in-state tuition of $15,216, according to Penn State Tuition and Costs - Undergraduate Admissions .
Pennsylvania community college in-state tuition varies, apparently within the range of $4k to $6k per year. The Community College of Philadelphia is about $2.5k for city residents.
Obviously, this does not include other costs, like living and/or commuting costs.
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Out of curiosity, I looked up which colleges NYT interns were coming from on LinkedIn. It almost looks like NYT intentionally makes a point of getting interns from a huge variety of different types of colleges. The vast majority of the 65 interns all came from different colleges – some highly selective, some not highly selective, some public, some private, some prestigious, some not prestigious, some international, etc. The 2 schools with the most interns were Berkeley and USC, which both had 3.
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PSU branch campus tuition varies by branch from under $14,000 to ~$16,000 (the latter at the larger branches - e.g., Harrisburg, Erie, Altoona). Community college tuition also varies. At HACC, tuition for 30 credits is $6758 for students of sponsoring school districts. For out of district but instate residents, $8160.
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The grass is always greener. Actually, I think if you read closely you will find that many prep school parents weighed not sending their kids to these schools as the path to top schools is more difficult. Whether it is or isn’t really depends on the kid.
Kids at these top prep schools are the top students in their states and often the top kids nationally, as 8th graders. Even having perfect SSAT scores ( similar to a 1600 SAT in high school) doesn’t translate into a top prep school acceptance. At a school like Exeter, they accept about 10% of students and most kids who apply have all A’s, top EC’s and some have really amazing talents.
So when these kids graduate and are in the top 10% of the top 10%, well that’s a top kid. Also, these schools provide rigorous academics (often low, no grade inflation), some have very high level sports and arts options. So it’s not a kid going to a local public and being the best, it’s a kid being about top peers.
Actually, my kid just compared notes with a friend in public school ( top school in the top state kind of public school). Physics C next year in public school will be doing exactly half of what my prep school kid will do. Same Class. My oldest often compares notes on the same courses, they are not equal in the amount of work required. The public also does not require a 50 page paper, nor do they do lots of academic things which are required at many prep schools.
If you look at top schools, Ivies, the strongest techs (like Caltech/MIT), an outsized portions of top awards (like Rhodes, Marshall, all other top scholarships and prestigious awards) go to kids who attended prep schools and private schools. Why? Because they were among the top students coming in.
I’m a fan of public, private, BS and all the rest. But I think unless you/your kid has attended a top BS then it’s hard to criticize them. It’s not the easy path you might imagine. Kids at all schools are working hard to gain access to the best universities. There are lots of great kids doing lots of great things across the US ( and the world). Most still get rejections.
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I’m not sure where these numbers are coming from. In the Harvard freshman survey, 23.9% of students said they attended a private, non-parochial school – not an “elite” or prestigious private – any private. Assuming a similar private/parochial ratio to Harvard, then Cornell’s class profile suggests only 16.8% of Cornell students attended a private non-parochial high school – again not a prestigious private – any private. So across the all Ivies, I’d estimate a little under 20% of students attended a private, non-parochial private high school, and a far smaller portion attended an “elite”, prestigious private HS. Surveys also suggest private school admits average higher SAT scores than public school admits.
You can get some specific numbers from https://polarislist.com/, 3 of the 5 HSs that send the most students to Harvard were publics – Boston Latin (#1), Stuyvesant (#3), and Cambridge Ridge (#5). 2 of the 3 had nearly half of students low enough income to qualify for free lunch.
Rather than being wealthy or prestigious, I think the drivers are more that the HS is highly selective, located in Northeast, and has a large number of students who want to apply to Harvard. I’d expect that nearly any high school that meets these 3 criteria is going to have a good number of Harvard admits. As Happytimes2001 points out above, highly selective “prestigious” HSs have a very high concentration of stellar students. They also have a higher concentration of applicants. So it should be no surprise that they have a good number of admits. This is not suggestive of a special admission advantage for attending one. I think whether an admission advantage exists or not, depends on the particular student for a variety of reasons. Some kids would have a better result at a selective private HS, and others at a non-selective public.
I attended a basic, non-selective public HS in upstate NY. Being in upstate NY, many students apply to Cornell every year. Naviance suggests far more students apply to Cornell than to all over Ivies + SM combined, probably more applications than any other highly selective college. As such my HS gets several acceptances to Cornell every year, but there are very few acceptances to the highly selective colleges where few students apply, such as Harvard.
The high school I attended has an average SAT of ~1100, while highly selective privates have much higher SATs. For example, Andover has an average SAT approaching 1500. As such, it’s a safe bet than Andover and similar selective privates HSs have a higher concentration of top test score students than my HS. If you control for scores, rigor of classes, and hook status, I’d expect that applicants from my HS have a higher rate of Cornell acceptances than Andover and most other prestigious private prep schools. However, there are far more kids with high test scores and large numbers of AP+ level classes at selective preps, as well as a larger number of hooked kids; so a larger number of acceptances may be expected at the selective prep, even if number of applicants are similar.
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Honestly, I would have agreed with you that the curriculum at a top boarding school would have been better than that of AP classes at a top public school. The only problem is, those public school kids do just as well on the AP exams and the SATs/ACTs as the boarding school kids do. So when they’re both hitting the top of the scale, how is it justifiable that the prep or top private school kids are about a hundred times as likely to get admitted to Ivies as the top kids at decent public schools?
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The standardized AP exams may not reflect much and one can score relatively well by simply going through past exams. Similarly, one can do reasonably well in SATs/ACTs with prep nowadays. Given the class size is just about 10, the highly selective prep-school kids receive more attention from teachers and are expected to a do a lot of work (reading/writing/labs) as compared to public school kids. They also tend to get better summer opportunities given the support from both the school and the parents. As such these “preppie” kids may have better profiles and helps them to get into better colleges. Is the life fair? probably not, but then should the kids from a school based in Camden (NJ, who may not have great scores but may have the potential) be treated the same as a kid from a wealthy Bergen county (NJ) public school?
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Where is the hundreds of times more likely to get admitted figure coming from? The high schools that publish admit rates typically show much more minor differences. The numbers I have seen are more typically prestigious private HSs sometimes having an admit rate a few times higher than the overall pool (sometimes far less). The increased admit rates I have seen are not enough to suggest anything more than a higher concentration of stellar students at highly selective HSs + a higher concentration of hooked students.
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