The advantage of a public university is the resources that their grad programs can bring. You can find professors in more fields for a particular discipline. And since public universities like Michigan and Berkeley will have top notch graduate programs in the liberal arts field, you have a better chance of finding someone doing leading edge research or have connections at other graduate programs where you may apply for a doctorate. A history or english undergrad degree from Berkeley or Michgian has a lot of gravitas behind it.
Here’s a comparison of course offerings in one field (Roman history/civ) at a top university vs. a top LAC …
Courses in the UC-Berkeley catalog that cover ~Roman history and civilization include:
HISTORY 4A Origins of Western Civilization: The Ancient Mediterranean World
HISTORY 106A Ancient Rome: The Roman Republic
HISTORY 106B Ancient Rome: The Roman Empire
HISTORY 185A History of Christianity: History of Christianity to 1250
HISTORY 3 After the Roman Empire: the East (if you consider Byzantium an extension of “Rome”)
HISTORY 108 Byzantium
HISTORY C188C Magic, Religion, and Science: The Ancient and Medieval Worlds
CLASSIC 10B Introduction to Roman Civilization
CLASSIC 17B Introduction to the Archaeology of the Roman World
CLASSIC 29 Introduction to Greco-Roman Magic
CLASSIC 34 Epic Poetry: Homer and Vergil
CLASSIC R44 Roots of Western Civilization
CLASSIC 124 Classical Poetics
CLASSIC 130 Topics in Ancient Greek and Roman Culture
CLASSIC 170D Classical Archaeology: Roman Art and Architecture
CLASSIC C175F Pictorial Representation in the Roman World
CLASSIC 175D Topography and Monuments: Pompeii and Herculaneum
CLASSIC 175F Topography and Monuments: Roman Wall Painting
CLASSIC 175G Topography and Monuments: Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt
CLASSIC 180 Ancient Athletics
CLASSIC 202A Survey of Latin Literature
CLASSIC 202B Survey of Latin Literature
CLASSIC 203 Approaches to Classical Literature
CLASSIC 230 Latin Poetry of the Republic and Early Empire
CLASSIC 239 Topics in Greek or Roman Literature, History, and Culture
Courses in the Williams College catalog that cover ~Roman history and civilization include:
HIST 223 Roman History
HIST 224 Roman Archaeology and Material Culture
HIST 260(F) Augustan Rome
HIST 324 The Development of Christianity: 30-600 C.E.
HIST 485T After Rome
CLAS 102 Roman Literature: Foundations and Empire
CLAS 228(S) Insult to Injury: Satire and Comic Abuse in Ancient Greece and Rome
CLAS 241T Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece and Rome
CLAS 262 Performing Greece and Rome
CLAS 306 The Good Life in Greek and Roman Ethics
CLAS 334 Greek and Roman Ethics
CLLA 302(S) Vergil’s “Aeneid”
CLLA 401 Plautus’ Rome Made Visible
CLLA 403 The Invention of Love: Catullus and the Roman Elegists
CLLA 405(F) Livy and Tacitus: Myth, Scandal, and Morality in Ancient Rome
CLLA 406 Horace Odes 1-3
CLLA 407 Caesar and Cicero
CLLA 408(S) Roman Comedy
CLLA 409 Seneca and the Self
CLLA 414 Vergil’s Eclogues and Georgics
(For either college I may be missing some relevant listings in other departments or hiding behind non-obvious titles). These are from the course catalogs; presumably not every course is taught every year.
That was a lot of picayune to cut through.
The first post made perfect sense to me,. I just don’t know the answer.
Kinda thinking nobody else does either. Tempted to say it won’t matter that much as long as the state u has a broad reputation. A history degree from WV ought to impress as much as one from Kenyon, IMO.
In general, I kind of see a pvt LAC as something of a luxury good. Nothing wrong with that, but the qualitative experience is the big thing.
^Agree. I think we over-parsed the OP’s use of words when it was perfectly obvious what he was trying to ask. Why are some colleges and universities able to charge a quarter of a million dollars (and attract people who will pay it) in return for a degree whose ROI may take years to realize while others, including some very fine state flagship universities, would have a hard time doing the same thing while charging the same price? The answer is, “We don’t know.”
If that is what the OP was asking.
Seems like something one could ask without bringing the liberal arts into it, you know?
OP, you said you wanted a comparison like Knox and Berkeley. Problem is that Berkeley is one of the premier public universities in the world. Knox is a third-tier LAC. Compare Berkeley to Pomona or Williams or Swarthmore, which are highly ranked LACs. Or compare Knox to University of Delaware.
You can ask the same question about STEM. Harvey Mudd vs Berkeley, for example. It isn’t just a LAC question.
OP, as @tk21769 outlined in post #22, the difference in the number of course is negligible - that said, the distinction in the learning environments between an LAC with 5-15 students in a course as compared to 20-100+ at a university isn’t even close,
On class sizes, it depends on the university, really. Yeah, as an undergrad at a state flagship I had a couple lecture courses with 300+ students, but the courses in my major (admittedly a small major—we’re not talking psychology or English here) were never above 25 students, and mostly 15 or fewer.
If you want to pursue STEM, especially engineering, I would not go to a LAC personally. That’s like joining a monastery with the goal of becoming a fighter pilot.
Yea, that was basically what I was asking. I remember reading articles about students going into a quarter million dollar debt to go to some private colleges for a liberal arts major, and couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t just go to a cheaper state flagship instead.
But isn’t the bar lower for STEM degrees such as engineering? By this I mean that as long as you are an average engineer from a top 50 engineering college, you should be able to at least land a decent engineering job. However, that can’t really be said for an average student at a top 50 LAC can it (perhaps it can for the top quarter or tenth or students, but I certainly wouldn’t think the average student)?
The conventional wisdom here on CC is that any ABET- accredited engineering college will do. Engineering involves very specific knowledge and skills and I guess if you have it, you have it. I suspect there is a lot more nuance than that- obviously some engineers are more creative or better than others, and that may correlate somewhat with the selectivity of the school they attended, but out in the engineering world it may matter less since everyone has that credential.
Instead of saying “LAC” let’s say “major in one of the liberal arts” so we get university kids, directional college kids, LACs, etc in there - say, all English majors. Here the curriculum isn’t as well defined as engineering so a lot more depends on the student’s specific skills developed in college, in internships and work, etc. Some English majors will command huge salaries and some will struggle. Some will go to grad school or professional school, some will enter the workforce to read and write in some way, some will do something that doesn’t involve “English” specifically at all - work in finance or education or government.
And, not every engineering major decides to be an…engineer. I know two doctors who were engineering majors in college.
Yes, even average student in English or Political Science or Asian Studies do very well if they graduate from Williams, Pomona, Grinnell, Colby, Spelman, Whitman, or Dickinson.
Average students from directionals have a tough road ahead because their college has less rigor than lacs and fewer resources per student than either LAC or flagship, their alumni network is not as expensive or strong as either…
Average students from a flagship, it depends on many factors.
An advantage to a small setting is that you don’t fall through the cracks even if you’re average. You have less competition for everything and when there are eight to twelve students in a junior or senior class you can do what it takes to be memorable to your professor. It’s harder if you’re overshadowed by twelve top students and are lost in a group of twelve other average students like yourself (keeping in mind your professor also has stellar grad students occupying most of his/her mind.)
When talking about employment for degree recipients in professional vs. liberal arts fields, it’s important to remember that these days we tend to default to thinking in terms of what happens in the professional fields: You get a degree in engineering, you by default become an engineer; you get a degree in nursing, you by default become a nurse; you get a degree in elementary education, you…
The liberal arts don’t generally work like that. Yeah, I have degrees in linguistics and am a professor of linguistics, but of the dozen or so who got their undergrad degree in linguistics with me, one (or maybe two, if you stretch definitions) of them is also in a job where one could say they’re a linguist. The rest are employed in other fields.
And this is the norm for the liberal arts. You get a degree in linguistics; you don’t usually become a linguist; you get a degree in physics, you don’t usually become a physicist; you get a degree in English, you don’t usually…
Instead, you become something that allows you to use broad-based knowledge, probably involving some specific skills you developed as part of your major.
This is the case whether someone went to a LAC or a university.
@MYOS1634 I think your answer is exactly right…and answers the OP’s question. My sister-in-law was a psychology major at a directional and she still swears it’s gotten her no where. She won’t let her kids major in anything not pre-professional. I don’t think it was the psychology degree, but the school and the student. If kids major in English, History, Psych, etc at a top uni or LAC, they will find their way to a career and have help doing so from their school.
“If you want to pursue STEM, especially engineering, I would not go to a LAC personally. That’s like joining a monastery with the goal of becoming a fighter pilot.”
I mean no disrespect but that’s possibly the worst analogy I have ever come across. For STM the opposite is true statistically speaking.
As for engineering, I personally went to a state flagship a (long long) while ago and don’t think I missed much (if anything) compared to the undergraduate academic experience at expensive top ranked private technical schools with which I am very familiar with for a number of reasons… My engineering education was very, very good although limited to those of us that survived it (back then attrition rates were horrendous). That said, after taking my kid to see Olin, Harvey Mudd and a few other LACs with engineering I honestly wish I was his age again to look at all the options…
PS I know, Olin wasn’t around back then…
Pardon me for not understanding, but whats the point of spending more money at a LAC for a degree like engineering that can be had for much cheaper elsewhere?
You say you don’t feel like you missed out of anything at your state flagship, so why are you making the opposite choice for your children?
The same things some like about LACs - small classes, lots of professor interaction, are true of those that offer engineering too.
My kid at Mudd spent about 20 hours a week with her 2 research advisors in the lab, often with maybe 1-2 other students present for her last 3 semesters at Mudd. She got tons more interaction with them than you can get at a larger college (esp where there are grad students). That one on one time was very valuable and she learned a huge amount.
If that’s what you’re after, @RMNiMiTz, you’re begging the question. That is, in asking why it would be worth spending more for a LAC education than a public university one, you’re assuming that a LAC is more expensive than a public university. As has already been stated on this thread, that’s not necessarily a warranted assumption.
Though nearly remarkable in its conclusion, this study seems to be infrequently cited. The authors themselves use conservative wording, but they do appear to strongly suggest that for maximal cognitive progression, it’s imperative – given a realistic choice – to select a liberal arts college:
Pascarella, Wong, Trolian and Blaich. *Higher Education/i.