Name some colleges where intellectual conversations "for fun" are common?

College Search & Selection
61

You will find slackers at Ivies and intellectuals at community colleges as well. You will also find intellectual conversations for fun and stupid discourses both inside penitentiaries and churches. Having gotten that out of the way, the question the OP is most likely trying to figure out is where intellectual debate is pervasive i.e. a LARGER proportion of the student body and, for that matter, faculty engage in philosophical conversations for fun and not for grades or looking cool or to one day stand for President. It is an oversimplification to mention that you can get intellectuals everywhere and that college is what you make of it. Thats a non-answer answer and every kid knows that.

If a college has an overwhelming number of jocks or purely academic nerds or selfie-taking partiers, chances are the OP will have a harder time freely discussing whether declaring prostitution illegal is an infringement of individual rights or similar issues or whether Plato’s Republic is an increasingly flawed text - even if they did not take a class in philosophy. Also bear in mind that jocks typically do poke fun at such debate so being surrounded by them will not be conducive to having philosophical discussions.

Colleges that have a mix of all kinds of people (typically the huge UCs, UF, UMich etc but probably not BYU) do not have any particular philosophically polarizing identity and you typically get an opportunity to interact with multiple types of people. There is, however, an identity that defines literally every small LAC - from the conservative CMC to the ultra-liberal Reed. How many know that Swarthmore for example took a stand against McCarthyism and hosted the Head of the UC Communist Party for a lecture in the 50s during the height of the witch hunts? Or that Steve Jobs had applied only to Reed College because of what it stood for and he refused to go to any other college?

There are absolutely colleges that attract one type of kids be it the philosophers, the jocks, the academics, the cruise-on-papa’s-dimers, the partiers or the deep thinkers. Kids also like to be with other who are they can relate to more easily. There are certain schools our kids will fit better into culturally. That needs to be kept in mind. Your reserved deep thinker’s decision to attend a boisterous sports focused university (for example Alabama) might open him or her up to other things or make them miserable.

** Too much time today waiting for superbowl **

62

But see, what I’m claiming is that it is actually not an oversimplification to give that as an answer. It may be that “every kid knows” something, but that doesn’t make it true, after all.

I’ll note that I have said that the physical infrastructure of any given college may—I’m not certain, but I suspect it—have an effect, by making contact between students easier and/or more frequent. But the sentence I opened this response with? That’s the big divide that’s developed in this thread—some are claiming that there are material differences in the student bodies of different colleges that result in differences in what the OP was asking about, others (including me) are saying that the student bodies aren’t actually different enough for there to be a difference in that way.

(And I hear ya on the superbowl wait.)

63

The most intellectual conversations at my everyone-gets-in-regional-state-school? Elderhostelers. Elderhostel was a worldwide nonprofit where older people stayed on college campuses and took mini-classes. I was their dorm mom. (Man, try convincing a bunch of ladies in their 60s they can’t drink wine in the dorm lounge. Brutal.) Folks in their retirement who spent their travel budget on educational experiences were a lively and intelligent bunch, but more importantly had a MUCH DIFFERENT FRAME OF REFERENCE than 19-year-old me.

Maybe instead of just determining the colleges that like to have intellectual conversations for fun (and when I read that my own prejudice reads “pompous”), actively try to engage in wide variety of people substantially different than you. Go to a Muslim Student Union function if you are Christian. Go to a Polynesian Club meeting if you are white. Volunteer at homeless shelter, then take the time to listen to their stories. Go to a Young Republican debate if you are a Young Democrat. Take a class in a subject completely opposite of your major. Then, when you chance upon an intellectual conversation for fun, your conscious effort to interact with people outside your experiences will make you so much more interesting.

64

@dfbdfb i visited a number of colleges over the past 2 years with my daughter to help her choose her final list and have also exchanged thoughts with many parents, both here at CC and elsewhere. the point i was making is based on our experiences - we did get a distinctly different sense at many of the smaller colleges. there does seem to be a different vibe at Reed and a different one at CMC and a different one at UC Berkeley. You can see it in the way people dress for example or in what their extracurricular activities are at college.

@palm715 i agree with all you write - the most intellectually stimulating conversations are when you are out in an unknown environment. However, the OP seems to be asking for a list of colleges where his/her interactions with peers WITHIN the confines of the college will have the most intellectual and philosophical debates peppered in.

There are also some colleges that encourage such discussions and debates through their own curriculum. I will focus only on Reed to illustrate my point. Reed has a weeklong schedule of courses that students select to teach their peers (http://www.reed.edu/paideia/). They also have a core 2 semester class - Hum 101 modeled on the ancient greek blend of philosophy, literature, and many other disciplines. Their teaching and grading methodology is also structured around the greek discussion format. I have not come across this in researching most other colleges. If you meet kids at Reed, they are dramatically different from those at USC for example. These things also contribute toward making some student bodies more philosophical and intellectual. Coupled with a greater academic workload than at most colleges, this is perhaps the reason why Reed is an incredible dichotomy with a historically and currently astonishingly high rate to PhD coupled with a high dropout rate.

65

This is an interesting question. Why wouldn’t you expect to find this at every US college? Most people can’t afford to send their kids away to school – they send them to their local state school or a community college. Why would you assume that the children of those families aren’t interested in intellectual debate? Are they less intelligent than the students whose families can afford to send them away to college? Are philosophy and politics only of interest to middle and upper income families?

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@austinmshauri no the kids at such schools are absolutely individually interested in philosophical debates etc but have neither the parental nor faculty interactions and certainly lesser exposure to alternate thoughts to supplement their curiosities. they are no less intelligent. they simply do not have access to the same avenues that one would get at the bastions of academia.

there is a reason the greater institutions of learning have never lost the mantle of intellectual thought. and that is because over the decades they have maintained critical mass in terms of stable and growing academic thought. most state schools (well with the exception of places like Berkeley, Mich, UVA etc etc) and absolutely all community colleges are not expected or structured to be anything more than factories of traditional academic curriculum. in particular, community colleges are not designed to impart a way of thinking to kids. 2 years is too short a time to do anything except churn out generically educated kids - some of whom are going to stop at just that.

67

Why would a community college be inherently unable to offer equivalent (in terms of intellectual development as well as content) course work to the frosh/soph level courses at a four year school to students who are preparing to transfer to a four year school?

Why wouldn’t a student who starts at a community college be able to develop his/her intellectual thinking? Example:
http://news.berkeley.edu/2011/05/10/medalist2011/
http://sociology.fas.harvard.edu/people/aaron-benavidez

68

Yeah, I mean, how ridiculous would it be for a community college to do something crazy, like, you know, even imagine that any of its students might be intelligent or anything?

http://cms.montgomerycollege.edu/honors/ ←(Fortunately, some do.)

69

This is starting to remind me of trophies for participation… of course everyone’s special snowflake is an intellectual, and their schools are full of them as well. Not. No one says there aren’t SOME everyplace. But concentrated groups do exist, and more at some colleges than others. Why is this so difficult for some people to accept?

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Exactly, @intparent the question is about where intellectual discourse is pervasive, not the (also valid) question about how to find it in places where it exists but is not pervasive. If you’ve attended (or visited) more than one school in your life, you’ll know that these are very different questions. And CC wouldn’t even exist if there were not such differences between schools. What would there be to talk about?

71

That’s an interesting perspective. The parents of students who attend community colleges and state schools don’t engage in philisophical debates? How would the children develop an interest in it without solid parental examples? Did all of them come from exemplary school districts whose teachers inspired them to pursue deeper intellectual pursuits? Why aren’t the professors at those colleges capable of inspiring and leading intellectual debate? They aren’t all state school grads. And why can’t the students who are interested in broadening their perspectives read up on various schools of thought? Don’t these unfortunate children have access to the internet or a library?

Have you ever attended a community college or a state school? If not, how would you know whether or not they’re capable of teaching students to critically evaluate information?

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Do you believe people are inherently stupid? If that’s the case, it seems a wonder that our ancestors ever made it out of the caves. The ability to think and question the meaning of our existence makes humans intellectual beings. Intellectuals are people who are pursuing knowledge, aren’t they? How is it, then, that people who are striving to learn can be divided into “intellectual” and not “intellectual”? By definition, people engaged in critical thinking are engaged in intellectual pursuits, which makes them “intellectual”.

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I do not know about most other families, but our children have been raised to discuss issues and consider why they hold the views that they do. We have challenged them to defend their positions bc we believe simply stating a something is a valid position does not make it one. Shocking, considering my husband and I are both state university grads. Just how did we ourselves develop the ability to even contemplate issues well enough to have a POV when we didn’t attend a school imparting “a way of thinking.”

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Absolutely all community colleges? We can just stop reading there.

That said, I don’t disagree that there are colleges where there the kind of discussions outside of class are more common/easier to find than others.

My older son went to the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon. His friends never talk current events, or philosophy, but if you want to talk about video games (both strategy and the nuts and bolts of how they are constructed both technically and psychologically you might be in luck.) They also like board games, fantasy and sci fi, and graphic novels.

Younger son complained that there were very few video gamers outside the engineering school at Tufts. But if you wanted to talk current events, that was commonplace.

As an architect I think dorms with nice lounges built in and the residential college system really help this sort of discourse. As does having enough dorm space and nice enough dorm space that students stay on campus all four years.

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@austinmshauri , there are many good students who don’t sit around having intellectual conversations in their spare time. Many from our school who went on to our fine state Universities. They studied, they got good grades, and they liked to talk about boyfriends, celebrities, fashion, tv shows. At her highly selective college, my daughter had the opportunity to eat dinner with her classmates from a small class she was in, but she stopped attending because all they wanted to talk about was drinking and sports.

76

@austinmshauri Yes, my daughter did decide to supplement her high school education with some courses at the local community colleges in 2 cities (she moved after 9th grade). my impressions are based on her interactions with students and professors at the CC. she mentioned that her CC seemed more like a transitory airport terminal than a place to be at (and she could compare because she spent a week at UCSD with her cousin last year). To her it seemed as though everyone including the professors at CC, got up and left in a hurry after classes. how do you expect people to open up and engage in intellectual debates if no one seems to connect with you. 2 year non-residential community colleges are meant to be launchpads not ends unto themselves like residential 4 year colleges are.

@mathmom you are correct, the residential dorm system gives kids both the time and forum to engage in debates on political, philosophical and ethical issues. after community college classes, you drive home. there is minimal interaction with peers compared to that at a dorm. community colleges are not meant to be a comparable experience to full residential colleges. you will neither make the lifelong friends that you would at a full residential 4 year college nor will you open up to your peers. that is why i clearly stated so.

@Mom2aphysicsgeek once again we are discussing colleges where intellectual debates are MORE common, not saying that you cant get such elsewhere. sure there are intellectuals who come from community colleges and for sure at standard state and private colleges but those are exceptions and less common. the entire point i am making is that there are some colleges whose character is MORE conducive to intellectual engagements.

@ucbalumnus i am not sure how your example disputes my claim that there are some colleges that provide a more intellectual environment. also aaron benavidez did well academically and then transferred… to a spectacular 4 year institution, which WAS his end goal. you cant get a PhD at a community college and thats why it is just a prep institution or a stepping stone otherwise no one would transfer over. i also would state that all high schools are by definition not intellectual environments. their role is only to prepare you for college. the fact that you might get some intellectually stimulating conversation between high school seniors does not make all high schools intellectual.

@dfbdfb Having an honors program is about encouraging academic excellence and it is always nice to see that. the topic for this discussion is environment for intellectual debate. incredible academics does not necessarily correlate with philosophical debates.

@intparent agreed and i am confused why no one is understanding my point. this is not about academic excellence or even your own ability to engage in deep thought. this is about finding the forums where such activities are MORE common.

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Regarding Princeton, Ralph Nader has discussed a type of flawed intellectualism that he sometimes found there as a student:

“One day in the spring . . . I noticed noticed there were dead birds on the pavement between the campus buildings . . . a few days later I saw more such birds . . . I noticed that during the day groundskeepers would be spraying with huge hoses those [surrounding] trees. It turns out it was DDT. At that time . . . no one thought DDT was dangerous to anybody but insects. Well it turned out it was dangerous right there to birds. I went down to the Princetonian, the college paper, and tried to persuade them to do a story . . . and they said, “Naw, there’s nothing wrong. We have some of the best science professors in the world . . . if they had any idea it was harmful, it would be stopped” . . . But that taught me a very important lesson. One, that newspaper people can get very jaded . . . Second, that you might know something, like an expert chemistry professor, but if you are not interested in a problem, or if you have a dual allegiance, like perhaps you might be a consultant to one of the companies that produces the pesticide, you are not going to apply what you know . . .”

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Your claim in reply #65 was:

When you claim “absolutely all”, then any counterexample disproves your claim.

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@ucbalumnus again, your example is nice to read about but is only about the academic excellence of 1 individual from 1 CC. i have never said that intellectuals do not exist everywhere. my focus is on the colleges that host such individuals. your example says nothing of the intellectual environment at the CC he graduated from and whether they have similar debates there as in say a Swarthmore dorm. academic achievements of a handful of exceptional individuals do not qualify the CCs they graduated from as having provided great environments for philosophical discussions.

you are missing the point. we are not judging individuals, we are judging college environments.

80

@austinmshauri, no, of course I don’t think most students are stupid. But let me give you an example. When D2 was a sophomore in HS, we went to visit an academically respected school renowned for producing pre-med students (I am sure most regular posters know what school this is). Through a family member we had a contact who is a long time bio prof there, and she agreed to meet with us. At the time, D had an interest in bio research. This prof practically wriggled with joy to meet a student who didn’t want to just tick off the boxes of required classes, get as many As as possible, and head off to med school. She said so… and in the end, not so subtly suggested that Ds interest in learning for the sake of learning would be out of step with most students at that school.

D also attended Davidson THINK for a couple of summers, a very intense two college course program. She took classes like a Philosphy of Science college course – and when she came back, she said she didn’t care about much in a college except being with the smartest students she could find and a place where ideas & academics are foremost. She really just wanted to replicate that experience in college, where there was an intensity of mixing academic ideas, and where everyone else cared about that as much as she did.

This is a kid with zero interest in makeup, celebrities, playing or watching sports (she does fence), large parties, etc. She gets excited about participating in History Bowl, is an expert in Quiz Bowl at literature & opera & art (her choice of subjects), and is a physics major. Was sorely disappointed the 1st month of high school when she figured out that they were still going to study “stuff that is already known”. (did she expect to do grad level research on 9th grade? Not sure…). But she is not a grade grubber – she does her work and does fine, but wants time for her own academic interests (just carefully moved her huge insect collection cross country on the car seat next to me – could she have spent those hours getting better grades in HS or going to sporting events or parties? Sure, but she would rather study butterfly wings. Or spend time on a teen philosophy online forum she was asked to moderate while in middle school. Or paint or draw.)

So when college time came, we did a lot of visiting. And she could tell in a day on campus whether that intellectual bent was dominant on campus or not. Sitting in on classes, eating in the caf (kids at UChicago discussing math theorems over lunch – she was thrilled!), listening to guides and info session. But honestly class discussion was her key indicator – sometimes when there was time, she would go to two classes. I would check out campus open spaces and eavesdrop a bit around places like the coffee shop while she was in class, too.

Did that mean there were no students like her at schools that don’t ooze that vibe? Of course not. But there is a difference. It honestly isn’t something most students are looking for. So not surprising that some parents consider it unimportant or literally don’t notice it, or think it is okay if the pool of students like that is small. That is perfectly fine if your kid doesn’t care. But my kid does, and the difference in schools is real.