Are colleges primarily academic institutions or social gathering places? Aren’t colleges too expensive to be the latter?
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Do you want to drive over a bridge designed by someone who has been exposed to different cultures, viewpoints, skillsets, or by someone who did well in a rigorous civil engineering program, regardless of where he or she vacations?
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I’m going to assume that one’s first job out of college is not major infrastructure design, and that if you are a civil engineer designing a bridge, you have been hired by a firm that has built bridges in the past and that you have demonstrated competence. I don’t really think that excelling in any field is directly tied to the name brand or not name brand college you attended.
Getting an interview is probably easier for entry level positions if your degree is from a certain school. But after that, your progression is tied to your performance.
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When I sorted this data table by % of HS student graduates who did not complete FAFSA, Alaska was the highest. So the number of Pell recipients would be affected at least somewhat by that. How much I don’t know.
But % of Pell recipients does not give the whole picture of “expected” graduation rate. That’s only one of the factors Washington Monthly used to calculate their super low predicted number for Fairbanks. There is only 1 school (out of 442) with a lower number in that category.
The Wash monthly data sheet (linked by Austen above) has a few columns dedicated to Pell stuff. They have a Pell performance ranking, and Fairbanks is one of the lowest. But there are other schools that are well-regarded on this forum that are lower. The graduation rate of Pell recipients is not a perfect proxy for how well a school is doing its job.
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Agreed, I didnt mean to imply that it was. I was just surprised at how low the percentage of Pell kids there were at Fairbanks. That is not pulling down their grad rate much.
We have apparently already determined that all public universities are “good” under some possible metric under the sun. Presumably all public K12 schools too under the same criteria.
No, not at all. All public universities, and flagships in particular, have a unique mission. The specifics of the individual school missions differ by state as well. They serve an essential function, and some of them do it better than others. I’m sure there are some pretty dismal public universities out there – ones where I wouldn’t want to send my kid. I don’t know the best way to measure how well they’re doing it. It seems to be complicated. Similar issues exist for K12.
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Meaning that those who did not meet some threshold of high school academic performance and financial status should be forever barred from attending college?
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Campbell, this is what you stated. Not a nuanced “large diverse schools have some advantages” which I agree with. Not “as long as academic standards are met or exceeded” which I agree with. Not “colleges serve a societal purpose when they strive for diversity as long as they don’t abandon their core mission to educate”- which I ALSO agree with.
You somehow made the assertion that going to a large diverse school (I’m assuming you mean the likes of U Alaska, Maine-- i.e. the low performing flagships which have been the subject of this thread, which are most assuredly NOT diverse, except that they enroll low income rural kids who underperform as a group) is “better than” going to a place like Michigan or UVA.
And what college has ONLY upper income students who vacation in the same places???
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Let’s look at some examples from ABET-accredited schools for civil engineering, those who will be building some bridges.
Bucknell: Has a median family income of $204,200 and an average income percentile of 85th. 20% of its students are from the top 1% and 47% from the top 5%. 17% of students came from the bottom 80%. According to College Navigator, it is 75% white, 7% Hispanic, 5% Asian, 4% black, 4% 2+ races, and 5% international. Its cost of attendance is $80,170.
University at Buffalo: Has a median family income of $99,400 and an average income percentile of 68th. Less than 1% of students come from the top 1% and 7.7% from the top 5%. 57% come from the bottom 80%. According to College Navigator, it is 46% white, 16% Asian, 8% black, 8% Hispanic, 3% 2+ races, 5% unknown race/ethnicity, and 13% international. Its cost of attendance is $31,266 for New York residents and $49,186 for out-of-state residents.
My guess is that the typical civil engineer grad from U. at Buffalo (which has been labeled a flagship by the governor, if not by all the residents of New York) would probably have better soft skills in terms of working with people from diverse backgrounds than the typical civil engineer grad from Bucknell. And I’d be A-OK driving across a bridge designed by a grad from an ABET-accredited school on a daily basis. I doubt the bridges I drive on currently were designed by grads from many renowned private schools.
Sources for income data and enrollment demographics & COA are linked.
I see the clarification from @Blossom above. We were writing at the same time.
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Maybe it is only one course that a student needs to take - a writing course for an International student, a math course for a student who had a 36 on the Reading section of the ACT (I have one of those! although she took the math class, for credit, at another school and got an A; her flagship wasn’t letting her slide on the requirement).
At all the schools I know, the remedial classes ARE labeled (we used to call them ‘99’ classes as they were not English 101 but English 99, and would not count toward graduation or even for the required 12 full time credits needed for financial aid qualification).
U of Wyoming has a 98% admit rate. The college knows the quality of the secondary schools in Wyoming and the surrounding states, and knows most students can handle the college courses. IMO, it has a pretty tough CORE requirement for all majors (they can differ by the college) and it might take a remedial course in math or English or Communications to get one particular student up to speed. The U of Wyoming is the ONLY university in the state, but there are a few branches and some community colleges. That is it, the only choice. And they are serving their population which includes some Native Americans, some minorities that may speak English as a second language, some Internationals, some who were home schooled (or distance learning) because their ranches are just too rural. Those students don’t get to skip the requirements, but they may need help getting to a ‘college’ level. They aren’t going to get to that level in their rural communities, but they can get there if remedial course are offered by the university. And maybe they are flourishing in other classes at a top level while they are taking the remedial class.
If Harvard or MIT doesn’t want to offer a remedial class, that’s up to them, but state universities, even flagships, have to serve their residents. A state that has many universities could shuffle those needing remedial help to other colleges, but then those at the flagship might miss out on some really great classmates who need help for a short time in one area.
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My guess is that these numbers would look very different if the comparison is made between civic engineering students at the two schools.
Harvard does offer Math Ma and Mb, a slow version of first semester calculus with precalculus embedded in it. Perhaps needed for some hooked admits…
Princeton doesn’t hide its precalculus class MAT 100.
How many civil engineers graduate from Bucknell every year vs. Buffalo? I don’t have time to compare class size right now…
Bucknell graduated 23 civil engineering grads in its most recent year while U. at Buffalo had 165. Buffalo had 5,162 students in its most recent graduating class while Bucknell had 881.
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In most places in the world, a school that knowingly enrolled most of its students well aware that they can not graduate would not continue to operate. Divide it into a cheaper community college and smaller university, offer extension courses-whatever. Higher ed has lots of talented advisors who could figure this out if they wanted, or if they even recognized there is a problem with how they currently operate. I am not convinced they do. Though it is likely a sizeable percentage of its students do.
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That might be a good idea, but isn’t that like a school district putting all its best students in one elementary school and then having all those needing remedial help in different schools? Put all the best teachers in the best school and have others teach in the lesser schools? Maybe have tiers so the best students go to school A, those with average learning go to school B, and those who have IEPs or 504 plans have to go to school C? First, that’s not legal under IDEA, and of course many of the brightest students also have IEPs, so they are missing out on school A. We have a top, top hs here where probably 90% of the students are hoping for top 50 schools, but the school still has SPED students (who live in that zone), still offers some tech courses like auto shop. It has 3,500 students, so bigger than a lot of colleges, but it can still serve all its students.
In the sparsely populated states, there isn’t a cc on every corner. Wyoming can’t open another university or 4 year college (its constitution doesn’t allow it.) There may not be a math teacher in Cody or Casper who can teach Calc 3, or a French teacher, or the best theater teacher. Montana has decided it is best to have two larger universities and concentrate its funding in those locations. It is more economical to have students travel to the schools than for the professors to travel the students. California can have UCLA and Cal and tons of other schools, but most states can’t do that. And I’m pretty sure Cal and UCLA have remedial courses. We know how hard it is to get into UCLA, but if they are teaching remedial courses, SOMEONE must need them, and those ‘someones’ were good enough to get into UCLA.
Not every place is NYC where one can just take the subway to another school.
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There are a wide range of students between “the best” and those needing remedial help.
And yes, many school districts have a separate school/class for gifted students.
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Yes, colleges usually sort by academic ability. A central purpose of community colleges is remedial education. Remedial education is expensive to provide, and may not be provided very well, at some 4 year universities. Not their core purpose, and involves a different set of educators.
I guess it depends on how you define them, but Montana has a number of satellite colleges across the state that function under the umbrella of either U of Montana or Montana State, and students transfer among these depending on their desire/needs, and they may end up with a certificate or associate degree along the way, or otherwise acquire useful skills short of a bachelors degree before they end up dropping out and going to work. In short, the graduation rate of a school like U of M doesn’t really tell the whole story of what is going on in the state. Likewise I assume for other schools such as Fairbanks, which seems to be being scapegoated here.
I agree though that what we think of as community colleges aren’t really feasible for states with sparse populations, so schools in the university system fill that role. which impacts graduation rates.
One fact worth considering is that those with some college experience typically have more options and earnings that those with no college experience.
Community colleges serve many purposes, including training people to directly enter the workforce, and providing an alternate path to four year degrees for reasons that go well beyond just “remedial” needs. Many of those in the California community college system will often be taking the same courses they would be at the state flagships.
As for costs and efficiencies, the community college model can be extraordinary inefficient and expensive in sparsely populated areas, which is why in some rural states the universities are often playing a dual educational role. That’s why it doesn’t really make much sense to condemn some of these universities based on a few cherry picked statistics.
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Dropping out is not a good outcome for most students, particularly poor ones. Loans and no degree are not a good combination.
Many states ( including Alaska) have directional universities where less prepared students are more likely to be admitted and the flagship gets the most achieving students. That appears to be the case in Alaska as well-the flagship Fairbanks outperforms the other colleges in the system.