I’d agree with the answer given by @ucbalumnus that Barrett is there to attract and retain top students who seek some level of selectivity/exclusivity/prestige. I don’t necessarily think that the elite privates need to expand enrollment, but I do think there is a legitimate line of inquiry about the tension between the tax breaks they get and the exclusivity they maintain and tout as success.
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This conveniently glosses over the Fortune 500 CEOs. 
AND, many of the NASA upper echelon do have fancy graduate pedigrees, just not fancy undergrad.
I have a simple view on this. If one does not act like a charitable nonprofit, one should not be treated as a charitable nonprofit. The endowment hoarding has gotten out of hand at many schools. I think admitting more students + investing in the infrastructure to provide that same quality of education, particularly if those students have greater financial need, could be a way to reconcile this to an extent.
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To some degree, yes, and to some degree, no.
Honors colleges like Barrett, Alabama, South Carolina, and Schreyer grab students that would be headed to Ivies, LACs, and even prestigious Public Ivies (Michigan, Berkeley, UCLA). They do this by:
- Giving full tuition rides
- Selling small class sizes
- Perks, like first registration and very nice dorms
- Research opportunities.
Dean Jacobs from Barrett came from Swarthmore, and he told us in a meeting he wanted to create “Swarthmore in the Desert”.
But a school like Barrett also attracts more first generation and lower income students than the Ivies. And Barrett has as many students as Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore combined.
There are certainly more applicants than there were a generation or two ago not because of the Common App as much as international applicants. Think about how many applicants there were from China Pre-Tiananmen Square and also India compared to now.
I have bought into the ASU philosophy of providing a quality college education to as many people that qualify as possible. I used to go for the “go to the best school you can get into”. It ended up saddling an entire generation of students in debt, and in the end, holds back the economy from spending and family starts. Not good in the long run for our economy.
There will come a time, in 15-20 years, when we will be begging people to settle here from Third World countries because of declining birth rates in order to keep our economy going. We just had the first declining birth rate census here in over 150 years. Educating people online and admitting more students into all schools, not just exclusive ones, will be one way to keep the gravy train going.
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There’s different levels of honors. Baja is like a third of the school. My son is in it. Yet to take a class. Most kids drop. But it’s good for scheduling so they wait til senior year to drop. u of SC is small, more leading/mentoring. It’s legit.
Some of them…AZ and Bama…are built around ‘country club’ type housing.
But yes they are selling a higher quality, more elite experience.
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Yes, I do think that they should try to increase their class sizes some, if at all possible. But I also think that flagship state U’s are on the right track with their honors colleges.
The myriad low-level, non-competitive schools catering to first gen to college whose parents are so thrilled with the idea that the child is going to college, that they are willing to go into debt to send the kid, these are the schools that need to close down. We do not need to duplicate the student experience at community college and state college, by sending them to small, financially unstable private colleges which lead to lots of student debt and no degree, or a useless one. Taxpayers wind up footing the bill because students default on their publicly funded debt.
More trade schools, more ancillary health degrees. We don’t need more students coming out with unmarketable degrees from expensive, no-name schools.
And the 2008 baby cliff? Foreign students will HAPPILY take those seats, at full pay.
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“There is a common misconception that endowments, including Harvard’s, can be accessed like bank accounts, used for anything at any time as long as funds are available,” reads the report. “In reality, Harvard’s flexibility in spending from the endowment is limited by the fact that it is designed to last forever, which is crucial for an institution intended to serve generations of students and pursue research on big questions—questions that cannot be answered in one lifetime.”
They actually spend about 4% a year. That is around the right amount if you want a perpetual fund.
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Or, if they want to stay viable, figure out a more efficient way to deliver their product at a lower cost. Knox College and Harvard shouldn’t be the same base price.
Knox and Harvard aren’t the same net price. The lower level schools heavily discount.
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Is anyone aware of recruiters / recruiting companies who specify that they “prefer” or that they will only interview honors students ? Or University Fellows (UAlabama) , Foundation Fellows (UGeorgia), or restrict resume collection & interviews to only those in the most elite honors college / honors program at certain undergraduate universities ?
Not for everyone, and some of that “discount” is in the form of loans. My point is that they shouldn’t be starting at a similar price. They offer a lot less (and I’m not even much of a Harvard fan).
Parents have claimed this to be the case at UGA, but I find it hard to believe that a heavily involved, 3.8, non-honors student wouldn’t get the nod over a disengaged, 2.8 honors student regardless of what’s been claimed.
I have heard the same about UGA.
I have not checked recently, but I believe that one must maintain a certain level of grades at UGA to remain in the honors program or to remain as a Foundation Fellow. (Foundation Fellows at the University of Georgia are screened thoroughly before being offered a Foundation Fellows status. These are extremely intelligent, highly motivated students.)
For almost everyone. At a college like Knox, something like 99% of the student body would get a scholarship/grant these days, give or take a few percentages. And by net price, I meant price after grants/scholarships.
These days, it seems like the only privates below the near-Ivy tier who can keep a decent percentage of their student body at full-pay are the ones in the Northeast or are popular with Internationals (schools at the BU tier).
Not heard of that, although a different but not completely different one is that of elitist employers recruiting only elite-admission majors at not-so-elite-admission colleges, while recruiting students of any major from elite-admission colleges.
UCB- evidence and/or examples?
Not sure what an elite-admission major is at a not so elite admission college- but there is a difference between a company sending a team to “recruit” at a college, vs. screening out students anywhere else.
This is a matter of ROI (which folks on CC claim to love). You’re not going to get the same “hit rate” at some colleges as you will at others; hence it doesn’t make sense to devote time, travel, etc. of a recruiting team at some places for face-to-face/dog and pony shows. That doesn’t mean the company wouldn’t be happy to interview and hire those grads.
Good example- Cal Tech. It’s small, and it has a large percentage of the undergrads going on to either grad school or directly into research oriented roles (JPL for example). So if you’re a bank in NY it’s hard to justify sending a team to Pasadena to interview. So- you aren’t “recruiting” there. But a math major at Cal Tech is going to get the same time and attention (all things being equal) as a math major from equally strong math schools if you are hiring for those skills. So no- company not recruiting at Cal Tech does not mean they won’t hire from Cal Tech… just a different mechanism.
I’d love to know which “elitist” employers you are referring to, and what an “elite-admission major” at a not-so elite- admission college is. The only college I can think of that possibly meets this description is Missouri M&T for any of the engineering disciplines- but that’s not accurate, recruiters love M&T, know it well, and understand that the admissions stats do not reflect the rigor and substance of the program.
The context is that the business major (“Haas”) is a competitive admission major that students apply to in their second year, and the economics major is less difficult to get into.
First of all, an anonymous post by a college junior is not evidence.
Second-you are extrapolating things from this post that are absolutely not in evidence-- and that may be quite Berkeley specific and not generalizable to the rest of academia. In MOST rigorous colleges, Econ is significantly preferred over “business” except at Wharton where it’s a wash. And at the tippy top firms (DE Shaw, Bridgewater) Physics or Math (with both applied and theoretical course content) trumps ANYTHING having to do with business.
But sure- listen to a college junior!!!
But even if this were true-- in what world is Berkeley not elite??? I thought you were referring to places like BYU (generally not thought of as elite, but has very strong programs in accounting and actuarial science). Those are the interesting examples- U of Maine with one of the top (if not the top) Paper Science program in the country… not the hair splitting of whether you should major in Econ or Business at Berkeley- which is already recognized as a top university around the world!
Because who would pay $240K for Knox? I think that’s a problem. If they want to survive, they need to cut their costs so that they don’t have to do the discounting song and dance.
Investment banking relies mostly on relationships and other personal skills. Hedge funds, on the other hand, rely more on logic and quantitative skills. They know they can teach a new hire about finance, but not about math or computer science.
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