Oh and @Chrchill - I’m really starting to wonder about you! Surely a Harvard/Columbia alum with Hasty Pudding Ties need not dive into this muck…
@Parapraxes I am sure there is a point to your narrative. l Perhaps you could express it in a pithy manner ?
All this can be achieved admirably at a lower cost state school. Let’s not get carried away and think that Chicago does this in some unique special way and state schools somehow cannot give that kind of intellectual experience to kids. in fact I would claim that any of the top 200 schools in the US can provide the above for a motivated kid. There is no need to spend 4x times on a private school like Chicago to achieve this.
Then in my personal opinion, you made a seriously bad financial decision, given that all of what you stated above could have been accomplished at a much lower cost at some fantastic state institutions.
In my eyes the reason to choose universities like HYPSM or any other private top 20 school at the huge expense of being a full pay student or parent is to get something beyond what you stated. It is to signal to others that you are among the smartest 1% to 2% of your student cohort (which is much harder if you go to a flagship state school, given the diversity of the student pool), to form valuable connections to future movers and shakers ( who may not attend state institutions) and hopefully have a very successful professional career. Not that this can’t be done by going to a flagship state school, but an elite private school will make it easier by opening doors nationally that a state school may not be able to open for you. So yes, when you spend $250K for a private school, “brand image” becomes very important in my eyes. It is the brand sizzle that you can’t buy at a state flagship. You can pretty much get everything else. So in reality you are paying the huge premium (again this only applies for full pay students and parents) for one thing above all else. The “future brand value” of your alma mater.
BTW, I think you completely misunderstood my Stanford comment about “focusing on undergraduate nuts and bolts” comment. I was not talking about “quality” of the undergraduate experience at Stanford or the intellectual rigor of a Stanford undergraduate degree in the 1950’s or even the 80’s at all. I meant that Stanford was sensible enough to realize early on that “undergraduate study” was lucrative enough to pay the bills and so focused on having a sizable and growing undergraduate population. If it had not done this, it would not have been able to sustain itself financially as it was slowly making its way to the top and the Hi-tech industry matured around Stanford. This strategy also helped tremendously with having an active alum network. It was simply a cash flow and alum network issue and Chicago missed that boat big time.
Also, I have read Dean Boyer’s excellent book and I think you will recognize that he makes exactly this argument in Chapter Five, when he states that Chicago made a huge blunder by under enrolling undergraduates for fifty important years. It was not quality but quantity that we needed in the undergrad population during those crucial years and Stanford and all the other schools were smart enough to realize that.
“It was simply a cash flow and alum network issue and Chicago missed that boat big time.”
Well, back when Stanford was trying to make it’s undergrads more intellectual, the U of C was having trouble merely filling up it’s (small) entering classes.
@Cue7 finally we agree on something …
The Harvard board is much cleaner @Chrchill - I assure you…
@Cue7 yes. But when you are dealing with top dog perfection, the envy of the universe then where is the challenge …
@Chrchill - the only question Harvard grads deal with is how to raise the subject of their alma mater tastefully:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/9/15/harvard-students-go-people/
Well, maybe that and making sure the Princeton grads are mixing enough martinis for everyone.
@Cue7 I am beginning to like you. BTW, the Penn guys make the drinks. Princeton does our lawns. But I think of UChicago as our younger and able hard working little brother …
I have noticed that this tasteful fake modesty about Harvard is actually more offensive and snobbish than simply matter of factly saying I went to Harvard. Hopefully, though, that is at least the third sentence of ones mouth …
Wouldn’t the Princeton guys make the drinks (what with the well stocked bars in the eating clubs) and the penn guys would be relegated to the keg outside? I thought the penn guys wouldn’t even be allowed in (they bring too much bro-hugging and talk of resume building to the party).
Princeton has very nice shrubs and manicured lawns …
That is true. Immaculate campus…
@Cue7 bottom line is this. Uchicago is clearly one the worlds top universities. It does have a glaring weak – medical sciences. But except for Harvard and probably Stanford, all major schools have a weakness. Moreover, the Uchicago brand for college is red hot. It is a real momentum school. But I agree with you that without substantially more green, it will hit a ceiling. Can we agree on the foregoing ?
Yes @Chrchill weakness in medicine and green is fair. Aren’t you concerned that, even running at full gear, Chicago can’t break higher than #14 on the university fundraising rankings? Stanford can match Chicago’s YEARLY fundraising total in THREE MONTHS.
Even worse, Northwestern has raised more than Chicago for the past few years… These are not good signs, and I don’t know how to get around chicagos money issues.
If Chicago had $20B in the bank (like Yale) I’d be much less concerned about the weaknesses…
@Cue7 I agree it is a serious concern. But they are all over this as much as they can. Moreover, Yale in fact is a great example that underscores how well UChicago has done with much less money. Yale has many glaring weaknesses and they are super rich. Latest fundraising efforts are very encouraging. Longer term, the college brand will also generate more from alums.
The bigger threat to these elite institutions in the longer run may be the radical disruptions that the global economy and technology will surely bring to the field of higher education.
It is not clear right now whether in 30-50 years “chasing educational credentialing” will increase the probability of success as it has in the last 150 years. Radical disruption in higher education may dilute an elite institutions’ brand power and make its “endowment power” irrelevant. New models to getting educated may emerge that may render a traditional “residential college” experience obsolete.
Most of these institutions are extremely slow movers and laggards when it comes to adopting radical approaches, so not sure how well they will cope with an insurgent competitor if one comes along.
Not since Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho shared the Nobel Peace Prize have we seen such a rapprochement of bitter foes! But, er, we know how that one worked out.
Flip sides of the same counterfeit coin.