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<p>Please read gadad’s post, then name the half-priced equivalent.
I don’t think it exists. Nowhere else with the hothouse environment he describes, certainly not in a less selective public university at half the price.</p>
<p>Now, is that high-rolling hothouse “culture of accomplishment” really the ideal college learning environment? I think it is one very interesting, exciting model that has turned out top leaders in many fields. Suppose, though, that instead of offering the kind of environment where you can invite the Dalai Lama in for lunch at school expense, or pull strings through your adviser to land an internship at Goldman Sachs, you instead keep it simple and focus on the academic mission essentials of a liberal education: big ideas, great teachers, small classes, challenging questions. That’s another effective way to run a good college. I suspect quite a few non-Ivies do that at least as well as Harvard.</p>