This opinion from a professor who has taught at several colleges suggests, to the extent that you are asking about atmosphere, that the distinction pertains to the contrast between preprofessional inclinations and intellectual inclinations during a student’s college years:
However, graduates from a variety of undergraduate institutions can converge on similar professions.
Meet the New Faculty: Jason Cieply, Russian Studies - News - Hamilton College .
Many Jesuit schools have pre-professional schools (ex. business, nursing etc.) yet they have a very large core curriculum.
That’s actually one of my bullet point questions in the OP. I think it is fabulous if a student dreams of being a doctor from an early age and then goes through all the amazingly difficult steps to actually become one a decade or more later. You can insert any “profession” into this paragraph, and the basic issue is still the same.
The question I have is how easy is it to change your goals if you found out you didn’t much like it. I’ve said this before on CC, but I think one of the best things about US higher ed, with all its problems, is giving students the latitude to find themselves and find what they want to do while in college. This is in contrast with, for example, the UK institutions, where I guess you’re kind of stuck if you change your mind.
I personally favor the intellectual inclination route over the professional route, but perhaps I am naive. As others have pointed out, the cost and commitment are so great for some of these schools, that perhaps planning it early on IS the way to go. However, I worry that it may box our kids in.
While there is no single differentiator, i think of pre-professional as learning for the sake of a job or utility whereas others are about intellectual pursuit and learning for its own sake.
This isn’t to say that kids at LACs who are deep into Russian lit might not be wall street bound, but that students in general are more interested in making their minds a more interesting place to be.
Most, if not all of the top schools, tend to be quite pre-professional (eg lots of folks want to do IB/consulting/medicine/law). This most likely reflects the fact that they select students whom they believe are the most likely to be successful. Our society defines success often as money and power. Moreover, parents want an ROI on the expensive tuition… So, it’s not surprising…
Look, you could be in it for the ideas for sure, but also need to be practical as well. You need to earn a living and get a return on the tuition! Otherwise, this is why we have the student debt crisis?
@observer33 , i think there are kids who want those kinds of jobs at schools that don’t have a pre-professional vibe and who are interested in creative writing and history, etc… iow, less about where they are headed than the focus of their 4 years.
Yes, but in order to be successful, you need to be strategic and deliberate in assembling your vitae. In my experience, folks who leave this for the last minute, tend not to get the big opportunities…
This book was probably written by a tenured academic who does not need to worry about employment or the real world IMHO…
I guess it depends on how success is defined. Certainly, as you say, it’s money and power for many.
But to me, my greatest successes have come from loving what I do (I’m a lawyer). I am a big believer that everything follows if you are doing what you love. And yes, I have indeed already called myself naive in this thread! 
I am just concerned about what I read on CC about it getting tough to switch majors at US schools. I would just hate for kids to get stuck. I do hope the US continues in offering that basic flexibility to change if you find you don’t like what you’re studying. That to me is the essence of “university”.
You want a school to be pre-professional and to have the kind of expert advising, support staff, and alumni network who can help with launching careers… In fact, I would be very worried if a school only focused on the ideas and not the practicalities, which I think would probably be more the case of LACs rather than the leading research institutions.
Maybe (in thinking this through), at the less pre-professional schools, intellectual pursuits are valued and kids may spend time in intellectual discussion. That doesn’t mean though that they aren’t preparing for life after school, but that life after school isn’t the sole driver of academic interest or pursuit. They might go hear each other at a liberal arts symposium, for example, even if they hope to be an IB.
Getting a job and developing intellectual interests are not mutually exclusive.
One of the reasons I think we have the student debt crisis is that many schools do not focus enough on the practicalities, and as a result, their graduates end up without jobs, income, or assets to service their crushing debt… Very unfortunate situations…
But why does it have to be “either or”. Why can’t we be both intellectual and pre-professional?
Just seems people are drawing distinctions without differences here…
Yes!! And i think the schools that are less pre-professional are in fact both.
It is interesting to think of the term “pre-professional” versus “vocational.” The latter seems to be used for community college associate’s and certificate programs, while “pre-professional” seems to be used for pre-med and, more likely, business/accounting, nursing, PT and other health careers, and education. Not sure what people even mean when they use the term “pre-law.”
Remember that a student can major in anything and go to med school (with pre-requ’s covered), and not that many schools have a formal pre-med program.
I think any major geared to a specific career outcome could be termed “pre-professional.” So this could also include music and the arts, but the term isn’t often used for those.
Basically, more colleges and universities have a pre-professional vibe in this day and age of high cost and burdensome loans. This may mean, simply, a student at Harvard, for instance, is more focused on grades than learning, with an eye toward a job on Wall Street.
Small liberal arts colleges have a history of being more about “the life of the mind,” but students at those schools may share the same financial anxieties. It is still true, however, that a liberal arts major who has explored intellectual interests without exclusive focus on future jobs, can still access well-paying careers after graduating. This idea is losing ground unfortunately.
In the Brown versus UPenn comparison, it may be as much about Brown as Penn. Since Brown lets you take classes you are interested in in the place of gen eds, it might attract more of the students who want the “life of the mind,” who knows. But in reality Brown students take the same number of courses in their major as any other school including Penn: they just don’t have to do gen eds. And Brown actually does have a pre-med option.
ps A" vocational" program like radiology tech may result in a higher salary than some of the preprofessional degrees, so what are these terms really about. Not money.
IMHO it’s a distinction without a difference…
I worry about people making the assumption: “everything follows if you are doing what you love”. Commencement speakers often say platitudes like that, but that’s because they are already rich! I bet many of the the graduates seeking debt forgiveness probably thought that… Most people need to be strategic and practical in how they approach life… Just my 2 cents…