The gist of the article is an assertion that the present Carnegie classifications are needlessly hierarchical and encourage prestige-chasing as “lower” classified universities seek to leap-frog ever closer to the cherished “R-1” classification widely regarded as the pinnacle of higher education.
First of all, is this an accurate description of the present situation? And, secondly, does slicing and dicing colleges into ever smaller categories really solve it?
I love the rhetorical question posed near the end of the piece, wherein the author asks why Fordham and Wake Forest should occupy the same Carnegie category “despite their obvious differences?”
Obvious to whom? IOW, is this a solution in search of a problem?
Assuming I understood all of that, here are my thoughts:
The college pecking order revolves around prestige, which revolves entirely around media exposure. Media revolves around exposure and awareness. Notice that educational quality is nowhere to be found in that formula. US News rankings are just that…pet schools that people know about. Schools love to be selective, because it gives them a sense of prestige. That’s like GM saying they make the best trucks because they only sell to the most experienced drivers. It’s completely backwards. It really misses the point of why the school exists in the first place…to give education opportunity. In fact, teaching quality at these elitist schools leave much to be desired, for the money being paid.
Elitism is actually an obsolete business model that stagnates schools. As population increases and the economy becomes more complex, elitist colleges just allow their schools to remain the same size and let enrollment be more competitive. This gives the false impression that the school is better than it actually is, when in reality, the school is getting research grant money for doing literally nothing, except brand advertising. In fact, they’re exploiting students to inflate an undeserving reputation.
In contrast, UTSA, a sister school to UT-Austin decided to do the exact opposite. As the big flagship limited their enrollment, UTSA increased their capacity and innovated employable degree options based on local needs. The result was UTSA tripled in size in less than 10 years.
You know my bias. Having attended two R-1 schools, one for undergrad, and one for professional school, and having a son who attended a Masters University, I’ve always wondered why, for undergrads at least, R-1s get all the shine. I turned out OK, and had a very good career, but my son’s undergraduate education was much better than mine.
Does the Carnegie categorization make sense? I would say only “sort of”. MIT is not Reed. But MIT is also not Harvard. And Harvard is not Yale, but it is more Yale than MIT.
Is a R1’s primary focus undergraduate education? No. The closest you could say is that an R1 is not a teaching institution, but it is a learning institution.
Are R1’s “better” than other colleges? Of course not. I might go out on a limb and say for most people, they are not. I did well at one. I think I did better than I would at, say, a Reed. But I am not the same as everybody else - in the worlds of Fred Rogers, we’re all special.
Do people have goofy views on the value of prestige?
Faculty at universities and colleges do two things: 1. teach, and 2. perform research. (Ok, three things - they also chase grants. Wait, is chasing grants just part of research? But I digress.) Often - though not always - schools that focus too much on research, give undergrads the short-shrift. Many professors want to concentrate on research, and do not want to be in a class teaching a lower level class to undergrads, and it shows. Of course, there are professors who are good at both teaching and research, but their career advancement is driven by the research.
For the vast majority of undergrads, the focus should be on the quality of the instruction, not the research when selecting a university. This is why I have come to believe that “less prestigious” schools that focus on teaching provide a better education than better known research universities. My son, J, just applied to MechE programs at seven schools, ranging from large, top 10 research universities (UofM and Purdue) to a tiny school that does not offer PhDs (RHIT). By every objective measure of quality instruction - class sizes, access to professors, credentials of instructors, etc. - he will receive a better education at Rose-Hulman. And RHIT’s outcomes as measured by salary by major and grad admissions are comparable to UofM’s. Of course, there are trade-offs for the better quality instruction, including prestige/name recognition, alumni network, and research opportunities as an upper classman. If he were not trying to stay relatively close to home I would have recommended that he apply to schools like Olin, WPI and Cal Poly (we’ve been reading your posts eyemgh).
Between my eldest child, my wife and myself, we have all these covered, both undergrad and grad. Major difference between Y and H in our experience is from the undergrad perspective where Y feels like a college that happens to have a full graduate research university attached and H feels like a graduate research university that happens to have an undergrad college. MIT felt kind of like it’s own world where the grad was kind of a seamless add on to the undergrad in your major, but felt very remote outside your major.
From the grad perspective (PhD at least, can’t speak to masters or professional schools), where everything is much more focused on your field, there wasn’t much difference.
