Usually, this means an academically less selective college, often mostly serving a community with lots of lower income students who are working to barely afford college.
Both transferring away and leaving higher education altogether can be due to affordability issues.
Bragging rights! 
But seriously, we stretch the budget to pay for the school great in their major, which is also most likely to get them to the graduate school of choice.
Lots of things mentioned beautifully above, but probably the number one thing, that I don’t think I saw explicitly mentioned is outstanding peers. High-energy, engaged, sometimes super-expert at a variety of things, kind, challenging, talented, coming from all over the place with lots of backgrounds, mind-opening, witty and sociable, etc. Of course I was looking to pay for an excellent academic experience, which has many facets, but it seems to me that great course content, outstanding teaching, and credentialling etc can happen at a lot of places, so a major differentiator for me was what their peers would be like and how that would (or wouldn’t) stretch them and lead to much personal growth and special friendships.
Reading these replies, it is pretty clear that there isn’t much demand (at least among parents here on CC) for my ideal model, the pared-down European model. I guess I’m an oddball, but I really still like it! In particular the student apartments, where students of all local universities live and mingle, seem wonderful to me (I just imagine Boston with mingled student housing–cool!) But also the prices: tuition anywhere from free to $10,000 max. That would be life changing for so many kids.
I have family in Europe and many cousins both my age and the ages of my kids. So I do not romanticize the European model of higher ed. It works out great for some kids, terribly for others. I wasn’t smart enough to figure out if it was going to be a good thing or a bad thing for my own kids- and none of them seemed interested in exploring those options. Most of my family members lived at home, took public transportation to university, came home at the end of the day. So they didn’t have the student apartment experience… which of course adds to the price-tag since even cruddy apartments in some cities are super expensive…
We paid extra so each lad could get what they wanted from a college. The sky wasn’t the limit, they stuck to schools that were affordable with basic loans, but each still got their first choice.
1st - Wanted the school where the authors of, “When Helping Hurts…” worked. Got it, ended up majoring in business.
2nd - Wanted to be part of, “We’re not nerds, we’re intellectual badasses” - a handwritten sign he saw in a dorm on a tour. (Beat out, “If you’re not a sports fan now, you will be when you graduate” mantra emphasized on tours.)
3rd - Wanted Tropical Marine Bio - found a great place where he could roll out of his bunk and walk to the lab - and changed his major 3 weeks in, but still no regrets. He learned a lot and found his life’s calling from that school.
I’m glad we were able to give each lad their first choice (though cost limitations were in there at application time).
True. For at least half the Europeans (and almost all of the Latin American) students I know, this is the case. Here in the US (at least among upper-middle and upper class families) it is almost impossible to imagine a kid skipping the rite of passage that is the American residential college experience. It’s almost as if there is no other way to become an adult. But for much of the world this is not so. I am intrigued by this.
We have a daughter who attended an LAC and a son still at a public. There is no question that our daughter had a superior educational experience to her brother, who is at the most rigorous public U in our state.
A superior academic experience is worth paying more for, IF the kid wants that. (Academic experience includes classes, rigor, profs, etc…) I think my son at the public U didn’t realize he would care, but in fact, he really hasn’t enjoyed that many of his classes. So, IMO, the superior academic experience is a combination of small classes taught by professors who are interested in teaching undergrads, and where the fellow students are engaged and want to be there.
Good food is worth paying extra for. Especially if they will be on campus all four years. My D’s college is known for good food, and most students are in campus for four years.
Good career center/strong alumni network. Those things go together.
All these things are important for some kids and not for others. It seems clear that people have many different ideas of what’s worth paying more for. The answer to the original question really does depend on a student’s needs and a family’s budget.
While my son has no regrets about his university, and it is known for being rigorous, and we do think it’s a good school, I sometimes wish he had transferred to the private university where he was offered that option. I think he would have enjoyed learning there much more than where he is. But it wasn’t my choice to make and he is happy at his public.
But here’s what I don’t like about his school: it’s very rigorous but without any of the benefits of learning in smaller classes. He is a junior now, but not many of his classes have involved interesting class discussions, and not that many profs seem to care about engaging the students. His school is just hard without any of the the fun stuff that could have been part of his academic experience.
By the nature of the question in the original post, I’m aware that I am lucky I am able to answer it at all.
Edit: @fiftyfifty1 , I attended commuter college and am sometimes jealous of my kids. So I guess 4., a residential college experience is worth paying more for. They have both had a great time.
That’s really unfortunate! That hasn’t been my D’s experience at all at her public flagship.
Is it the class size that’s the biggest problem with DS’s school?
It’s not that all the classes are big. In fact, they get smaller as he works through his four years.
The professors are the problem. They are mostly interested in research and not teaching. Many of his classes are taught by grad students, primarily those classes for his major. This is a pretty universal problem at many public universities. He actually enjoys the classes he takes to fulfill Gen Ed requirements. That’s where he tends to get a better class experience. Maybe it’s his major, which is Econ.
His sister gave him a tip: she said go see every professor at the start of the year. Studies show that making that bit of effort to get to know the prof results in a grade boost. So now he does that. He visits the curmudgeons and the ones who really should retire, but won’t. Maybe he only visits once, but he at least makes that effort. Almost always, it’s the TA’s who make the difference. He spends quite a bit of time with TA’s.
This was a problem even back in the day at private research institutions. I had some horrifically bad professors at Cornell. Definitely not just a public problem.
My D has no grad students teaching courses for her major.
That resembles community colleges and universities that mostly cater to local commuter students. On these forums, outside of this thread, such colleges seem to be seen as less desirable by those who can afford anything else.
This was our list too. But DD’s list was:
She got all but #8 and decided later that’s okay. One HS classmate has become one of her best friends.
She would have liked to have a more exotic location, like a mountain view, but that didn’t mix with “easy to drive to”.
That seems unusual. Larger classes (which economics classes commonly are, due to the popularity of the major) in large universities are commonly taught by a faculty member and a TA (often several TAs).
Thanks for your perspective on this. I am still trying to figure out what I think about the whole American College Experience and how different it is from elsewhere. I’m still very torn. Our own kid ('22) will be staying here in the US and doing it, and I know there are benefits. It’s just that I still don’t feel sold on the idea. Maybe because I found my own experience tedious, to be frank. Living with a bunch on 18-22 yo who stayed up late drinking and pontificating and barfing on the floors for the custodian to clean up? Kids who couldn’t go to the dining hall except in a “herd”? Yuck. I was glad to get out of there and into medical school, which seemed more like real life to me. In med school I rented a crappy apartment near campus with a couple of other students, had a great time, and made lasting friends.
Interesting question, because I guess I never really thought to spell it out.
in general, we were looking for the best academic experience that fit our kids. Money was definitely a factor, but not the only factor. Technically, they could have probably gone a couple of blocks away to our local uni for free/minimal cost. But that school is very non-selective with limited majors. It would have been hard to find a job outside of our tiny area, and I want them to be able to go. I will say quality of dorms/food were not a factor for me. I think of it as a rite of passage - within reason of course. Completely unsanitary would be different.
Kid #1 - I really hoped he would find professors would could help him figure out exactly what he wanted to do. He knew it would be something with finance, econ, business (and math).
Kid #2 - His personality jives with large public universities, and fortunately we have several great in-state options. He was a kid who could do most anything, but really didn’t know what. He loved the sound of his major and course descriptions, but I also felt better about him having a large number of options.
For both - a good career center or professor connections that could help with employment.
I buy into the communal experience of the college idea. I stayed in a dorm when i was going to college, and now, I am in close touch with some 50-70 kids that i was in the dorm with, 35 years later. There is even talk of a subset of them buying retirement homes together. It is a close knit community. If it matters, it has also come to some professional benefit, but that is not even necessary. My kid that is currently in college has a strong cohort of friends in the dorm and the college that will be hard to replicate if he is commuting. The networking is immensely beneficial also.
Unfortunately, both of these are generally misrepresented, especially by “elite” universities.
The first is usually “gamed” by providing a slue of small niche classes to juniors and seniors, while the core classes are almost all very large. So, while 70% of the classes offered are smaller than 20 students, 80% of the classes that the students take are large lecture classes.
The second is gamed by A, dividing the faculty categories into “Full Time” and “Part Time”, with a substantial number of the full time being non-TT faculty on yearly contracts, and B, using the same trick as a above - having the tenured faculty all teach tiny niche classes or seminars, while the large core classes are being taught by non-TT, and often contingent faulty. So, again, 80% of the classes that are offered are taught by tenured/TT faculty, but the majority of classes that each student takes are taught by non-TT faculty.
So this is something that requires some deep digging at larger universities.
PS. What you are describing is a Liberal Arts College or a small very residential university. Was that your preference during colleges search?
Unless all classes are the same size, the average student will spend a higher percentage of the time in large classes than the percentage of classes that are large, simply because more students are in large classes. Example: there are 1000 students in 10 classes of 80 and 10 classes of 20. Half of the classes are large (80), and half of the classes are small (20), but 80% of the students are in the large classes.
Of course, there is gaming by having classes of exactly 19, 29, 39, and 49 (the largest possible within a given size bracket for class size metrics used in college rankings). So two sections of 19 and 29 students look better for college rankings than two sections each with 24.