Okay, the faculty member isn’t the presence in the class. The TAs do more than the faulty members, for sure.
Thanks for commenting on your experience. I am growing increasingly convinced that my aversion to the residential college experience was “just me.” I had a great time in high school and have a large and cherished social set from those years (including for networking.) Again same for medical school. But I would not repeat my undergrad years at the residential college. I did not like the dorms, living surrounded by 18-22 yo’s round the clock. It felt like summer camp to me. Maybe for me familiarity breeds contempt.
I hated HS and found dorm life such an incredible experience! Different strokes…
I do understand your point about the 18-22 year old bubble. I volunteered in the local community with the elderly, tutored and taught in a local school, and did various activities (non campus based) which got me a different social network/level of connection.
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Yes, I stayed sane by working off campus at the local public high school. A real relief.
For my D19 it broke down like this.
I did not want a commuter school for her. I wanted her to have a full experience of being on her own and I didn’t want half the campus leaving on Fridays.
I wanted a school big enough to have multiple majors that were respected in case of a pivot.
I wanted a school that had a reputation that was good enough for her to get into grad school or get her foot in the door for a job.
We weren’t going to pay for special food or a special dorm situation. (Almost all schools we visited had better food than we did in college so we felt she could deal with it.)
We weren’t going to pay extra for Top20 school. Definitely not the 2x the cost they would have been compared to her current school.
Cost was a huge factor in the decision. She had cheaper offers and more expensive offers. I felt like she got the overall best value.
Part of the value calculation was getting plenty of AP credits allowing for double major and a minor in 4 years. As well as the Honors program giving additional money for a study abroad summer which will finally happen this Summer. Also since she is STEM the ability to do meaningful research, which she did and will be listed on two published papers by graduation.
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I worked with 7th graders. I would hardly say it kept me sane (you know 7th graders) but it did keep me from thinking that the entire world revolves around 18-22 year olds!
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For us, the top three reasons for picking a college are academics, academics, and academics. Does it have the courses he would likely take in the next four years and perhaps taught by professors who could offer some special insight in the subject? Does it have the right academic environment that encourages students to collaborate with and challenge each other? Does it provide meaningful research opportunities to undergraduates, including freshmen, in areas of his interest?
Because that is how it is set up. The reason that these classes are so large is not because these subjects require classes of 500 for optimal teaching. It is because the required courses are generally taught by a small number of faculty.
The entire teaching system is set up so that the required classes are very large. The number of classes that are offered in each topic is directly correlated to the number of faculty that the university hires in these fields, and to what classes the university can require faculty to teach.
There are generally very few faculty who can be assigned to teaching the basic classes, either for political reasons (internal politics), because highly productive faculty are not required to teach intro courses, and faculty who are not highly productive do not remain, or because these courses are not in fields which bring in large amounts of grant money, and so the university is not hiring enough faculty to teach these courses.
That is why intro classes and other required classes are often so large, and why these are so often taught by non-TT faculty.
So this is not entirely true. It depends on the place. The custom at Princeton is to have freshman kids to be taught by senior faculty – e.g. the CS course for non majors is taught by Kernighan (is very old, and not doing any research anymore, but he is exceptionally well regarded in the field for his prior work, including developing Unix), the first course in economics is sometimes taught by Martin Feldstein from time to time etc. Some first year math courses are taught by Fefferman from time to time. The 400 level courses are occasionally taught by less experienced faculty because the audience is also advanced, and even if the discussion is more technical than it needs to be, its ok. There is no room to make those kinds of staffing mistakes for large freshman classes. Interestingly, when my son was taking the main Algorithms course in freshman fall, the class was taught by a well liked and very seasoned teaching faculty (tenured), and one of the precepts was taught by Tarjan – a Turing medal winner, which I thought was bizarre, in a positive way.
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Well, I went to a big flagship but was in the honors program and was already in advanced coursework for my major and minor when I started. But I think I only had three classes that had more than 50 people at my home university (not including my time at European universities). Most of my classes had fewer than 20, and only a handful were between 20 and 30. Except for my education coursework, an honors introduction to computer science, and a Spanish composition course, all my classes were taught by tenure-track faculty or emeritus (post-tt) faculty.
The college search for my kiddo hasn’t started yet (and won’t for awhile), but my list above is what I value and would be willing to pay extra for. It’s also the type of environment where I think my kid could thrive. I love the idea of liberal arts colleges, but some of his fields of interest might make that an impossibility. Time will tell.
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I’m sure this isn’t universal, but my observation is that faculty in more theoretical fields tend to like to teach foundational intro classes as well as in their specialties, than faculty in more applied or experimental fields.
For those who did not click on the link within @ChoatieMom’s post, she has kindly allowed me to paste the text of the linked message here.
I’ve posted on the topic of the ROI on education many times over the years always from the perspective of following your dream.
We raised our son to understand that his education is all about the life of his mind; the life of his wallet will take care of itself and is a by-product of how he cultivates his thoughts. Marketable skills and money are not the goals of education. We’ve always been more concerned about the quality of the tape that plays in his head than any marketable skills. College is about gaining the mental enrichment to inform whatever you choose to do for a living. If you love to do something, you will make a go of it – even if you have to live in a box under the freeway for a while. That’s what we always told our son, anyway. He grew up knowing that his undergraduate education would be our last financial gift to him, and he could do whatever he wanted with it, absolutely no strings. We would not support him financially in his adulthood because we have our own lives to live and provide for. He’s always known that and has looked forward to making his own way in the world, whatever that eventually looks like for him; money/employability was never the driver, never the goal.
Given his interests in high school, we thought he’d end up living in an old car traveling around with a camera on his shoulder enjoying seeing life through a lens, and that’s all that mattered. Instead, he astounded us in his junior year saying that he felt he needed to serve his country before venturing out on his own. His prep school talked a lot about service and told its students they better not dare consume a quarter of a million dollars of this world’s goods without considering the weight of that consumption. He took that very seriously and will all of his life. Though we never struggled with him being a starving cinematographer, we struggled mightily with him joining the military. The irony! We and his school taught him service above self but never considered that he would choose the “wrong” kind of service. The fates are laughing at us, I’m sure. But, I’m also sure he didn’t choose his current path for money.
I’ve never understood the argument that you have to be rich to pursue education for education’s sake, and I’ve never understood expecting some form of financial ROI on college. To be well educated is an end in itself, a great gift to oneself and those you share it with. What does money have to do with it? I always figured I could cut hair or learn some other trade to avoid starvation, but I never equated my education or that of our son’s with what I’d/he’d be able to earn. Education is about the ability to live happily and fully, curiously engaged in one’s head. For me, the by-product of that internal engagement has always been sufficient to translate into something useful enough to keep me off the streets. I grew up extremely poor, went to beauty school out of high school, and ended up in college by a twist of fate. What I learned there was the magic of books and stories and writing and history and engagement with people and faculty who helped me start to think differently and more deeply about the world around me. I left a very different, better person from the one who entered, and I treasure that mental epiphany and those magical years I almost missed more than anything. That transformation, not any particular job, is what education is to me and what we wanted for our son. He always understood that he could pursue whatever he wanted and he should pursue what he loved but that he was on his own to support himself with it, just like his parents did. If he never makes much money, so what? If he lives in a box under the freeway but does what he loves, what’s wrong with that? If his life is hard, why shouldn’t it be? I sure would hate to see him pursue something he doesn’t love just to make money. His education will keep him company while he finds his way with no financial help from us.
At some point, we’ve turned college into trade school and a financial proposition. I find that tragic, and I think that reduction misses the boat of life by miles. For any who are thinking that there has to be some minumum financial payback for the outrageous cost of the educational experience demanded by most here on CC, let me counter that the type of education I’m talking about can be had at hundreds of schools and at many price points, does not have to be completed in four years or out of state, and does not require a boarding experience. It costs, but it doesn’t have to impoverish. If you let go of any ROI notions, you come closer to my definition of what college is for – acquiring knowledge for the pure love and mental enrichment of it. I believe the rest will take care of itself. It’s the ROI cynicism that is turning our bastions of higher education into trade schools and our would-be scholars into money grubbers. And, for better or worse, our kids are excellent consumers of the messages they hear.
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I am just curious about this. Above, you seemed to think that the apartment buildings in Europe that were filled with university students but pulling from multiple universities, sounded very appealing. To me, that sounds similar to a dorm (or at least similar to dorms with suite-style living). Sounds like the European apartment buildings you described have similar 18-22 year old aged residents, etc. So just curious what aspect of that sounds good whereas living in a building in the US with 18-22 year olds sound bad. Is it because they attend multiple universities that makes it more appealing to you? Or that they have their own kitchens in the apartments, so there is no dining hall experience? Are you thinking the 18 year olds in Europe are more mature and less likely to over-drink and be annoying? Or something else?
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I think I paid for them to get out of my house and study something they like and basically help them mature a bit, ready to deal with the real world. True enough, they never came back home after college. I call it success. No failure to launch here, lol.
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Regarding @ChoatieMom 's post…
Increasing credentialism in the job market (where many employers want to see a BA/BS degree even for jobs that do not require the general or major-related skills indicated by a BA/BS degree), in addition to the increasing cost of college (even at less expensive in-state public schools), is a driver for the increasing pre-professional / financial ROI emphasis in college decisions.
Some parents feel that if the kid is not successful by the parents’ standards (which often includes financial success), they have failed as parents. For upper middle class parents, that can be even more stressful, since the space for upward mobility is small, while the space for downward mobility is large (even though moving downward financially from upper middle class can be a very comfortable living for many). In addition, some of the kids raised in upper middle class environments may have acquired relatively expensive habits, and realize that ordinary levels of income will not support such habits, so they self-impose a drive for financial ROI or elite employment and income.
Things are not necessarily the same in every European country - e.g., the UK is closer to the traditional U.S. “college” experience.
But in contrast, let’s take a country like Germany:
There is no such thing as “class of 20xx” because there is no “4 year college”!
Basically at any time in your life, as long as you fit the entry requirements, you can apply to a suitable University, pay some token registrations/administration fees, and start enrolling in their classes. Some students might be able to do this full-time, stick with it and manage to rush through to a single degree, some students might have part time jobs, or can’t handle an intensive class load, or “live happens”. Other students decide to add other degrees along the way. Many students may not go straight from “high school”, e.g., may attend university after having graduated from a “trade” school (which could be “Banking”, “Computer Science”, “Business”, and similar white-collar “trades” - it doesn’t have to involve hammers and saws).\
Also, you don’t work to be able to “afford” University (the fees are minimal), you work to LIVE while being able to take whatever few classes each week.
Bottom line, your fellow students in your various classes are likely of many age ranges and stages in life. Some are “kids”, others have been at it for 7 years already, some might have families.
Consequently, there is no such thing as “freshman dorms”. Most people will procure their own housing, if they don’t commute. Obviously, students will primarily look to share apartments that are within public transportation distance. As a result, specially in smaller towns, there will be certain areas that noticeably have a larger percentage of student renters - but that’s a far cry from “dorms” or “housing”.
But overall, if you try to “match” the U.S. freshman through senior (18-22 year old) college experience with all its benefits and problems - it is essentially non-existent.
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I fully agree with @ChoatieMom. We have two very different kids who are both happily pursuing what they really love. One will likely have a very lucrative career if everything works out. The other can pay bills, have an emergency fund, go on short vacations, fund retirement accounts, etc….but will likely never meet the same financial level of the sibling.
So what? Both are pursuing something they love and never ask ups for a dime.
Scroll up to see what we thought was worth funding. And it included location location location. Because happy kids definitely do better in college.
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For us, it was a different equation. Academic quality and cost would have been the predominant factors but we are fortunate that the COA is pretty much the same regardless of school attended, the majors our kids wanted are offered at most schools, and we have numerous academically selective schools with high academic rigour and that attract the best and brightest students in close geographic proximity. S20 could have been admitted to any school in the country but didn’t want to go out of province. As a result it mostly came down to location and campus feel. He wanted more of a traditional campus experience and so he picked a predominantly residential campus with the culture he wanted in the geographic area of his preference that also had selective admission. S18 had stricter geographic constraints since he initially wanted to live at home and his major isn’t offered at all the schools within commuting distance. Of those that did there were a couple he wasn’t competitive for. He narrowed down his choices to 2 similarly ranked schools one in an urban area and the other suburban. He chose the urban school since it was in a different environment to what he was accustomed.
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It’s good to hear that they are doing this.
For me, the bad part was the trapped nature of it. Living in the dorms with a full meal plan was required. The dorms were traditional dorms with doubles and triples, not “suite dorms.” There was a ton of partying that could not be escaped. Even during the week it was super loud until very late at night. The binge drinking was so bad that students barfed all over and so the whole place smelled like vomit. The dorm rule was that the custodian was not required to clean up vomit, that if you barfed you had to clean it up yourself, but the students seldom did. The custodian’s child was attending the college on a scholarship and lived on my floor, and it just felt so incredibly disrespectful to me-a bunch or rich white kids barfing so that a low income brown immigrant could clean up after them (I was perhaps more sensitive to it because my mom was a cleaning lady, although our family is white.)
Anyway, I imagine these European student apartments work like normal apartments in that there is no “cleaning guy” or “cleaning lady” there. You do your own cooking, you do your own cleaning. You can choose your own roommate, and move out if it doesn’t work. If you create major problems, the police get called and your landlord evicts you–not some campus security and a slap on the wrist by the dean. It just seemed so infantilized in the dorms. And then the cost of the dorms and meal plan, so expensive!
I did get to visit a set of German student apartments when I visited a friend who had been a foreign exchange student at my high school. It just seemed more grown up despite mainly 18-22 yos (plus some grad students.) More civilized.
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