The point I seem not to be making clearly is that the big research universities (we call 'em R1’s) are not the ones dependent on adjuncts. These are two separate issues.
As far as “most of those T-50s are not really getting any better”, I disagree. I gave some examples. Some T-20’s, I would argue, are getting worse as well, and they are in that category based more on the past than the present.
I agree that going into debt to buy prestige is dumb. But who is being dumb? The admissions departments of more, for lack of a better term, upmarket schools? Or the students and parents who borrow money to buy prestige?
I’ve been in and around academia for a few decades, so I am familiar with Carnegie classification. If I was writing something on the late lamented forums of the Chronicles of Higher Education, I would have used “R1” or “RU/VH”, but I’m not.
In any case, research universities (that includes R2s, like W&M, as well) may not NEED adjuncts, but yet a bit more than half of all of their faculty are adjuncts or not TT faculty.
Some colleges have indeed gotten better, like UIC. However that is both because the state has decided to invest and because Chicagoland and Northern Illinois students are choosing UIC over SIUC, NIU, or OOS choices. They also started hitting their own alumni up for donations.
However, there is no evidence U Michigan improved since 2009, even though in 2009 it received 30,000 applications, and now it is receiving 65,000.
The “trickle down” effect does have a positive effect on some colleges, but mostly those colleges which, prior to this, had issues with enrollment, and thus with funding.
I disagree about Michigan. Their research funding is up 40% since 2009 (your date), while Harvard’s is much flatter: perhaps 10%. (And yes, research is not everything, but it is a proxy for faculty quality, as it does measure how successful faculty are at competing for research dollars with their peers). I disagree about NIU as well. It is in no danger of entering the T-50 (or T-100) any time soon, but it’s much stronger academically than it was 30 or 40 years ago when it was a real cow college.
Also, one needs to be careful about “non TT”. Different schools use them for different things. Ed Taylor (Oersted Medal winner) taught at MIT for three decades with a non-TT appointment. This is a very different experience than the adjunct driving his car from college to college teaching a course here and there. In my opinion, lumping everything together obscures the real problems more than shines a light on them.
But most importantly, how does this connect to admissions? The fact that colleges have other problems has little bearing on this one.
I agree with much of MITPhysicsalum’s analysis. You can’t lump “superstar” adjuncts in with the traveling “cobbling together a living” adjuncts. Two different populations.
And I agree that there are quality institutions far down the “rankings” (for lack of a better descriptor) list. The problem as I see it is that many parents- and by extension their kids- do not actually care about the quality of the instruction, or the rigor of the education. Not part of their reasoning. If something has been ranked as prestigious- that’s good enough. So I see a feeding frenzy for some schools which is really baffling.
Missouri S&T- yes it’s in Rolla which explains why it doesn’t get as much love as it deserves. But a fine institution, some A-rated departments, some fantastic faculty. I suggest it on CC (and in real life) to kids who are pining away for a B or C type engineering program which happens to be at a private institution- which gaps, which the parent will be taking out a HELOC to afford-- and the kid looks at me like I have two heads. I used to recruit in the aerospace industry (a long time ago) and believe me, parents on either coast may never have heard of it, but recruiters have. Folks will go into debt to study engineering at Hofstra but won’t look at Missouri M&T? Mind you, I have no idea how either institution is doing in the ratings- I just know the folks I’ve hired out of Chem and Mech Eng-- and Rolla gets you there.
I don’t see evidence that the hunt for prestige is “killing” the next tier down. For sure there is a shakeout going on in higher ed- so far, the small rural LAC’s who are tuition dependent, without a robust endowment are the ones taking it on the chin. But the number of seats lost to this consolidation is quite minor (these are small institutions- Marlboro? A fine college, but it’s not as though their student displacement will have an impact of the overall number of college grads). What is problematic- I think- are the numbers of kids who have educational debt who aren’t anywhere close to a Bachelor’s degree. They take off a semester- or two. They change majors- again. They don’t realize that the statistics course they took is appropriate for a marketing major but not for someone interested in public health. So they retake the right course, throwing them out of sequence. I seem to be meeting a lot of “super seniors” of late- and I wonder where they got off track, and why it takes 5 years to get a degree in recreation management…
True. The former have always been around, and, for example, are a critical component of professional schools. The latter, though, are the ones whose numbers have been increasing, and are the majority of the new faculty hires. The latter are also a lot more common at R1s than you realize. Check out how many of the job advertisements for R1 humanities departments are for adjuncts. Check out how many adjuncts are teaching the composition and other work intensive intro writing courses in the English departments at R1s across the country.
In any case, that is my last post on that topic on this thread.
That’s because people always bring up the sideways blog, which I think is a little misleading. MIT adcoms blogged from science fairs because they have the kind of students that MIT wants (their words). Interestingly the MIT adcom say he ran into the Harvey Mudd adcom as well. They don’t attend baking contests. I have mentioned before that over a six year period, about 25% of Intel winners are at Harvard.
Most, if not all, colleges like MIT do know that science fairs, hackathons and contests favor white and Asian males, so they take that into account. They also know that a lot of these are not available to everyone, whether it’s because of money or where the high school is located.
If you show you’re one of the best stem students in the country, you’ll do ok.
Understood. My comment about the math contests (and those who predictably post about math contests) was more about the culture of math education, which so many capable young females find toxic. MIT plays a role fostering this culture by putting so much emphasis on these contests, but there are of course many other factors as well. Probably too far afield to get into here though.
While more men win the math contests, note that when it comes to science contests, women do very well, often winning a majority of the top prizes. Women also do very well in top humanities programs like TASP.
Do the Olympics play a role fostering the sexual abuse of young athletes? Do symphony orchestras play a role in the “winner take all” culture of classical music where the tippy top folks become international superstars while everyone else ekes out a living?
I don’t believe MIT puts “so much emphasis” on these contests- I’ve already posted that my MIT kid participated in zero contests, as did most of his fraternity brothers.
But a music conservatory wants kids who love music, and MIT wants kids who love math. If you were to show me that 85% of MIT admits were contest winners you could credibly argue that they are " fostering this culture". But I don’t believe the numbers are ANYWHERE that high, nor do I believe that there is one “route in” to MIT.
I think the culture of math education- if you want to call it that- has many more problems than the kids who end up at Harvey Mudd, MIT, Cal Tech. The waiter at the local diner who can’t calculate the 5% sales tax off a $10 tab when the computer goes down? That’s a problem of math education. The kids who graduate from HS and don’t know what compound interest is, and the millions of people in our country who cannot read a chart to understand what herd immunity is for a dangerous and potentially fatal pandemic? These are serious failures of the culture of math education in our country.
I won’t shed tears for the relatively small number of math geeks out there who participate in math contests, even if most of them skew in one direction in terms of gender or ethnicity.
It’s not the percent of MIT admits that win these math and science contests, it’s the percent of these winners or finalists, maybe semi-finalists as well, that are at MIT, Stanford, Cal Tech, Harvard and a few others. That percentage is pretty high, no one knows exactly but it’s definitely above 50%, more likely 60-70%. In a typical MIT class of a 1,000 maybe 50 or 100 will be these winners, but the other 900 won’t so yes you’ll run into a lot more that haven’t participated or won.
“I think the culture of math education- if you want to call it that- has many more problems than the kids who end up at Harvey Mudd, MIT, Cal Tech.”
Sure, but I don’t think this is about the culture of math and science education, in fact these contests are done outside the classroom.
Long and old thread. There is one misconception that I want to address, that parents are pushing their kids into the admission gladiator games out of desire and bragging right for prestige. This might be true for established multi-generational East coast communities. Not so much in my wealthy Sillicon Valley community where a substantial part of the population are immigrants, and most of these immigrants are Asians. The most competitive HS here have a population of 50 to 90% Asians. As a fellow immigrant (but not Asian) I can completely understand these parents’ motivation:
we came here because we were the best of the best in our home countries. The best of the best in the academic sense. Armed only with an outstanding UG education from abroad, some of us achieved staggering success as measured against the outcome of people who did not leave. So quality education is put on a piedestal as the only way forward
Having come here 10-30 years ago and being surrounded mostly by other immigrants, we have never heard of most of the small and/or regional colleges discussed on this forum. I did not know what a LAC is until recently. I have only heard of the Us that are recognised all over the world. The idea of sending my child to an unknown entity at the cost of a HYPSM made no sense to me.
As first generation immigrants that had to overcome significant odds to succeed, our kids don’t have multigenerational wealth behind them (as in grandparents that pay for their education or bequit them houses). So college is an enormous investment that cannot go wrong. The fear of losing my scholarship and being sent to my country if I had more than one B in grad school when I barely understood what the professor was saying is still fresh in my memory.
Living in an area where houses cost 2-3 millions, it is the perception that the kids need to have a very good head start to make it, and this includes an elite education.
The US is a ‘winner takes all economy’ with staggering innequality (especially in SV). There is no social net and this is the only OECD country where you are not guaranteed health insurance and education.
So, is it surprising that parents are terrified for their kids future? Especially, the immigrant parents that have seen enormous societal changes and upheaval in the last 20 years they’ve been here?
I was really intrigued by your post @Mumfromca as another Mum from California that was born, raised and educated (up to PhD) in Europe. I don’t share your anxieties and I am trying to understand why. I thought I received a stellar education at institutions that no one here has ever heard of. They rank very high in global rankings but are not name brand. I have also worked with highly successful colleagues that started at California community colleges and worked their way up to PhDs. I do feel the anxiety of high achieving immigrants here in the outer reaches of Silicon Valley, and try to tell them it’s not the Ivy League or bust. Yes, higher education is more expensive than we experienced but I’m not willing to pay more for an education just so my relatives back home know where my kids are going to college. My husband’s family (California natives) have no idea where I went to university so why should my family know where he went (disclaimer: his graduate institution is a global name brand but they had never heard of where he studied for his undergraduate degrees). Maybe the difference is that it would never have crossed my mind to move to the US and work here until I met my husband. The US certainly has its share of problems but I can’t say that any of the countries back in Europe where I was educated is problem free. I guess what I’m saying is that the US doesn’t owe us anything. It’s a life full of uncertainty (much less so that other countries in the world), opportunity, strife, happiness, learning, enrichment. A life. Our kids also don’t owe it to us to be the best of the best in a community where the best of the best in the world congregate. Just a few thoughts from the opposite side of the anxiety/worry spectrum.
The point of my post was to push back on the idea that parents are pushing their kids for the sake of bragging right (back home or to their neighbors - I don’t think you read my post carefully enough) and out of pure snobbism, and to try and explain a bit the immigrant perspective. In a community in the very heart of SV with the 3 million dollar houses and stressful HSs, and for people who do not have local inlaws and their local perspective.
Whether I share these anxieties or not is a different story. My daughter forwent acceptance to several Ivy leagues schools, UCB and Stanford, and chose to go elsewhere and we let her make her own decisions.
I’m sorry if I misread anxiety in your post and that you took my perspective as anything other that a perspective. There was no intent of snobbism in my post. There is also no multigenerational wealth for many California families (ours included) with many families being displaced by the housing market prices you quote. California is not all Silicon Valley, however.
And thank God for that! I doubt my daughter will come back to this area - too subburban and too techie so she will not need millions of dollars to buy a house either
I hear you on the prices of houses! I just helped my neighbor clear out her parents’ house somewhere around Palo Alto, after they passed. Lovely neighborhood (suburbia has grown on me in my old age), tiny suburban house. She was telling me how much the houses in the neighborhood were going for and that never in a million years, her Dad who was a blue collar worker and her Mom would have been able to buy a home there anymore. Housing in the more popular areas in CA is certainly a problem and had we been starting out with a young family these days rather than twenty years ago we probably would have chosen a different place to settle down. My hope is that our kids will find the opportunities they need to build their lives, even if it means looking away from Silicon Valley.
@Mumfromca your post was interesting. Here on CC I have often tried to address #2 with young people who post with angst about getting into elite schools (Ivies). I try to suggest that they and their families learn more about US colleges. Often even the prestigious "little Ivies’ do not satisfy the apparent need for a name school.
I understand that for some, this focus on name schools, mostly top Ivies, MIT and Standford, is about perceived quality and outcome (ROI) but it does clearly reflect a lack of knowledge of the US system and the many great choices out there. (I always suggest Colleges that Change Lives but there are so many great schools out there.)
I think one factor especially jumps out for us: schools that only have undergrads. And "vibe, " was really vital in choosing.
SV is not California, and California is not the USA. I have a sibling living in a nice midwestern city with opera, ballet, theater, museums, bike paths, good public transportation… and beautiful homes which cost less than half than my neighborhood in the northeast. I lived in a different city in “flyover country” with similar amenities (although not as good a public transportation system, I admit…) and you can STILL buy a nice house with backyard, two car garage, etc. for under $200K. And my neighbors were college graduates with interesting jobs.
I sympathize with the angst and know where it’s coming from (I am first gen American myself) but when you live in a country as big as the US, focusing on one small geographic region and assuming that it’s like that everywhere is a mistake. I remember my first trip to Houston for business-- it was over 30 years ago-- and the person in charge of running me around to meetings was describing to me the diversity in the public school system (even back then- something like 20 different languages spoken, now it’s likely over 50) . Houses in the fancy suburbs were selling for less than half than the neighborhood where I had grown up (NOT a fancy neighborhood at the time) and I remember thinking, “why did I not know about Houston?”
I’ve had similar moments since then- recruiting for big corporations- meeting brilliant young graduates from U Illinois and Carleton and Haverford and Rhodes and GA Tech and Franklin and Marshall and thinking “why didn’t anyone from my HS ever talk about these places?” (I had over 1,000 kids in my HS class-- so even though not everyone was college bound, and many went straight into the military, there were lots and lots and lots of college bound kids).
Big country. Lots of smart kids. Lots of college choices. And the phenomenon of “nobody in my country of origin has heard of this college” is mutual- my cousin heading off somewhere nobody in the US had ever heard of and being reassured “it’s the top pharmacy program in Europe” (OK, we’ll take your word for it) and a sibling going to another U nobody had ever heard of and being told “it’s a direct pipeline to senior jobs in diplomacy and government” (ok, it’s not Oxford, Cambridge, or Sciences Po but we believe you). Cuts both ways.
Immigrants in SV (and similar places) tend to be more educated on average. They tend to come from families that are more more educated in their own countries. Their family educational background likely plays a much greater role than their immigration statuses, or even wealth. Immigrants with less educated background in many places clearly don’t seem to have the same priority. Even among the non-immigrant populations, there’re much greater percentages of students applying to elite colleges from geographic locations where the populations are more highly educated.
