Clearly Princeton fits both definitions. That’s why you might occasionally see it called a “liberal arts university” which is, in my opinion, a very fitting description.
makennacompton, Further, as noted above, Princeton has other schools besides the college. It has a Graduate School with its own dean and everything. So rest assured, Princeton, your university distinction is not on the line here. To the OP, what makes you think “professional schools” are necessary for a institution to be considered a university? Better minds than yours have weighed in on this issue. Those better minds disagree with you.
But that isn’t all. There’s more! Princeton has something called "The School of Architecture. They have the Woodrow Wilson School. Enough other students believe that Princeton is a university that 10,966 students applied there for graduate training. And that is true even if you narrow the criteria to graduate professional schools. Aren’t you relieved? Princeton’s School of Architecture, a professional school,
I can’t find the source right now, but in NY at least there is a legal definition of a college vs. a university. A local “college” is trying to rebrand itself as a “university” and they are unable to do so because they do not meet the state definition, which if my memory serves me is an institution that offers post graduate degrees with significant research emphasis in 3 or more disciplines.
After reading the newspaper article I started thinking about it though and some schools don’t fit the bill-like Colgate and St. Lawrence for example, so I wonder if it was a grandfathering situation?
Further, as noted above, Princeton has other schools besides the college. It has a Graduate School with its own dean and everything. So rest assured, Princeton, your university distinction is not on the line here. To the OP, what makes you think “professional schools” are necessary for an institution to be considered a university? Better minds than yours have weighed in on this issue. Those better minds disagree with you.
But that isn’t all. There’s more! Princeton has something called "The School of Architecture. They have the Woodrow Wilson School. Enough other students believe that Princeton is a university that 10,966 students applied there for graduate training. And so Princeton meets your own definition of a university. That is true even if you narrow the criteria to graduate professional schools. Aren’t you relieved? Princeton’s School of Architecture, a professional school, conferred 62 PhD’s in 2015.
makennacompton, I’m guessing you are still in your teens, at least as shown from your posts. There is nothing wrong with being in your teens. Even if there were, time would take care of it. But age often brings experience and knowledge. Because you are young, you may not realize that being considered a LAC isn’t a put down or an insult. It also does not suggest it is any easier to get admitted to then it would be if the institution were a university.
Princeton is designated as a university because that is what it is. If they promoted themselves as LAC they would be promoting the institution in a way that does not accurately convey the experience students would have if they attended. There is no law that states schools must use one term over another. It is convention. Some schools continue to call themselves colleges long after others have designated the institution as a university. You may have noticed that some universities and some colleges don’t even use those terms when they typically refer to themselves. Clemson is just called Clemson typically. In fact, Princeton is typically informally called Princeton.
You might want to go back and speculate about why certain hair looks different than other hair or, a few inches up there is that navel I’ve heard garners attention by some. Maybe worth looking into. Either way, good luck with your studies at whatever college, university or high school you currently attend.
National LACs,
Williams has Master’s (but not PhD) programs in Art History and in Development Economics.
Amherst college has Master’s (but not PhD) programs in Education and Teaching.
Swarthmore college has Master’s (but not PhD) programs in Education (Teacher certification)
Pomona college has no graduate programs.
==> LAC schools seem to have some Master's programs, but not any PhD program. (Is there an exception to this?)
==> I think the distinction between LAC and a University is really the absence/presence of the PhD programs (preferably broad based, in Arts and Sciences)
==> thus, Darthmouth college (an Ivy school) is not part of the LAC.
I accept the views above. There is no necessary reason why any university needs any of three professional schools (business, law, medicine) in order to “quality” as a university. They only need to do so in the ranking of universities as defined and complied by me, makennacompton.
…and we come back to the first page of posts in this thread where we agree that " just Amherst or Williams with some liberal arts grad departments" is a high compliment.
PS: @dadofs I do not think Amherst has a grad program in education, it doesn’t even have an undergrad program in education.
Nice post @makennacompton ! There no arguing with that. Just as there no arguing with my criteria in post #32 above, where my unstated requirement was that the college field an NCAA fencing team.
RE: “where my unstated requirement was that the college field an NCAA fencing team”
Along those lines, this is why Stanford wins the “college cup” for athletics each year. It stacks the deck by having the most NCAA teams in the most sports – where other colleges have “club” sports, Stanford upgrades these to D-1 level, wins some stuff and voila, mirabele dictu, Stanford is college cup champion. Of course, you have to have Stanford’e endowment to play that sneaky game . . .support the scholarships and teams and all that, etc.
Yes, but having the endowment isn’t enough. You also have to be willing to spend the money on athletic scholarships AND also to lower your admissions standards down near the NCAA minimums, neither of which the Ivy League is willing to do. As you probably know, by league agreement there is a minimum academic standard below which Ivy teams may not go, which, in my opinion, makes Princeton’s 2013 NCAA Division 1 Fencing Championship all the more impressive!
Re; Fencing. Doesn’t Columbia always win this for the men, and Dartmouth for the women?
Re; Fencing. Doesn’t Columbia always win this for the men, and Dartmouth for the women?
Dartmouth doesn’t have a fencing team. Columbia is good but inconsistent. The four years my son fenced at Princeton it was either Princeton or Harvard winning Ivy League Chamionships and, as noted above, Princeton was national champions in 2013.
Just curious, why is it Dartmouth College when they have a medical and a business school?
@Falcon15 Doctoral degrees and research funding/activity tend to be the most significant difference between colleges and universities. Dartmouth granted only 91 PhDs across 16 math/science PhD programs in 2013. Thus, it appears that the majority of their 437 tenure-track A&S and Engineering faculty are focused on teaching rather than research.
http://thedartmouth.com/2013/08/06/college-yet-to-be-invited-to-aau/
@Sherpa re post #49, I don’t believe Stanford is admitting athletes anywhere close to the NCAA minimums. The average SAT for Stanford football recruits is around 1800, certainly well below the overall Stanford average of around 2215, but nowhere near the NCAA minimum. And presumably football is the sport where the school would bend things the most.
http://www.stanforddaily.com/2015/02/22/the-price-of-athletics-at-stanford/
This is likely a lower overall SAT score than Ivy football teams. At the same time in the Ivies, including HYP, there are some players admitted with SAT scores below 1900. It is true that Stanford (like Duke and other elite schools outside the Ivy League) is not constrained by league rules on Academic Index like the Ivies are.
I also agree that a big part of why Stanford always wins the director’s cup is the number of teams it fields.
@bluewater2015 - You’re right and I apologize. I didn’t mean to imply that Stanford was dipping that low, but as I reread my post I see that is precisely what I wrote. I also agree that Stanford requires their athletes to be almost as academically strong as the Ivies do. Unfortunately for Princeton and the others in the league, it’s very difficult to compete with the ability to offer athletic scholarships.
Thanks @sherpa, I appreciate the follow up.
I googled ‘Dartmouth fencing’ and the team showed up. It is a club team.
It appears that Dartmouth has a fairly good club, but there’s a big difference between a fencing “club” and an NCAA fencing team…