<p>I still don't see the societal problem. As competition heats up in the top 20, 30, 50 or 100 universities students who are bumped just move down the continuum a bit to find a place that works for them. There is no cliff where a student (with the possible exception of legacies) is faced with a dramatically worse alternative. Remember the same process is working on the faculty level and the difficulty of becoming a tenured professor, at any level in the system, has pushed excellent faculty further down the continuum too.</p>
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I still don't see the societal problem. As competition heats up in the top 20, 30, 50 or 100 universities students who are bumped just move down the continuum a bit to find a place that works for them. There is no cliff where a student (with the possible exception of legacies) is faced with a dramatically worse alternative. Remember the same process is working on the faculty level and the difficulty of becoming a tenured professor, at any level in the system, has pushed excellent faculty further down the continuum too.
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And that's where the argument comes in. I don't see this happening at the faculty level. I don't see all the universities growing in quality and new ones being founded to offset the cascade to the bottom, I see a critical mass being reached at the bottom. It takes a minimum of four years for someone to get a doctorate after they finish their undergraduate degree, usually a few more years of teaching and research before they can even be considered a 'worthy' professor and then several more years of work before they reach a high level of quality.</p>
<p>This is compared to the time-frame of undergraduates, which is 4-5 years. Every new undergraduate class will have more applicants. By the time new faculty is trained, the applicant pool will have grown larger and the problem will be even worse. That's how I see it happening, anyway. I'm not saying your version isn't feasible, I just think mine is more realistic. The pressure has to be alleviated at the top, and not at the bottom in my mind. The top is the only real place that has room (room = resources, small student:teacher ratios, a large amount of capital that can be used for expansion) to expand anyway.</p>
<p>Universities have been pumping out PhD's in excess of demand for decades now. If you noodle around on the internet a little you will find lots of articles about people who would have been excellent candidates for tenure at major institutions 50 years ago who must now settle for temporary assignments at much less prestigious institutions. Neither of these processes (at the student or faculty levels) is a new issue. Both have been at work for decades.</p>
<p>Would it be all that bad if colleges raised their standards? Today's elite applicant would be considered average ten years from now. At that point, why should colleges admit applicants who meet today's elite standard rather than the one of the future? As other posters have said, they would all be bumped down a tier. </p>
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You do this so the burden isn't continually shifted down to state systems that will eventually break under the pressure and we reach a point where it's impossible for kids to get bachelors from even remotely respectable schools.
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<p>This seems to be one of your main concerns. But as other posters have pointed out, a state school like UIUC is now growing increasingly selective and benefiting from a student body with increasingly high standards. All this contributes to general prestige and "respectability". Where was UIUC a few decades ago? And who's to say that the little colleges of today won't become the UIUCs of the future due to this continual raising of standards?</p>
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The top is the only real place that has room (room = resources, small student:teacher ratios, a large amount of capital that can be used for expansion) to expand anyway.
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<p>If we pack in more students with the star faculty to spread the brilliance around, that would dilute the student-teacher ratios, which compromises the quality of education one gets. If we used the resources to hire more faculty to offset this, we would be sucking professors up from the schools a tier beneath. What's wrong with simply letting the students attend the lower-tier schools in the first place instead of moving everyone around?</p>
<p>Regarding the chicken and egg situation with training researchers, it was a fair exchange. The state gave land and money to colleges, the colleges trained researchers who made discoveries that benefited the state/country as a whole. As long as the top colleges continue to train the top researchers who will make those discoveries, it's all good. Education is a means to an end - productivity.</p>
<p>The one group that can't buy into the growth philosophy, in any significant way, is the LAC's. To do so would be to undermine the singular factor that makes them appealing to some students.</p>
<p>I want MORE kids at OTHER schools with HIGH STATS. I do NOT want an Ivy League monopoly on kids with high stats. I just wish the brightest kids would stop obsessing about Ivy League schools and take a look at the second tier schools.</p>
<p>One of the great benefits of elite colleges is that they are small (at least for undergrad populations). They have an intimate and traditional setting that fosters learning. If they all suddenly expand, that small community will be destroyed, and the campus will no longer have the continuity and homogeny that makes such fine, old universities so appealing. In effect, by trying to "serve the masses" by spontaneous expansion the great service will be watered down by higher student:faculty ratios and less intimate class sizes.</p>
<p>There are a TON of great colleges in the US. As the applicant pool grows, the "second tier" colleges will become as highly qualified as their more prestigeous peers. In effect, instead of a few universities with too many students, we will eventually see a lot of universities of exceptionally high academic caliber.</p>
<p>As an aside, it is amusing how we fall into the trap of treating the Ivy League as the top tier. It is worth remembering that the Ivy League is the athletic conference with the best academic reputation, it is not uniformly superior to non-Ivy schools academically. Just as an example there are half a dozen non-Ivy's that outrank the lowest ranking Ivy in USNWR. Not pushing USNWR, I'm sure other rankings would make the same point. The top tier may include the Ivy's but it is not synonymous with the top tier.</p>
<p>Tetrishead - your philosophy only wrks if there was a lack of room in colleges overall. Because, the kid that used to go to Harvard is now going to Cornell who is now going to UCLA and on and on down the line. There will never be a situation where you were Harvard and now are Houston CC. Most colleges are begging for good applicants, and bodies in general. Also, these colleges are recieving grants due to productivity in research, not their production of degrees. If Harvard stopped educating undergraduates, but maintained its research endeavors, it would keep getting the grants as long as it remained productive.</p>
<p>Even schools that are not benefiting the government as much, lets say Julliard, are tax exempt. They also can have even lower acceptance rates and higher demand.</p>
<p>The government doesn't care how many people are going to Harvard, they care what Harvard is doing.</p>
<p>Public institutions will continue to grow to meet demand, private ones will grow when they feel like it.</p>
<p>Also, the population of quality students is not ever growing. Only so many kids can be in the top 10%, or score in the top 10% on a test. And the population of HS students is peaking, not a still growing wave.</p>
<p>"I want MORE kids at OTHER schools with HIGH STATS. I do NOT want an Ivy League monopoly on kids with high stats. I just wish the brightest kids would stop obsessing about Ivy League schools and take a look at the second tier schools."</p>
<p>Wow, what an extremely selfish statement. And just why would the brightest students not want to go to the best schools? If one is a IMO Gold Medalist or a Siemens Winner, why would they in all honesty want to go to a second tier school where the resources and the overall intelligence of the student body are dramatically lowered? </p>
<p>Your statement in essence contradicts the entire logical framework of why counties have magnet schools. Astute students need each other to magnify and properly develop their talents.</p>
<p>Keep in mind in countries like China and India, the top universities have a dramatically lower admit. rate than that of HYPS.... So I don't understand what all the complaining is about. Life isn't fair. Get over it and live it.</p>
<p>This is in regarding to post #2
"I think that universities might follow Stanford's lead"
Lead? There is a bit of jumping the gun here, as Stanford has only suggested, via the trial balloon Hennessey launched in the Alumni magazine article, that it would be nice to add more spots to the undergraduate clas. The university has huge expansion constraints placed on it by Palo Alto, Santa Clara, and by the original will. There is only limited areas on campus where they can build more housing for undergrads, and they have to get approval from outside agancies for any construction projects. Graduate students are not quaranteed housing, but undergrads are, which is why they can expand the graduate level programs.</p>
<p>Your logic is hilarious in every thread. If the top Ivies don't expand, that'll just result in their receiving even better students. Excepting legacies and recruited athletes, Harvard's class of 2020, for example, might be constituted of all absolutely brilliant kids, instead of brilliant kids + some almost as brilliant kids. Not expanding enrollment will only make the Ivies more elite.</p>
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Wow, what an extremely selfish statement. And just why would the brightest students not want to go to the best schools? If one is a IMO Gold Medalist or a Siemens Winner, why would they in all honesty want to go to a second tier school where the resources and the overall intelligence of the student body are dramatically lowered?</p>
<p>Your statement in essence contradicts the entire logical framework of why counties have magnet schools. Astute students need each other to magnify and properly develop their talents.
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"I want MORE kids at OTHER schools with HIGH STATS. I do NOT want an Ivy League monopoly on kids with high stats. I just wish the brightest kids would stop obsessing about Ivy League schools and take a look at the second tier schools."
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<p>Though this would help the educational landscape, asking kids to not strive for the best is just ridiculous. Yes, if brilliance wasn't so concentrated, more people would benefit. Still, you can't expect a high school senior to really be like "I'd rather gift my intellect to State University than go to a superior university like the Ivies and their peers." Plus, that would have to happen on an extremely large scale for anything to change. Such selflessness just doesn't exist, and I'm not even sure it would be altogether that beneficial in the end.</p>
<p>Huh? Why/how would it become a national crisis on how many kids attend HYP? Heck, outside of the NE, I got news for you, very few people even care. Go down to SEC country, and you'll be hard pressed to find many who even care about Yankee colleges; now discussion about LSU, OTOH..... Out west, more are concerned with their state Uni or Stanford or USC or other great school than with HYPM. </p>
<p>National crisis? You gotta be kidding, right?</p>
<p>One key factor, in my opinion, is that the ultimate objective of each elite university is institutional survival. Beyond whatever obligations it may have to current stakeholders (students, faculty, employees, alumni, etc.), its community, and society at large, it has to be around after all of those stakeholders have been buried for decades. A key part of this objective is producing alumni who are both leaders in their fields and who are loyal to the school. Not only does it increase the renown of the school, but it is also the most important way to build its wealth and infrastructure.</p>
<p>One reason the Ivies and other elites look beyond test scores and GPAs is that they want to admit students who may end up as Presidents and other key office holders, corporate CEOs, science Nobelists, internationally recognized artists, and so on - these outcomes have a low correlation with SAT scores and GPA.</p>
<p>So, one also has to ask whether admitting more students would produce more successful and loyal alumni. It would produce MORE alumni, by definition. And it wouldn't really reduce the probability of producing highly successful alumni, and admitting some academically marginal (relative to elite expectations) but interesting applicants might produce a few more. The real question is the "loyal" part - to the extent that the undergraduate community is diluted, loyalty and attachment to the school might suffer.</p>
<p>So, the key thing for any school wishing to expand is to ensure that the bonding between students and with the school is in no way negatively impacted. If that can be accomplished, a modest increase in class size is a likely winner.</p>
<p>Having said that, keeping class size the same and recruiting an ever more elite group of applicants has merits, too.</p>
<p>"Not expanding enrollment will only make the Ivies more elite."</p>
<p>not expanding enrollment can also lead to these schools losing serious talent. the amazingly brilliant students of this country continue to grow in number each year. its not like we'll have 5000 (made up number) amazingly brilliant kids for the next 30 years to fill the spots at the "elite" universities. no. the way i see it, these schools need to expand if they want to reach their full potential. and while some of these schools may seemingly have reached their full potential now, believe me they all have a long way to go.</p>
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National crisis? You gotta be kidding, right?
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<p>We've got a war, we've got natural disasters, we've got an impending recession ... and we've got more students who want to go Harvard.</p>
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the way i see it, these schools need to expand if they want to reach their full potential.
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<p>Agreed. But the question is, will the size prove detrimental to their potential?</p>
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and while some of these schools may seemingly have reached their full potential now, believe me they all have a long way to go.
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<p>I'm not so sure. Harvard has exhausted its 300+ acres, and is building more. But how much more can it go without increasing enrollment? How many more awesome facilities does this set of people need -- or even want? How many more shelves of books do they need to build till these "elite" intellectuals are satisfied?</p>
<p>I think there comes a point in size when the university can't really build much more--even without space constraints--unless it increases its size. It does this by increasing faculty, staff, and, most importantly, students.</p>
<p>I don't think Harvard would be the one to expand its class size. I have a feeling it will continue to be as elite and selective as it's been -- perhaps even more so, to the point that its undergrad acceptance rate looks more like its med school acceptance rate.</p>
<p>good point. but there is always more to be done, always more to be discovered. and a brilliant student body, which comes with top notch professors, is a major factor in achieving this.</p>
<p>Good point kyle: getting accepted into H is a crisis beyond the war, homelessness, health care, literacy, and 50% HS drop-out rates. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>but ok, let's play along with the idea that the Ivies+S should expand by xx thousands of students. But, then, they would have to add faculty to teach those new students, correct? And, where would they find that faculty? They would have to poach faculty from the next 10-20 colleges down the food chain, which, ironically, is exactly where the students would be if the Ivies do not expand. Hmmmmmm.</p>