# IMHO, college shouldn't be all about academics

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/imho-college-shouldnt-be-all-about-academics/961837>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [March 28, 2022, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/imho-college-shouldnt-be-all-about-academics/961837 "2022-03-28T15:22:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\
**Post date:** [March 30, 2022, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/imho-college-shouldnt-be-all-about-academics/961837/41 "2022-03-30T18:27:30Z")

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Yes it is: the word “educate” covers networking.

I know what you mean, and I don’t disagree. There’s a lot of tacit bias in education that basically throws away a lot of great minds because they don’t conform to the mould early and often. But we do that in other sectors, too: jobs, sports… it’s a widespread cultural failure, not just in education.

And snobbery and elitism are pretty widespread human failures, too.

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**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\
**Post date:** [March 30, 2022, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/imho-college-shouldnt-be-all-about-academics/961837/42 "2022-03-30T22:11:18Z")

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> [@Cheesesteak](#):
>
> Networking is not in the mission statement of Harvard, Yale or Princeton. I checked.
> 
> The thing that makes a diploma from these schools more desirable than a diploma from Boston College isn’t the quality of learning available there, it’s the ability to write the word Harvard on your resume.
> 
> I admit, this is a personal pet peeve of mine, so take it as such. I hate the fact that educational institutions, going down all the way to pre-K, have a public mission of imparting knowledge, uplifting children, providing support and growth to all of their students, while in actuality, they act to stratify and grade kids like slabs of meat, to ensure we have well defined groups of students to send to the next level. This whole top school vs second tier school thing is the same, it’s not about the education, it’s about what strata you get to be in.

A company hiring people who has limited resources is going to bet that the average student at Harvard is going to work out better than the average student at Podunk U. BC is a good school, so I’ll leave it out of this.) That’s valuable right there.  
Top schools also give you access to more famous professors which is valuable if you get interested in an area. The level of instruction is higher thanks to students catching on faster. I’ve taught classes at a top school and not so top school so I can testify to this.  
The US is relatively good at not targeting kids. My son-in-law is from Germany, and he didn’t really work at age 13 and 14 and got assigned to a vocational track. He got serious and had to go to a secretarial college to qualify for going to a real college. He eventually got a Masters and is doing quite nicely. I appreciate that it is hard to break out of low expectations here, but not that hard.

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