Wait a minute, just wait a stinkin’ minute here! This isn’t supposed to be in GD… I just noticed this. General Questions :smack: Maybe attending a decent college/university would have helped my reading skills.
Mods, please move.
I think it would have ended up here. There is no objective GQ-type answer.
You can make a kind of matrix, depending on what one wants out of a school, how much effort you are willing to put in, and what you expect from the school. There are differences, but not all are of benefit to everyone.
If you want to get a piece of paper stamped with a degree, I’m sure a cheapo college will work fine. If a kid is planning to party, and is going because parents are forcing him, the Univ. of Chicago ain’t going to work. If you want a real education, look for flexibility. Some big, and very good, state universities limit the stuff you can take because of overcrowding - but if you get into a good program (like EE at Berkeley) you’ll get a good education for not much money.
There is a perceived difference. Top companies recruit at top schools in their field. Some schools have really good alumni networks. I didn’t need it, but I was involved with the MIT Club of Princeton, and I was in close contact with some really top people. I understand UC has the same kind of network.
It may not always be true, but a degree from certain schools biases people in your favor. I was showing an agent a proposal for a hard sf book. He started asking about handling the science, I mentioned where I got my degree, and the issue went away. 
You can get crappy teachers at both universities and colleges, but only at universities can you also get to meet and maybe work with really top people. If a kid feels he won’t get anything out of meeting really top faculty, a college works fine. But my life, and that of my daughter, was changed by opportunities at universities I didn’t imagine possible when I went. (I shelled out for her to go because I thought it was worth it for her - I was right).
On the other hand, friends of mine would have done just as well with a cheaper, less prestigous school. So, the answer depends on the student - but a “college” kind of puts a ceiling on what one gets out of going. The floor is pretty much the same in both cases.
uh, Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, Wellesley . . . those poor Wellesley grads!! :dubious:
There are also historical reasons for calling a university a college - for instance the College of William and Mary, a university, but it will never change its name.
There is also a push to call things that are naturally colleges universities, for the prestige.
I was using “college” in the sense the OP meant - see my post right after yours. I didn’t even go to a college, after all, I went to an Institute of Technology. 
Actually, I doubt that thereis a clear, factual answer either. I think a better home will be IMHO.
[ /Moderating ]
Comparing a good university to a good college, I can think of one type of student who would be better off at a university. That is a student who is fairly clear that they want to go into research as a career. There will be an opportunity to interact with research-focused faculty at a good university and to get part-time jobs related to research. For the typical student who wants a basic college experience, a good non-university college will be as good or possibly a better choice. Faculty focused on research aren’t always the most motivated to give students one-on-one attention, and many good universities are huge. It can be easy to get lost in the shuffle. That said, if the student graduates from the college with decent grades, maybe gets a little work experience, the college degree should serve the purpose of getting him into graduate school if he chooses that later.
For my own views, I’d say that it rates a really big “It depends.”
Around Cleveland, I would generally rate John Carroll University as “better” than [del]James A. Rhodes Junior College[/del] Cleveland State University, but CSU has a lot of good courses, some in areas where the smaller JCU does not even have offerings. Then there are Baldwin-Wallace and Hiram Colleges that have good reputations, but may or may not have the cachet of Ohio State University (again, depending on the courses taken).
My mother was “heartsick” that my younger brother accepted an entrance to Michigan State University after being told he qualified for the University of Michigan, but he was admitted to the James Madison College on the MSU campus that was much more highly rated than anything similar at UoM. Hillsdale College in Southern Michigan is reputed to be one of the best schools in the country, but I am pretty sure that it would be a lousy undergradute school if your interest was particle physics.
As many have pointed out, the distinction between colleges and universities in the US tend to be semantic at this juncture in time. Many of the land grant schools established under the Morrill Acts were more or less universities (being composed of several colleges) from the get go. On the other hand, your Yales, Harvards, etc. started as colleges and eventually morphed into universities.
I think Harriet is mostly right, though in the US it’s more or less a requirement to earn a masters or doctorate before teaching on the collegiate level, so it’s irrelevant whether you attend a college or university for a baccalaureate degree. What matters is what you do when you get there. I know Ph.D. types who went to small liberal arts colleges, and those who went to big state schools (universities). If you’re at a major university, you can probably can change majors or colleges without worrying about a substantial drop in the quality and resources available. If you’re at Kenyon College and you decide to switch from being a English Lit major to an engineer, you might be up a creek (not sure if Kenyon has an engineering program). If you’re at the University of Texas (a fine, fine school) you’d have an easier time with that change.
The only place where the college/university dichotomy exists to a strong degree would be the California higher ed system. Clark Kerr clearly intended for the CSUs to be teaching institutions providing baccalaureate degrees, while the UCs were the Ph.D. granting, research-intensive institutions. Having worked at a CSU I can tell you the line is considerably blurred - some CSUs offer masters programs and I believe some are angling for Ph.D. programs in partnership with UCs, but that’s the only place in higher ed in the US I can think of that tries to differentiate between college and university.
To answer the OP, reputation matters so much more than what your school is called. It’s understood that a large state school will have a wide distribution of folks - from the kids who get profiled in the alumni magazine for discovering new elements to those who get arrested for robbing the Quik-E-Mart. If your school has a good reputation in your area of study, you’re set. If not… it’s been 20 years, right? Are you around people at work from your same school or from more prestigious schools as well? That’s probably your answer right there.
As to the question “does quality matter?” Well yes, it does. I’d have to find you some cites, but there was a study done in Minnesota of twins who attended different schools. The general finding was that the twin that attended the better school made more money. Caroline Hoxby has also done research that suggests that the best strategy is to attend the best school which you can get in to: take the loan to go to NYU instead of staying at home and attending the local nonselective institution. When you start comparing NYU to a selective/highly-selective state school (say a U Michigan) it gets more cloudy. There are tons of intangibles at play.
Alumni networks matter a great deal, and this is why the prestigious schools like the Ivies carry an advantage. Additionally, people external to those networks also agree that the grads from these schools come at a premium. One of my profs always made the point that what you want to do matters before we can talk about quality. In my native Texas, a Harvard degree isn’t gonna mean as much if you want to run for public office… go to Texas or A&M.
It should also be noted that out of the 3000 colleges and universities, only about 300 are truly competitive… which means most folks out there didn’t attend a highly selective/selective institution.
After having attended one of these schools, nothing I did in 9 years of graduate study even came close in intellectual rigor, effort, or density of material covered.
…
…
…???
OK, what’s the difference between a College and a University? Is a college sort of stand alone and a Uni a bigger thing?
Back when I was in grad school in the US, I was in the Sciences College or a University, so I kind of translated “University” as “Universidad” and “College” as “Facultad”, but Americans talk about “going to College”, in which case it means the same as “ir a la Universidad” in Spanish.
I’m confused, please fight my ignorance!
Generically, “going to college” means pursuing education beyond secondary (high) school. It could be to community college, junior college, a four-year undergraduate degree at a college, or a four-year undergraduate degree at a university.
Generally speaking, and with exceptions as mentioned in this thread, for four-year Bachelor’s education, a college is an institution that primarily educates undergraduates. A university distributes undergraduate Bachelor’s degrees but also has graduate schools and/or professional schools under its institutional umbrella.
In your case, and as in some mentioned above, the graduate program was part of a division in the university, and the university chooses to call those divisions colleges. Were there undergraduate degrees distributed by the Sciences College of the University?
Don’t discount prestigious private schools such as these because of their high tuition rates. Note that I graduated almost twenty years ago, but my experience then was that the public schools had little scholarship money while the prestigious private schools had lots of it, so the overall cost was quite similar. And when I was going to school, we were told that some large percentage of the tuition paid (something like 20% or more) was returned to other students in the form of scholarships, so the high list price was a way of shifting costs from the rich students to the poor ones.
And if Bobotheoptimist is in Colorado, his kids may have an advantage when applying to East Coast schools, since schools want geographic diversity in their student base.
Some of the prestigious private schools will not expect any contribution from families with incomes below a certain amount (like $45,000 or $50,000).
Hmm. I did not know that (obviously). One of the reasons I immediately discount CU is that they, at least in the late 80’s, were not inclined to accept locals. They wanted “diversity”, by which I always assumed they meant “out of state tuition”. Having a clear path in mind when I started my higher education, I knew where to go and how to get it at the cheapest cost and maybe mistakenly assumed that I was ineligible for assistance (and that path turned several times, so wasn’t as clear as I thought). I may have to spend a some time figuring out how to guide my own kids the right direction… They already have more money for school than I ever did, so that’s a start I guess.
Thanks everyone, if my original question was vague and uninformed, at least I got good info anyway.
Definitely keep an open mind when looking for schools for the children. Perhaps the local public college will be the right one for them, but perhaps they’d also do well at a small East Coast liberal arts school like Williams College. The college fairs are a good place to learn about different schools, and the high school guidance counselors can tell you more about the current state of college funding.
I do not in any way discount the education offered at more expensive private schools (if I did, I would be discounting my on undergraduate education), I am simply stating that in my opinion, a hard working student can get a perfectly worthwhile/competitive for the global marketplace education at one of a handful of less expensive top tier state schools. Certainly you are aware that in the last 20 years the cost of secondary education in general and private secondary education in particular has skyrocketed. My uncle paid his way through Vanderbilt 30 years ago, a feat almost unthinkable today.
Your geography comment is dead on. I had my heart set on a religiously affiliated college (let’s call it “Dream School”) that fed heavily from the religiously affiliated prep school I attended for high school. I got in, but got no merit based scholarship. Later in life I met a guy from Pawtucket, Rhode Island that attended Dream School on a full ride. He was my same age, same class, his test scores were much lower than mine, his high school GPA was also lower than mine, and his extracurricular activities were otherwise comparable to mine. Why the free money? Dream School needed to “add a state,” specifically Rhode Island.
Finally, I think tomndebb has the answer wit, “it depends.” Hippy Hollow’s example showcases the relative merit of different educational pedigrees with respect to the desired career. As a lawyer practicing in Atlanta, I can tell you that magna cum laude or better from UGA law, in almost every circumstance imaginable, just as good or better in the state of Georgia than a Harvard law degree. Throw a run for political office into the mix and UGA takes the prize for “better pick” hands down.
Well, this is probably a perception issue over actual fact. A state university, in its charter, exists to educate the citizens of the state first and foremost. (Case in point - the University of Texas’ motto is Disciplina praesidium est - “Education is the guardian of the state.”) Otherwise there’s no point in the legislature pouring cash into the school’s coffers. However one way to make a school more prestigious quickly is to attract high-caliber students from outside the state. This makes the school better for the hoi polloi (it’s called peer effects - having smart kids around makes everyone perform better) and for his/her trouble (what’s in it for the smartest kid?) that student gets a significant discount on his/her tuition (a full-ride scholarship, perhaps).
Dewey makes an excellent point about sticker prices. Nobody pays the sticker price, and the sticker price is heavily subsidized through loans, work study, grants, etc. This is unfortunate, because it doesn’t make sense to anyone outside of higher education, and the greatest determinant of whether a low-income family sends the child to college or not is… sticker price. Most people don’t know this. And it is worth it to attend the best school your child gets in to, except for the cases I mentioned of strong/selective state schools vs. somewhat competitive private schools. Take out the low-interest loans from Uncle Sam, because he/she will have greater lifetime earnings than his/her counterpart at a less competitive institution.
Diversity matters a great deal to private schools - and it goes far beyond race. What instrument does a kid play? What does his/her parents do? Where is he/she from? Those kinds of things matter. At a school where there are more applications then there are slots, there’s a determination of aptitude - can these students actually perform here, based on grades and test scores? Once that is decided upon the other stuff comes into play. This is why the argument “I got higher SAT scores than this kid and he got in, while I was waitlisted” is so ridiculous. That isn’t how they decide who to admit. Harvard rejects a fair number of perfect SAT/valedictorian/salutatorian/team captains… because a lot of them apply. If a kid has the exact same demographic profile as fifty kids in an application pool, guess what? That kid doesn’t have much hope for being admitted to that school. Have your kid learn to play the harp, move to North Dakota, and take a job as a forest ranger to help in this area.
Michael Mumper estimates that at a public school, up to 2/3 of the cost is absorbed by appropriations, etc. but of course this number is declining as there is less money in government allotted to education.
Right now, it’s a great time to be a smart kid from a low-income family. Harvard and Princeton (and this is likely operating at some level at the other Ivies) are now guaranteeing 100 percent grant/scholarshipp/work study financial awards to students whose parents make less that $40,000, I believe. There’s another version of this that has the income rising to $60,000. Of course the chances that a kid competitive for admission to Harvard comes from such meager origins is slim (I don’t mean that kids aren’t smart, I mean they probably don’t have the awareness of the admissions game that the kids whose parents are making six-figure salaries do).
Another thing to consider in State Schools are the honors programs. Some of these are damn near as competitive as the most competitive private schools, they have small class sizes, interesting curriculums, access to the “big names” on campus, reseach/intern experience, all at a state university price.
Slight hijack here. According to List of NCAA Division I FBS football programs - Wikipedia, there are 119 Division 1-A football schools. Of
this 119, 16 (or 13%) of these schools are private institutions. It shouldn’t be a surprise that public institutions represent 80% of the Top 25, since they make up 87% of the schools playing Division 1-A football. I think the specific comparison of the athletic achievements of private vs. public schools would make a decent thread in itself.