# What makes a good university good? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 5, 2025, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428 "2025-12-05T14:26:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2025, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428/61 "2025-12-08T12:50:23Z")
> [@Limmin](#): > > Better would be looking at a student’s performance during first year engineering (FYE) classes, where they learn most of their math, physics, chem, drafting, coding…things they’ll need once the real engineering classes begin. Most students admitted into the department will have gone through these same classes, so it’s a lot easier to compare students on the basis of grade performance. So, you are talking about a graduate level program, not undergrad, correct? Not aware most high schools offer FYE classes. Why does the school allow repeat class-taking? Because if enough students take enough repeat classes, the school gets extra semesters’ tuition from those students? > [@Limmin](#): > > Yes, students are always stressed about grades. Do you believe such stress harmful? Necessary? Avoidable? ---
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2025, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428/62 "2025-12-08T13:01:44Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > But of course a lot of that football revenue went toward our fancy-ass campus. It might have, but for many schools, including some big football powerhouses, football loses money. At some places, the highest paid person on campus is the head football coach, with salaries in 7 figures. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2025, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428/63 "2025-12-08T16:53:15Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > So, you are talking about a graduate level program, not undergrad, correct? Not aware most high schools offer FYE classes. Or, potentially, an undergraduate program which only accepts upperclassmen, who have completed certain prerequisite classes as a freshman and/or sophomore, while achieving a certain GPA. When I attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the 1980s, the undergraduate Engineering and Business schools operated this way. I was a business major, but for my freshman and sophomore years, my major was classified as “pre-business,” and I was technically in the College of Letters and Sciences, until I met the requirements for formal admission into the undergraduate business program. ---
**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:** [December 8, 2025, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428/64 "2025-12-08T18:50:15Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > They do have one now. And because of the recent focus on traumatic brain injury, they are talking about eliminating it again. Who knows, maybe they even will. They are not going to get a lot of alumni pushback if they do. There was a varsity basketball team when I was there, who played against powerhouses like Woopie Tech (Worcester Polytech.) I assume someone went to games. A friend of mine was on the fencing team, though. I do think I heard about when they started the football team. Not a lot about it since then. ---
**Author:** ![sciurophobic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cab0a1/32.png) [@sciurophobic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sciurophobic)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2025, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428/65 "2025-12-08T18:50:22Z")
Are there any schools known for taking B-/C+ high school students and turning them into future PhD students? ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2025, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428/66 "2025-12-08T19:24:24Z")
Isn’t that the guiding principle of those “quirky” colleges designed for students who never quite jibed with traditional academic requirements in high school? (E.g. Hampshire, Reed, Evergreen State…) ---
**Author:** ![Al128](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/al128/32/16541_2.png) [@Al128](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Al128)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2025, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428/67 "2025-12-10T11:36:14Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > I attended Illinois for both undergrad and law school UIUC? ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2025, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428/68 "2025-12-10T12:19:10Z")
Yes (Discourse) ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2025, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428/69 "2025-12-10T13:59:42Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > I know this will not be a popular opinion but I think most of it is getting into the club. > > Successful Harvard people try to promote other Harvard people. It raises the value of the degree and prestige for everyone. > > Graduate from Southern Illinois University and chances are no one is giving you a job because they also went there. > > So much of business is not what you know but who you know and the Ivy League (and a few others) have monetized that big time because it benefits all of them. > > That is not to say the education you get there is bad. It is very good. But I doubt anyone can say that their grads are that much better than anyone else. I would disagree with the statement that there is no difference in the quality of the grads. I was more in touch with comparing schools when I was younger and more involved in the hiring at the various firms I’ve worked at or even just seeing the batches of new college grads. The reason better schools are “better” is sort of a virtuous circle where a good school with a good reputation attracts the smartest, most ambitious students from the most successful families. The best employers recruit at these schools for the top talent who go on to be successful. A combination of endowments from successful alumni and ability to charge higher tuition enables the school to provide better services and a better education, further increasing the reputation and so on and so forth. It’s also not just simply a matter of “I know you, let me give you a job”. Let’s say you want to work on Wall Street. My college has a literal club you can join for that. It’s not bullshit either. A few times a year, the finance professors and other organizers bus them into Manhattan for various events where they can interact with alumni who work at all the major investment banks (plus others like myself who work in consulting firms, recruiting agencies, fintechs, and other Wall Street-adjacent companies in the finance ecosystem. So one of the main differences between a “good university” and a regular one is that the students don’t tend to come out of a “good university” all like “I have my degree now, what the fuck job do I want”. Many, if not most of them have spent 4 years working internships and participating in various clubs and activities that prepares them for their desired career with companies that are actively recruiting on campus for them. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2025, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428/70 "2025-12-10T14:31:41Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > “I have my degree now, what the fuck job do I want” I graduated from Harvard and came out saying pretty much exactly that. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2025, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428/71 "2025-12-10T14:56:36Z")
I actually felt that Harvard was really bad at preparing students for anything but going on to more school. You want to get a PhD? Lots of support. Go to law school? Med school? Lots of support. Anything else? I went to OCSOCL (the office of career services and off campus learning) seeking help, and they suggested i go into finance (even then, the financial firms liked to hire mathematical talent for developing models) or go to law school. Why law school? “A legal degree is always useful”. I shit you not. After graduating with a degree in math, i messed around wondering if i should go to medical school (and maybe i should have) and worked in a job my father got me in a hospital lab while i took the rest of the required pre-med courses through the Harvard extension school. Then i got married, spent a semester playing housewife and wondering what to do with my life (housewife was clearly a bad fit), and got recruited into the actuarial field by a guy i met playing bridge. I guess one good thing that came from that was that we had learned to live on just my husband’s graduate student stipend, so we saved ~100% of my starting salary as an actuary until we had kids. When i got raises, we spent some of that increase (hey, we can go out for Chinese once a week, instead of pizza!) but continued to save at least that starting salary for years. With the miracle of compound interest and market growth, that’s why i didn’t need to work now. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2025, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428/72 "2025-12-10T15:20:17Z")
In theory it’s about the research, even in undergrad you are being taught by people who are doing the research that is advancing the cutting edge of world knowledge in that subject. In practice of course there is no relationship between being a world leading research scientist in a subject and being good at teaching that subject at undergrad. So, in practice, yeah, it’s all about the network effects and good old boy connections. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2025, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428/73 "2025-12-11T02:53:10Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > I actually felt that Harvard was really bad at preparing students for anything but going on to more school. You want to get a PhD? Lots of support. Go to law school? Med school? Lots of support. Anything else? > > I went to OCSOCL (the office of career services and off campus learning) seeking help, and they suggested i go into finance (even then, the financial firms liked to hire mathematical talent for developing models) or go to law school. Why law school? “A legal degree is always useful”. I shit you not. > > After graduating with a degree in math, i messed around wondering if i should go to medical school (and maybe i should have) and worked in a job my father got me in a hospital lab while i took the rest of the required pre-med courses through the Harvard extension school. Then i got married, spent a semester playing housewife and wondering what to do with my life (housewife was clearly a bad fit), and got recruited into the actuarial field by a guy i met playing bridge. PhD, law school, med school, finance, and actuarial all seem like pretty reasonable post-college options. You weren’t forced into a job growing vegetables, were you? The nice thing (and sometimes challenge) of graduating from a good school is that you have a lot more options of what you can do for work. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2025, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428/74 "2025-12-11T04:04:09Z")
I wasn’t forced into anything. But you might have missed that i randomly fell into becoming an actuary, and my college didn’t prepare me for it in the slightest. It really only prepared me to go to another school. (My high school did. I like to joke that being an actuary is a way to monetize being really good at high school algebra.) ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2025, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428/75 "2025-12-11T12:52:32Z")
I have a degree from a university that (at the time at least) was often spoken about derisively; being a new university with relatively low entry requirements. And I have a degree from a world top 5 university. There was no difference in teaching, indeed I can say that two of the worst lecturers I’ve ever had were at the latter university, and the best I ever had was at the former. There was a difference in resources though; we had access to better facilities and made more visits to working hospitals. I suppose differences like this become more critical for doctoral and post-doc work. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2025, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428/76 "2025-12-11T15:02:48Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > I wasn’t forced into anything. But you might have missed that i randomly fell into becoming an actuary, and my college didn’t prepare me for it in the slightest. It really only prepared me to go to another school. > > (My high school did. I like to joke that being an actuary is a way to monetize being really good at high school algebra.) And yet you made sure to point out that you went to Harvard 😃 ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2025, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428/77 "2025-12-11T15:08:09Z")
Uh, yes, to make the point that “good” universities don’t necessarily prepare you for a job. Harvard is generally considered to be “good” University. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2025, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428/78 "2025-12-11T16:47:47Z")
It’s like the old joke “How do you know someone went to Harvard?” [spoiler] They’ll tell you. [/spoiler] I was also echoing your comment back to you from another thread. 😉 I think one of the benefits of a “good university” is it does specifically position you in an ecosystem of alumni, industries, and career paths that might otherwise not be available or may be unknown to you. Maybe that’s less critical these days with LinkedIn, Glassdoor and other resources providing all sorts of details about different companies and industries. I don’t know much about actuary jobs, but I often like to joke that being a “management consultant” is a way to monetize being really good at being a college frat guy. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2025, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428/79 "2025-12-11T17:07:26Z")
So, your comment was unrelated to the thread? Anyway, > [@msmith537](#): > > I think one of the benefits of a “good university” is it does specifically position you in an ecosystem of alumni, industries, and career paths that might otherwise not be available or may be unknown to you. i didn’t get any of that from my college experience. I graduated with no idea what i was going to do with my life, how to earn a living, or even how to apply for a job. ---
**Author:** ![Dorjan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dorjan/32/12440_2.png) [@Dorjan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorjan)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2025, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428/80 "2025-12-11T17:22:49Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > i didn’t get any of that from my college experience. I graduated with no idea what i was going to do with my life, how to earn a living, or even how to apply for a job. Perhaps, but graduating from a “good” university implies that the skills you developed to earn that degree put you in a good position to make your way sucessfully in the professional world, even if it wasn’t what you envisioned or directly related to the degree, which is one of the reasons why so many people insist that Universities shouldn’t just be considered the equivalent of trade schools for white collar jobs. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-good-university-good/1025428.md?page=5)