Why do these two states seem to have decent higher education institutions, such as UT or UF. To draw on stereotypes, isn’t the South supposed to be stupid?
Texas Aggies
or
MIT, Caltech
Stereotype perpetuated.
He’s talking about the University of Texas, consistently ranked as one of the top public universities in the country. Or the University of Florida, also consistently ranked as such.
Texas A&M is also not considered a bad school, that’s like comparing Pepperdine to the University of Virginia and saying California is stupid compared to Virginia.
You’re comparing two private colleges to a public school in Texas with A&M compared to MIT and CalTech. And not even the best public school in Texas.
The U.C. system would be a fairer point, since arguably public universities have to reflect to some degree the governments and the state itself because they make decisions on how they are ran. Private schools not so much, any really rich person could start a really good small private college anywhere, and then 200 years from now it’d roughly be equivalent to a Duke or Stanford if it was consistently maintained.
Also finally, showing two schools, one from Massachusetts and one from California that are better than a third school from Texas doesn’t perpetuate the stereotype of Texas being “stupid.” Yes, MIT and CalTech are better (generally) than A&M, but A&M in its own right is a respected, national level public university and is in the AAU and other prestigious “groups” that correlate to respect universities.
Are you actually asking why a stereotype doesn’t conform to reality? Probably because stereotypes, even ones based in part on some true things are typically too simple to be taken seriously and are usual untrue in part of whole. Even the dumbest State in America (if you can quantify that somehow) is going to have tens of thousands of really smart kids who grow up there.
Speaking as a Southerner… well, this isn’t the pit, so I can’t give the response I want.
The reason for the South’s reputation comes from the fact that the South still has a lot more rural areas, which tend to lesser education and experience with the outside world, than the rest of the country. That’s not true for universities, which are often in large cities, have a huge population of PhDs, or both.
Not to mention, you picked some weird universities to cite as your examples. I would have gone with Georgia Tech and Duke over UT and UF. Heck, I would have got with TAMU and FSU over UT and UF.
On top of all that, neither Florida nor Texas is “The South.”
Moderator Note
IceQube, if you want serious answers to your questions in GQ don’t poison the well with remarks like this in the OP. In any case, as has been pointed out the premise of your question as posed doesn’t make much sense. I’m going to close this. If you wish, you can open another thread in IMHO, but try to be clearer about what you are asking, and leave out the stereotyping.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator