What Makes an Elite School?

[AthenaAwakened]

If the elite schools are supposedly the ones that offer the best education, how do we define that best education?

The best education one can get, IMHO, is one that can start with a freshman with obvious deficits and make him/her a graduate with limitless possibilities.

What do you think?

What makes for an elite school, for the best education?

Do our current systems, public and private, provide the best education possible to the most number of people?

Are the criteria for labeling a school elite in step with what we as a citizenry believe to be elite?

If we don't know the answers to these question, then what the hell is Scalia even talking about?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

That's a tough question. I'd say that, for many of the programs in a university, the ability of a graduate to get a job and the salary they receive would be the number one factor. For instance, if the 95% of the graduates from Harvard Law get offered jobs as lawyers and only 80% of the graduates from Michigan State Law do and the average starting salary the Harvard grad gets is 20% higher, then it's clear that Harvard is the more elite school. People who know the industry are more impressed with the output from that school than they are with the output from the other school.

That does basically boil down to reputation. If you have a Nobel Prize winning physicist teaching cutting edge research at one place and some dude who hasn't been published in ten years at another place, then students are probably going to learn more from the former guy and employers are going to want to have those students on their team.

 

[untermensche]

Elite schools are where the rich send their average children, like GW.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

If the elite schools are supposedly the ones that offer the best education, how do we define that best education?

Generally an elite school is considered one that offers a rigorous education, leadership grooming, and access to the power corridors of the nation.

 

[Metaphor]

If the elite schools are supposedly the ones that offer the best education, how do we define that best education?

The best education one can get, IMHO, is one that can start with a freshman with obvious deficits and make him/her a graduate with limitless possibilities.

That might be the best education you can get, but that isn't what makes elite universities elite. Elite schools don't start with students with obvious deficits; they start with the cream of the crop.

There is a complex web of reciprocal effects that makes a school elite. The higher the average SAT required, the higher the high school GPA required, the higher the rejection rate, the more elite an institution is regarded.

You can also count the number of Nobel laureates and other prestigious prizes awarded to graduates or professors from the school. You can gauge what the public thinks by references in popular culture (in TV-land, if you're a mathematical/scientific genius, you went to MIT).

Are courses harder at elite institutions? You'd imagine so, since they have an academically superior student base and courses are marked partly on a curve, and they have an interest in producing strong graduates.

 

[Trausti]

Saying that an elite school is one that offers the best education is to take a cargo-cult view of schools. What makes an elite school are the students who go there. The idea that the education differs from school to school is a bit silly. Does Harvard have some sort of foundation of knowledge not available to the the State University of Southwest Technical College? Nah. Harvard has a brand. It uses that brand to be highly selective of its entrants. How many of the students admitted to the Ivy League or State flagship universities have average or below average SATs or ACTs? The students selected are already top choices and would do well wherever they go. If you swapped out Harvard's students with those of State Central Community College - Podunk extension, Harvard's elite aura would evaporate. Conversely, then Chinese parents would spend mightily and grease any hand to ensure their child's place at Podunk. To analogize the question, what makes a sports team great? Obviously, it's the players. Not the team location. Not the team stadium. And not the team mascot.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Elite schools are where the rich send their average children, like GW.

If the elite schools are supposedly the ones that offer the best education, how do we define that best education?

Generally an elite school is considered one that offers a rigorous education, leadership grooming, and access to the power corridors of the nation.

If the elite schools are supposedly the ones that offer the best education, how do we define that best education?

The best education one can get, IMHO, is one that can start with a freshman with obvious deficits and make him/her a graduate with limitless possibilities.

That might be the best education you can get, but that isn't what makes elite universities elite. Elite schools don't start with students with obvious deficits; they start with the cream of the crop.

There is a complex web of reciprocal effects that makes a school elite. The higher the average SAT required, the higher the high school GPA required, the higher the rejection rate, the more elite an institution is regarded.

You can also count the number of Nobel laureates and other prestigious prizes awarded to graduates or professors from the school. You can gauge what the public thinks by references in popular culture (in TV-land, if you're a mathematical/scientific genius, you went to MIT).

Are courses harder at elite institutions? You'd imagine so, since they have an academically superior student base and courses are marked partly on a curve, and they have an interest in producing strong graduates.

Saying that an elite school is one that offers the best education is to take a cargo-cult view of schools. What makes an elite school are the students who go there. The idea that the education differs from school to school is a bit silly. Does Harvard have some sort of foundation of knowledge not available to the the State University of Southwest Technical College? Nah. Harvard has a brand. It uses that brand to be highly selective of its entrants. How many of the students admitted to the Ivy League or State flagship universities have average or below average SATs or ACTs? The students selected are already top choices and would do well wherever they go. If you swapped out Harvard's students with those of State Central Community College - Podunk extension, Harvard's elite aura would evaporate. Conversely, then Chinese parents would spend mightily and grease any hand to ensure their child's place at Podunk. To analogize the question, what makes a sports team great? Obviously, it's the players. Not the team location. Not the team stadium. And not the team mascot.

And is this the way it should be? That the best schools should provide the best opportunties to the best bred students? The ill-bred need not apply?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

And is this the way it should be? That the best schools should provide the best opportunties to the best bred students? The ill-bred need not apply?

Ya, it kind of should be. It's like how the NHL provides the best opportunities for the best hockey players and the less qualified players remain in the minor leagues. When draft day comes around, it doesn't matter why one player is better than another and if one guy couldn't spend as much time as he wanted on the ice practicing because his mother was working two jobs to pay the bills and couldn't drive him to the rink, that's not the problem of the coaches and managers. They should only care about how well he plays hockey.

When the brightest potential physicists are studying physics, it's in the interest of everyone who cares about physics to have them in classes with similarly bright students so that the course work doesn't need to be slowed down any to let everyone catch up. It's in the same interest to have the best professors teaching them so that their potential is maximized to the fullest amount. That's not to say that there shouldn't be other opportunities available for the next tier of students in other schools, but if you want to be in the elite, it's fair to have you prove your ability to be there before being accepted.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

And is this the way it should be? That the best schools should provide the best opportunties to the best bred students? The ill-bred need not apply?

Ya, it kind of should be. It's like how the NHL provides the best opportunities for the best hockey players and the less qualified players remain in the minor leagues. When draft day comes around, it doesn't matter why one player is better than another and if one guy couldn't spend as much time as he wanted on the ice practicing because his mother was working two jobs to pay the bills and couldn't drive him to the rink, that's not the problem of the coaches and managers. They should only care about how well he plays hockey.

When the brightest potential physicists are studying physics, it's in the interest of everyone who cares about physics to have them in classes with similarly bright students so that the course work doesn't need to be slowed down any to let everyone catch up. It's in the same interest to have the best professors teaching them so that their potential is maximized to the fullest amount. That's not to say that there shouldn't be other opportunities available for the next tier of students in other schools, but if you want to be in the elite, it's fair to have you prove your ability to be there before being accepted.

And don't forget how the birth month affects a hockey player's potential.
http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=657724

Parents worried about whether their child has the goods to make it into the NHL might now have another seemingly arbitrary factor working against them — the time of year their hockey prodigy was born.

A study, published Wednesday in the online science journal PLOS ONE, suggests that the NHL is guilty of an age bias because it weighs its draft selections more heavily in favour of players born earlier in the year.

The report found that 36 per cent of players drafted by NHL teams between 1980 and 2007 were born in the first quarter of those years, or from January to March, compared to 14.5 per cent of draftees who were born in the fourth quarter.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

And is this the way it should be? That the best schools should provide the best opportunties to the best bred students? The ill-bred need not apply?

It is not the was it should be. But it is the way it currently is.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Apparently age is a factor in academia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_age_effect

 

[untermensche]

...Does Harvard have some sort of foundation of knowledge not available to the the State University of Southwest Technical College?....

Harvard has endowments. It has property. It has a brand.

And it has a lot of powerful people connected to it. Many of them the nations most influential lawyers and politicians and government officials. The president.

And it gives a student access to real world connections, not "knowledge".

 

[prideandfall]

personal opinion:

how do we define that best education?

if by "we" you mean collective society, especially in the west, "best" education means "a degree from a school that an interviewer considers impressive" - what you've been taught, what you actually know, what knowledge you have and whether you have the capacity to apply it in any meaningful way are all completely irrelevant.

What do you think?

i think the best education you can get has to do with the most extensive access to information - and since the internet now does that for everyone all the time, "education" is essentially utter bullshit and only matters in the context of what interviewers think about the idea of a piece of paper.
an elite or exclusive university used to mean some special curriculum or access to unique books or speakers, some vague idea of a refined educational experience where you'd either get more information than was available to students at other schools, or were taught in some special way that was better than other schools.
with the information we have available now in this stage in our social, cultural, and technological development these are ridiculously outdated and obsolete ideas with no bearing whatsoever anymore on current real life.

What makes for an elite school, for the best education?

having a reputation that makes interviewers think you're special for having gotten the exact same information from there you would have gotten at community college or being good at googling.

Do our current systems, public and private, provide the best education possible to the most number of people?

no.

Are the criteria for labeling a school elite in step with what we as a citizenry believe to be elite?

yes (though i'd qualify that as being because we as a citizenry are collectively fucking retarded)

 

[prideandfall]

And it has a lot of powerful people connected to it. Many of them the nations most influential lawyers and politicians and government officials. The president.

And it gives a student access to real world connections, not "knowledge".

you'd think somebody would take the hint at the greater level of efficiency that is possible here - since you're getting a community college level of education either way, stop bothering with the ridiculous huge campus, have a standard 10,000 educational program, and just charge 75,000 dollars per student to shake hands with henry kissinger and take a picture of it.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Elite SKKKool:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/10/us/citadel-pillowcases/index.html

 

[Trausti]

...Does Harvard have some sort of foundation of knowledge not available to the the State University of Southwest Technical College?....

Harvard has endowments. It has property. It has a brand.

And it has a lot of powerful people connected to it. Many of them the nations most influential lawyers and politicians and government officials. The president.

And it gives a student access to real world connections, not "knowledge".

Good point. Imagine how successful Bill Gates could have become if he hadn't dropped out in his second year.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Harvard has endowments. It has property. It has a brand.

And it has a lot of powerful people connected to it. Many of them the nations most influential lawyers and politicians and government officials. The president.

And it gives a student access to real world connections, not "knowledge".

Good point. Imagine how successful Bill Gates could have become if he hadn't dropped out in his first year.

He had access to the school's computers. The most advanced computers of the time. His parents were able to afford tutors and had connections to get him into that school.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

And is this the way it should be? That the best schools should provide the best opportunties to the best bred students? The ill-bred need not apply?

Ya, it kind of should be. It's like how the NHL provides the best opportunities for the best hockey players and the less qualified players remain in the minor leagues. When draft day comes around, it doesn't matter why one player is better than another and if one guy couldn't spend as much time as he wanted on the ice practicing because his mother was working two jobs to pay the bills and couldn't drive him to the rink, that's not the problem of the coaches and managers. They should only care about how well he plays hockey.

When the brightest potential physicists are studying physics, it's in the interest of everyone who cares about physics to have them in classes with similarly bright students so that the course work doesn't need to be slowed down any to let everyone catch up. It's in the same interest to have the best professors teaching them so that their potential is maximized to the fullest amount. That's not to say that there shouldn't be other opportunities available for the next tier of students in other schools, but if you want to be in the elite, it's fair to have you prove your ability to be there before being accepted.

So not only will you not improve your conditions if you are not already the best at what you do, if you have not already had all the advantages, no avenues need be provided for you to improve?

BTW, your sports analogy is a little iffy.

Scouts will go to the ends of the earth to find a good wing and then base their decision on talent and skill. Any kid willing to pick up a stick, put on the skates and put in the time has a shot. Grandpa playing for the Rangers really doesn't enter into it. Whereas with say entering an Ivy League school, Talent and skill count, but you don't really see college recruiters going out into the hinter lands or into the inner city to actively search for mathematicians, and they will accept a substandard student based on whether or not Grandpa endowed a chair.

 

[untermensche]

Harvard has endowments. It has property. It has a brand.

And it has a lot of powerful people connected to it. Many of them the nations most influential lawyers and politicians and government officials. The president.

And it gives a student access to real world connections, not "knowledge".

Good point. Imagine how successful Bill Gates could have become if he hadn't dropped out in his second year.

You don't seem to understand.

You can't use the rare exception to form any rule.

But to an extent I agree. The most gifted, the rare, like Gates, are bored to tears by traditional education.

 

[Toni]

And is this the way it should be? That the best schools should provide the best opportunties to the best bred students? The ill-bred need not apply?

Ya, it kind of should be. It's like how the NHL provides the best opportunities for the best hockey players and the less qualified players remain in the minor leagues. When draft day comes around, it doesn't matter why one player is better than another and if one guy couldn't spend as much time as he wanted on the ice practicing because his mother was working two jobs to pay the bills and couldn't drive him to the rink, that's not the problem of the coaches and managers. They should only care about how well he plays hockey.

When the brightest potential physicists are studying physics, it's in the interest of everyone who cares about physics to have them in classes with similarly bright students so that the course work doesn't need to be slowed down any to let everyone catch up. It's in the same interest to have the best professors teaching them so that their potential is maximized to the fullest amount. That's not to say that there shouldn't be other opportunities available for the next tier of students in other schools, but if you want to be in the elite, it's fair to have you prove your ability to be there before being accepted.

We'll, it's a rare tenured full professor at a major research university who sees an undergrad, except for a work study student cleaning floors. Most of those oh so brilliant researchers don't teach any undergrad courses and few grad classes. They are too important conducting research and bringing the university those grants and that prestige that allow universities to command enormous tuition.

Of course there is the question of whether those brilliant researchers can actually teach. Many cannot and most have no interest in doing so.