Decreasing in Quality

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Returning to the original question, I would not spend out of state tuition to send my kids for undergraduate studies at one of University of California schools (such as Berkeley or UCLA) due to terrible budget concerns and overcrowding that cause kids to take 6 years to graduate, on average.

California parents who live in wealthier areas almost always prefer to send their child to T20-30 private over any UC if kid can get admitted.

I find it impossible to believe that wealthier parents in Cali would prefer USC, NYU, Wake Forest or Rochester, over Berkeley and UCLA, if they are academically-serious.

Especially when tuition is 1/6 of the cost compared to other colleges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Returning to the original question, I would not spend out of state tuition to send my kids for undergraduate studies at one of University of California schools (such as Berkeley or UCLA) due to terrible budget concerns and overcrowding that cause kids to take 6 years to graduate, on average.

I don’t understand this comment. The four year grad rate at UCLA and Berkeley is 77% and 75% respectively. With the exception of UVA and W&M, that’s right on par with other top publics.

yeah but 77% is Terrible. UVa is like 94%.

Cmu is only 72%. Lehigh’s is similar but I can’t remember what it is

It's because UCLA and UC Berkeley have a large and rigorous engineering programs, along with a large number of community college transfer and a more middle-class population of kids who work part-time during college.

UVA and W&M are liberal arts schools, basically. And they have the wealthiest kids among publics. Although I find it hard to believe UVA's 94% 4-year rate considering the community college students they must take in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Returning to the original question, I would not spend out of state tuition to send my kids for undergraduate studies at one of University of California schools (such as Berkeley or UCLA) due to terrible budget concerns and overcrowding that cause kids to take 6 years to graduate, on average.

I don’t understand this comment. The four year grad rate at UCLA and Berkeley is 77% and 75% respectively. With the exception of UVA and W&M, that’s right on par with other top publics.

yeah but 77% is Terrible. UVa is like 94%.

For large public universities it is good. UVA is 89%.

Going down the list of top 25 USNews public colleges:
UCLA - 77%
UCB - 75%
Michigan - 79%
UVA - 89%
Georgia Tech - 40%
UNC - 82%
UCSB - 70%
University of Florida - 68%
UC Irvine - 68%
UC San Diego - 62%
UC Davis - 61%
William and Mary - 85%
Wisconsin - 62%
Illinois - 70%
Texas - 61%
Georgia - 66%
Ohio State - 59%
Florida State - 66%
Penn State - 66%
Purdue - 56%
Pitt - 65%
Rutgers - 61%
University of Washington - 67%
Umass - 71%
UMD - 70%
UConn - 73%

Now, if PP wanted to make the argument that she wouldn’t send her kid to large publics as a whole because their graduate rates tend to be lower than privates, that would be fair. But to single out the UC schools as having low graduation rates is an argument that does not hold water. It’s a large public school thing, not a UC school thing.

I always knew Georgia Tech was a pathetically terrible school, despite being one of the top engineering research universities and being smaller than UVA in size.

Or perhaps comparing world-renowned and rigorous engineering-focused schools like Berkeley and Georgia Tech to liberal arts focused
that's generally considered easy like UVA, 4-year graduation rates is not the correct metric

Engineering simply takes far more required courses, and these required courses tend to have required pre-requisites that go in order, and these required courses are difficult enough that even top students sometimes - shock - have to re-take the course and can't go on to the next course in the sequence.

Compare that to many liberal arts courses where after you've written a high-school level writing course, you can take senior level courses as a freshman.

CMU 4-year graduation rate: 72%

[Anonymous]

Oberlin, perhaps?

[Anonymous]

And Wesleyan

[Anonymous]

Holy Cross, Catholic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oberlin, perhaps?

Yeah, just ten years ago it was better than Kenyon. Now that’s debatable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oberlin, perhaps?

It’s a top 25 producer of science and engineering graduate degrees per capita...

https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf13323/

[Anonymous]

Brandeis
Yeshiva University

[Anonymous]

Dartmouth

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oberlin, perhaps?

Yeah, just ten years ago it was better than Kenyon. Now that’s debatable.

I don't know--when I went to a private high school in Chicago (now 20 years ago!), Kenyon and Oberlin were regarded as academic equals, just different styles/specialties. Both were popular destinations for strong academic well-off kids in Chicago who weren't drawn to the bigger schools like Northwestern.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oberlin, perhaps?

Yeah, just ten years ago it was better than Kenyon. Now that’s debatable.

I don't know--when I went to a private high school in Chicago (now 20 years ago!), Kenyon and Oberlin were regarded as academic equals, just different styles/specialties. Both were popular destinations for strong academic well-off kids in Chicago who weren't drawn to the bigger schools like Northwestern.

I am guessing the quality of education hasn’t changed. Still top notch. What has changed are US News ranking criteria. Schools move up or down by academically irrelevant factors such as the number of Pell-grant students, % of full-paying students, social mobility, etc.

[Anonymous]

Any school that is homogeneous economically is on the decline

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any school that is homogeneous economically is on the decline

Not sure what you mean. You don’t have to worry about schools that admit only economically disadvantaged students declining. They are already there.
Schools with disproportionately rich families seem to rise to the top. Think HYPS.

[Anonymous]

They may be talking about ranking-wise...which many people equate as synonomous with quality.