Competition Culture

[Anonymous]

Why is it that some universities and occasionally liberal arts colleges seem to have a strong culture of top academic competitions (Putnam, Parliamentary Debate, Model UN, and Mock trial), while other schools hardly do any competitions? Is it funding or intelligence of student body? It seems sad that a school would accept a national debate champ only to not have a debate team at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why is it that some universities and occasionally liberal arts colleges seem to have a strong culture of top academic competitions (Putnam, Parliamentary Debate, Model UN, and Mock trial), while other schools hardly do any competitions? Is it funding or intelligence of student body? It seems sad that a school would accept a national debate champ only to not have a debate team at all.

The burden of making sure that a school offers activities in which you're interested falls on the student. If continuing with debate was important to the student, why did they apply to a school that doesn't have a debate team?

This is why choosing a school based only on prestige/rankings is stupid.

[Anonymous]

These teams are generally student led and so having one depends on the student leadership to make it happen. Different from high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It seems sad that a school would accept a national debate champ only to not have a debate team at all.

Perhaps they think that by college students should parlay that training into academics rather than academic competition? There's not really a market for professional debaters after college. At some point, students need to apply their skills in a practical way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems sad that a school would accept a national debate champ only to not have a debate team at all.

Perhaps they think that by college students should parlay that training into academics rather than academic competition? There's not really a market for professional debaters after college. At some point, students need to apply their skills in a practical way.

Agree with this. What is the point of winning a debate competition at the college level? If you have good public speaking skills, that itself transfers to lots of professions. When I was in law school, a lot of the top moot court teams had oralists who were ranked in debate, but it did not matter if they competed or not while in college.