Reply to New Wall Street Journal Rankings 2019

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you are looking at the quality of education you can get, there are a lot of small schools who don't rank very well that have a great curriculum and good professors that are actually much better than Harvard, Stanford etc.

Look at this website that actually looks at the curriculum and what kids actually get taught.

https://www.whatwilltheylearn.com/

[b]The tool you link to gives Williams College a D- and Pepperdine an A+.[/b]

I'll pass.[/quote]

That is exactly the point. Name wise and reputation wise, Williams has a lot more credibility but when you really look under the covers, the curriculum at Williams and other Elites have been watered down to such an extent that unless a kid is really determined to get a well rounded education, they offer very one dimensional educational experience.

When you don't require your students to have a "college level" understanding of US history and economics for example (and don't tell me taking an AP class in school is the same, it is not), they will be terrible voters and poor citizens unless they learn all this on the side.

This was not the case 50 years ago. A lot of these colleges are just milking their reputations and are doing students a huge disservice, yet if you just look at "Is Williams more prestigious than Pepperdine", then USNews ranking is where you should go.

This is the only site that I know of that went through the curriculum of so many colleges with a fine toothed comb and critically evaluates what kids are really forced to learn in college. You can ofcourse get a great education at many schools that get a D in this ranking, but you would need to be very focused, a great planner and have a lot of determination to strike out on your own and disregard the path the college lays out. This is about getting an education.

For example, it is outrageous what Harvard considers a good Literature, Math or science course to fulfill their gen ed requirements and get an undergraduate degree. Have you really looked a the curriculum? For an earnest student, there are great courses, but Harvard has too many "backdoors" for students to get by without understanding and many do opt for fluff courses that barely have any real rigor because the college lets them do that. In doing that Harvard is failing in its mission of creating leaders, plain and simple.

I would use some combination of the "Prestige based" USNews ranking and the Acta rating to determine the happy medium of which schools to choose. For example, if I were looking for a reputable school where my kid would get a good education, I would be very reluctant to spend my money on the schools which get lower than a B grade on the acta site. I would then take the A and B grade institutions and use the USNews ranking to narrow down my selection. So two of the Ivies make the cut "Cornell" and "Columbia". FOr the other schools, your kid would really need to be very cognizant on what a well rounded education is and have the discipline to take a good list of survey courses in critical areas. Otherwise they have just turned their undergrad school to a glorified trade school[/quote]

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