Reply to New Wall Street Journal Rankings 2019

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][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. [/quote]

What is your evidence of that? It flies in the face of every other bit of information I have seen, including every review, guidebook, visit, discussion with college counselors and professors.  I have to call BS.  Total BS.

[quote]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. [/quote]

So just list colleges that have strong core curricula so people that value that can choose them.  UChi, Columbia, etc.

[quote]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. [/quote]

I'm not even gonna argue this one, or concede I might be wrong on this point.  You'll get a better education from better professors at Williams or (open curriculum) Amherst than you will at Pepperdine, in almost every discipline.  End period.

[/quote]

The grading is really on commitment to core curriculum.  A counterpoint grading could be done on commitment to open curriculum.  It might have been better to have some sort of assessment that shows where the schools fall on that continuum.  [/quote]

Core curriculum WRT what the core is exactly or what the quality of it is, or the teachers, or the facilities.  Ludicrous to the point of negligent. Aside from just completely meaningless.

ps - Even open curriculum schools like Brown have requirements like 2 writing courses and other requirements per concentration.  How is that accounted for in this silly methodology?  It isn't? Oh...[/quote]
It's not writing but composition that is being evaluated.  None of courses Brown says will fulfill its writing requirements satisfy the requirement needed by get a check off against the composition rating

[b]An introductory college writing class that emphasizes some or all of the following topics: mechanics, style, grammar, usage, argument, rhetoric, research, expository writing, understanding of tone and audience, editing, revision, rewriting, and an understanding of academic writing conventions[/b][i]

Brown defines it as "any course requiring significant writing" which is a joke

And the grading is not for a "Core Curriculum", but for a good "Gen Ed" curriculum and the two are totally different, in case you don't know. You can clearly have a very good general education curriculum without having a "Core Curriculum". Brown is being singled out for a "F" grade not because it does not have a "Core curriculum" but because its general education curriculum is a freaking joke.

Again let me emphasize that this does not mean that you cannot get a fantastic education at Brown and that the profs there are not excellent. I am sure for a dedicated student who is willing to eschew "fluff courses" and plunge into the "serious courses" offered at Brown, Brown will provide a wonderful education, but by setting the bar so low for most students and by allowing students to graduate without a robust and serious general education requirement (notwithstanding their marketing message) they are doing a disservice to their students in the long run.

[/quote]

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