Reply to Does Chicago win head to heads vs any Ivys?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Does Chicago win head to heads vs any Ivys?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]UChicago, like Johns Hopkins and MIT, was founded over a century later (actually more than 250 years after Harvard) and on a different model (German rather than English).  These were research universities that embraced a scientific model of knowledge.  Earlier universities in what is now the US were more oriented to instilling religious and moral values in a social elite (and enabling that elite to get to know each other. Chicago admitted women from the start.  And it was the largest producer of African American PhDs in the world prior to WW2.  So it has a different kind of history/raison d’etre/cultural DNA than the Ivies.

We’re in a moment now when institutional values of elite colleges in the US have pretty much converged, but, by virtue of their different histories, each school starts with a different set of strengths and handicaps.  So Yale has to worry about the implications of having named campus buildings after defenders of slavery and having comparatively weak STEM programs, while UChicago has to worry about name recognition and cash flow and how to rethink the Core.

Lots of Americans have a tendency to confuse wealth/social status with merit.  And there’s a real strain of anti-intellectualism in our culture.  So they act like the barbarians are at the gates when the hegemony of certain educational institutions gets challenged or when those institutions make room for different kinds of students.

[Stanford has a foot in both camps — started out a rich kids school despite being founded in the 19th, but gained status as the result of a tech boom, so science is a core part of its identity.][/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics