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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
What I don't get is why so many private school parents seem be more inclined to pay for Colby than to pay OOS tuition to send their kids to Ann Arbor or Madison.   But then I'm biased toward major research universities and am not particularly invested in the public/private distinction.  And I'm guessing that not many parents (or kids) are primarily interested in seeking out schools where the intellectual action is.  They're looking at social environment, networks, job prospects, and grad school acceptance rates.  [/quote]

I guess not everyone sees the benefit of large research universities for undergraduates nor do they underestimate the intellectual firepower of SLAC professors and students. The sports emphasis at places like Michigan and Wisconsin can also be a major turn-off. I find your perspective and attitude to be narrow and narrow-minded - all the most reason for me to support the kind of broad education a liberal arts college provides. [/quote]

Clearly it's true that people don't see the benefit of large research universities for undergraduates -- that was my point.  There's a much broader education available on a campus where 3676 are offered to undergraduates (Michigan) vs one where 395 courses are offered (Swarthmore).  As for the "intellectual firepower" of SLAC professors, it really depends on personality and field.  Intellectual stagnation is a real risk in situations where you don't have grad students, colleagues in your subfield, funding for state-of-the-art labs, and where the emphasis is on undergraduate teaching (which, of necessity, tends to get repetitious -- some courses need to be offered year in and year out and there may be only one faculty member who can teach them).  SLACs are not the most intellectually stimulating environment for faculty.

As for the students at SLACs, I'm not making assumptions about their "firepower."  Just saying that access to grad courses, better facilities (labs, libraries, museums, hospitals), and a larger and more diverse faculty and student body can be a really important (and "broadening") experience for an intellectually-inclined kid.  Maybe parents who are more concerned, at this stage, with small class sizes, personal attention, and the right cohort sometimes [b]do their kids a disservice when they encourage them to select a college using the same criteria we use for selecting an elementary school.[/b][/quote]

I will use your Colby example since you single it out to contrast to big research U. Maybe you should know that the chair of the Government department is a non-resident fellow at the Brookings. And another Colby Government prof is also a development practitioner with field experience as Team Leader for State Department- and USAID-commissioned assignments in the Middle East and North Africa, Southeastern Europe, the Caucasus, the Balkans, West Africa and East Africa. And that's just two of my kid's professors. So no, she (not we) did not "select a college using the same criteria we use for selecting an elementary school". And she did not choose Colby to find a partner. [/quote]

If you want to make comparisons, you need data -- not anecdotes.

Colby has 11 faculty in Government (one of whom seems to have a 50% appointment as an administrator, another of whom is on leave).  By contrast, Wisconsin's Political Science department has 38 faculty members (as well as 4 postdocs).

Only four of the faculty members at Colby got their PhDs within the past 15 years.  That might not matter at a school with graduate students, who infuse new energy and enthusiasms and ways of thinking into a department at regular intervals -- but Colby doesn't have grad students.  At Wisconsin, 23 of the regular faculty got their PhDs in 2000 or later.  And, not coincidentally, it's a department with a much broader, more diverse, and contemporary curriculum than Colby's and one where each subfield has at least a half dozen profs.  Bottom line: for a poli sci or gov major, Wisconsin has in terms of both breadth and depth.

As for how your DC chose her college, I have no idea and ventured no opinion.  I just suggested that parents' assumptions that the same criteria they used to select private primary schools should drive college selection might not serve their kids well at this stage, especially if those kids are bright and intellectually ambitious.[/quote]

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