Anonymous
05/21/2025 19:34
Subject: What makes an LAC "good"
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:PP is a troll. They have no contact with top institutions and know nothing about the humanities. Don’t respond.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/
...an article about how students have to read multiple books a week and aren't just "Not reading and getting As..." So the point still stands.
Maybe you didn’t read the article. Some excerpts:
“Faced with this predicament, many college professors feel they have no choice but to assign less reading and lower their expectations.”
“Delbanco told me—and he has made peace with the change. ‘One has to adjust to the times,’ he said.”
“The Columbia instructors who determine the Lit Hum curriculum decided to trim the reading list for the current school year.”
“The same factors that have contributed to declining enrollment in the humanities might lead students to spend less time reading in the courses they do take… And thanks to years of grade inflation (in a recent report, 79 percent of Harvard grades were in the A range), college kids can get by without doing all of their assigned work.”
“For years, Dames has asked his (University of Chicago) first-years about their favorite book. In the past, they cited books such as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Now, he says, almost half of them cite young-adult books. Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series seems to be a particular favorite.”
Then there’s hours worked data like the below from Harvard’s paper comparing courses from different depts. The top 7, and 9 of the top 10, were in STEM.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/2/27/miller-harvard-course-workload-divisions/
The author noted the 3x workload difference between some STEM depts and some non-STEM ones might actually be underestimated due to how the survey capped hours reported. They also said:
“If administrators like Dean Khurana are serious about academic laxity at Harvard, they must be prepared to have frank conversations about the source of this problem and recognize its disparate incidence in humanities and social science courses.”
But in the spirit of trying to move things along it was already offered there were other ways of comparing rigor at the institutional level, like surveying grad school matriculation/ acceptance rates or graduation requirements, where there’s also distinct differences across schools. Those are probably even less uniformly agreed upon measures than hours worked or the expectation to actually do what’s assigned, though. A surly poster decided that if someone referenced differential expectations across majors they didn’t know anything, so here we are, debating STEM v the rest, which is dumb both because there’s so much data on that topic familiar to most with even lay interest in higher ed it doesn’t make sense to attack someone personally for mentioning it, and also because there are other (less triggering?) ways to compare and differentiate schools.
Resorting to personal insults and chest thumping on an anonymous forum doesn’t really strengthen one’s argument; if anything, it signals weakness in the position.
I got As in chemistry and math courses without doing every single assignment. This isn’t unique to the humanities.
There’s a huge difference between a student not turning in their weekly math or chem problem set and a student not reading the humanities book. The student who doesn’t turn in the weekly problem set but intends to get an A needs to make a real effort to learn whatever they didn’t turn in, because the material very explicitly builds on itself. The student who didn’t read the humanities book isn’t going back and reading the book a week later so they can understand the next one; at most they read a summary of it. The Atlantic article does mention the phenomena of students not reading books isn’t entirely new, but the extent and frequency of it is, to the point curriculums are actually changing.
But really the ultimate indicator is hours spent studying, which as the Harvard paper reports can be vastly different.
I'm sorry, but did you get a STEM degree?
Yes things build on each other, but most of us are human and understand there's a very finite amount of things actually tested, which is most of your grade. There's a lot of stuff I half-a$$ed, and I don't know to this day, and it wasn't that detrimental, to be honest.
Anonymous
05/21/2025 09:56
Subject: What makes an LAC "good"
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:PP is a troll. They have no contact with top institutions and know nothing about the humanities. Don’t respond.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/
...an article about how students have to read multiple books a week and aren't just "Not reading and getting As..." So the point still stands.
Maybe you didn’t read the article. Some excerpts:
“Faced with this predicament, many college professors feel they have no choice but to assign less reading and lower their expectations.”
“Delbanco told me—and he has made peace with the change. ‘One has to adjust to the times,’ he said.”
“The Columbia instructors who determine the Lit Hum curriculum decided to trim the reading list for the current school year.”
“The same factors that have contributed to declining enrollment in the humanities might lead students to spend less time reading in the courses they do take… And thanks to years of grade inflation (in a recent report, 79 percent of Harvard grades were in the A range), college kids can get by without doing all of their assigned work.”
“For years, Dames has asked his (University of Chicago) first-years about their favorite book. In the past, they cited books such as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Now, he says, almost half of them cite young-adult books. Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series seems to be a particular favorite.”
Then there’s hours worked data like the below from Harvard’s paper comparing courses from different depts. The top 7, and 9 of the top 10, were in STEM.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/2/27/miller-harvard-course-workload-divisions/
The author noted the 3x workload difference between some STEM depts and some non-STEM ones might actually be underestimated due to how the survey capped hours reported. They also said:
“If administrators like Dean Khurana are serious about academic laxity at Harvard, they must be prepared to have frank conversations about the source of this problem and recognize its disparate incidence in humanities and social science courses.”
But in the spirit of trying to move things along it was already offered there were other ways of comparing rigor at the institutional level, like surveying grad school matriculation/ acceptance rates or graduation requirements, where there’s also distinct differences across schools. Those are probably even less uniformly agreed upon measures than hours worked or the expectation to actually do what’s assigned, though. A surly poster decided that if someone referenced differential expectations across majors they didn’t know anything, so here we are, debating STEM v the rest, which is dumb both because there’s so much data on that topic familiar to most with even lay interest in higher ed it doesn’t make sense to attack someone personally for mentioning it, and also because there are other (less triggering?) ways to compare and differentiate schools.
Resorting to personal insults and chest thumping on an anonymous forum doesn’t really strengthen one’s argument; if anything, it signals weakness in the position.
I got As in chemistry and math courses without doing every single assignment. This isn’t unique to the humanities.
There’s a huge difference between a student not turning in their weekly math or chem problem set and a student not reading the humanities book. The student who doesn’t turn in the weekly problem set but intends to get an A needs to make a real effort to learn whatever they didn’t turn in, because the material very explicitly builds on itself. The student who didn’t read the humanities book isn’t going back and reading the book a week later so they can understand the next one; at most they read a summary of it. The Atlantic article does mention the phenomena of students not reading books isn’t entirely new, but the extent and frequency of it is, to the point curriculums are actually changing.
But really the ultimate indicator is hours spent studying, which as the Harvard paper reports can be vastly different.
Anonymous
05/21/2025 09:44
Subject: What makes an LAC "good"
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Accessibility of professors, academic rigor, and commitment to undergraduate teaching. Amherst, Pomona, and Carleton are highly ranked in these areas—hard to beat them.
All small LACs are highly rated in these areas. That's what makes them SLACs.
DP. LACs are usually strong in those areas, but certainly all are not strong to the same degree. The three mentioned are excellent, as are others in the top 30 or so, but even within that group there’s variation on reputations for instruction quality and rigor.
Name a top 30 lac with lower quality instruction and rigor
USNWR does not have a 30 way tie for undergrad teaching.
For rigor, look at percentages of STEM majors and grad school matriculation rates.
What a bunch of bs.
Cause all majors are equally rigorous? Maybe you have a different idea of rigor, but fine, look at grad school matriculation or acceptance rates for what you consider rigorous then.
Also look at graduation requirements.
If your humanities majors aren't rigorous, you aren't as rigorous as you think you are. True rigor is in institutions like Reed and UChicago, where, across the subjects, you will undergo intense academic rigor, akin to academic hazing.
The STEM majors at those schools may have a different opinion on whether their humanities majors are undergoing a comparably rigorous experience. It’s not that I haven’t known some, there and at similar institutions. Even pre-ChatGTP one could get As without doing the reading at some of our finest English programs. BSing to an A isn’t really a thing in STEM.
You’re talking to a physics B.S. and bioinformatics M.S. BSing to an A is 100% a thing in stem, if you’re any good. This crap take is said by stem grads who wouldn’t be able to get into a grad program or even get grant funding, because they eschew any exercise in writing/the humanities. We get it: you think you’re better than others.
I’m going to trust the most recent Chicago alums I know over someone boasting about a bioinformatics degree.
You’re talking to a Chicago grad…
Anyway, it’s always interesting meeting people who think stem is the end-all, be-all, because they’re undoubtedly stupid.
And you just graduated? Acting like it…
I didn’t say STEM was the be-all. I don’t know any STEM major who skipped all the assigned homework and got an A like I’ve known in English, but I guess you are here to tell us Chicago has some of both. They say it’s changed over the years. I guess so.
History major from HYPSM and it was a well known hack to not do all the reading. So much was assigned that it wasn't humanly possible. You had to figure out what was enough. I did, and I got As.
This was decades ago, so maybe it's different now.
It’s still like that. Skimming for content is a real skill that most employed people need.
Yes, I still use this skill today!
Anonymous
05/21/2025 09:34
Subject: What makes an LAC "good"
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:PP is a troll. They have no contact with top institutions and know nothing about the humanities. Don’t respond.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/
...an article about how students have to read multiple books a week and aren't just "Not reading and getting As..." So the point still stands.
Nowhere in the article does it cite students reading multiple books per week. The closest example is a book assigned every 1 to 2 weeks.
Anonymous
05/21/2025 09:14
Subject: What makes an LAC "good"
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:PP is a troll. They have no contact with top institutions and know nothing about the humanities. Don’t respond.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/
...an article about how students have to read multiple books a week and aren't just "Not reading and getting As..." So the point still stands.
Maybe you didn’t read the article. Some excerpts:
“Faced with this predicament, many college professors feel they have no choice but to assign less reading and lower their expectations.”
“Delbanco told me—and he has made peace with the change. ‘One has to adjust to the times,’ he said.”
“The Columbia instructors who determine the Lit Hum curriculum decided to trim the reading list for the current school year.”
“The same factors that have contributed to declining enrollment in the humanities might lead students to spend less time reading in the courses they do take… And thanks to years of grade inflation (in a recent report, 79 percent of Harvard grades were in the A range), college kids can get by without doing all of their assigned work.”
“For years, Dames has asked his (University of Chicago) first-years about their favorite book. In the past, they cited books such as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Now, he says, almost half of them cite young-adult books. Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series seems to be a particular favorite.”
Then there’s hours worked data like the below from Harvard’s paper comparing courses from different depts. The top 7, and 9 of the top 10, were in STEM.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/2/27/miller-harvard-course-workload-divisions/
The author noted the 3x workload difference between some STEM depts and some non-STEM ones might actually be underestimated due to how the survey capped hours reported. They also said:
“If administrators like Dean Khurana are serious about academic laxity at Harvard, they must be prepared to have frank conversations about the source of this problem and recognize its disparate incidence in humanities and social science courses.”
But in the spirit of trying to move things along it was already offered there were other ways of comparing rigor at the institutional level, like surveying grad school matriculation/ acceptance rates or graduation requirements, where there’s also distinct differences across schools. Those are probably even less uniformly agreed upon measures than hours worked or the expectation to actually do what’s assigned, though. A surly poster decided that if someone referenced differential expectations across majors they didn’t know anything, so here we are, debating STEM v the rest, which is dumb both because there’s so much data on that topic familiar to most with even lay interest in higher ed it doesn’t make sense to attack someone personally for mentioning it, and also because there are other (less triggering?) ways to compare and differentiate schools.
Resorting to personal insults and chest thumping on an anonymous forum doesn’t really strengthen one’s argument; if anything, it signals weakness in the position.
I got As in chemistry and math courses without doing every single assignment. This isn’t unique to the humanities.
Anonymous
05/21/2025 09:10
Subject: What makes an LAC "good"
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:PP is a troll. They have no contact with top institutions and know nothing about the humanities. Don’t respond.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/
...an article about how students have to read multiple books a week and aren't just "Not reading and getting As..." So the point still stands.
Maybe you didn’t read the article. Some excerpts:
“Faced with this predicament, many college professors feel they have no choice but to assign less reading and lower their expectations.”
“Delbanco told me—and he has made peace with the change. ‘One has to adjust to the times,’ he said.”
“The Columbia instructors who determine the Lit Hum curriculum decided to trim the reading list for the current school year.”
“The same factors that have contributed to declining enrollment in the humanities might lead students to spend less time reading in the courses they do take… And thanks to years of grade inflation (in a recent report, 79 percent of Harvard grades were in the A range), college kids can get by without doing all of their assigned work.”
“For years, Dames has asked his (University of Chicago) first-years about their favorite book. In the past, they cited books such as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Now, he says, almost half of them cite young-adult books. Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series seems to be a particular favorite.”
Then there’s hours worked data like the below from Harvard’s paper comparing courses from different depts. The top 7, and 9 of the top 10, were in STEM.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/2/27/miller-harvard-course-workload-divisions/
The author noted the 3x workload difference between some STEM depts and some non-STEM ones might actually be underestimated due to how the survey capped hours reported. They also said:
“If administrators like Dean Khurana are serious about academic laxity at Harvard, they must be prepared to have frank conversations about the source of this problem and recognize its disparate incidence in humanities and social science courses.”
But in the spirit of trying to move things along it was already offered there were other ways of comparing rigor at the institutional level, like surveying grad school matriculation/ acceptance rates or graduation requirements, where there’s also distinct differences across schools. Those are probably even less uniformly agreed upon measures than hours worked or the expectation to actually do what’s assigned, though. A surly poster decided that if someone referenced differential expectations across majors they didn’t know anything, so here we are, debating STEM v the rest, which is dumb both because there’s so much data on that topic familiar to most with even lay interest in higher ed it doesn’t make sense to attack someone personally for mentioning it, and also because there are other (less triggering?) ways to compare and differentiate schools.
Resorting to personal insults and chest thumping on an anonymous forum doesn’t really strengthen one’s argument; if anything, it signals weakness in the position.
Anonymous
05/21/2025 07:55
Subject: What makes an LAC "good"
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:PP is a troll. They have no contact with top institutions and know nothing about the humanities. Don’t respond.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/
...an article about how students have to read multiple books a week and aren't just "Not reading and getting As..." So the point still stands.
Anonymous
05/21/2025 07:55
Subject: What makes an LAC "good"
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Accessibility of professors, academic rigor, and commitment to undergraduate teaching. Amherst, Pomona, and Carleton are highly ranked in these areas—hard to beat them.
All small LACs are highly rated in these areas. That's what makes them SLACs.
DP. LACs are usually strong in those areas, but certainly all are not strong to the same degree. The three mentioned are excellent, as are others in the top 30 or so, but even within that group there’s variation on reputations for instruction quality and rigor.
Name a top 30 lac with lower quality instruction and rigor
No one answered, because the original point is complete bull$hit.
Evidently resorting to lying is your idea of rigorous critical thinking.
No one brought any of that up? What are you on about?
Anonymous
05/21/2025 07:52
Subject: What makes an LAC "good"
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Accessibility of professors, academic rigor, and commitment to undergraduate teaching. Amherst, Pomona, and Carleton are highly ranked in these areas—hard to beat them.
All small LACs are highly rated in these areas. That's what makes them SLACs.
DP. LACs are usually strong in those areas, but certainly all are not strong to the same degree. The three mentioned are excellent, as are others in the top 30 or so, but even within that group there’s variation on reputations for instruction quality and rigor.
Name a top 30 lac with lower quality instruction and rigor
No one answered, because the original point is complete bull$hit.
Evidently resorting to lying is your idea of rigorous critical thinking.
Anonymous
05/21/2025 07:48
Subject: What makes an LAC "good"
Anonymous wrote:PP is a troll. They have no contact with top institutions and know nothing about the humanities. Don’t respond.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/
Anonymous
05/21/2025 07:07
Subject: What makes an LAC "good"
Anonymous wrote:You can use IPEDS to view colleges by their number of majors in a field. For example, Swarthmore graduated five "first majors" in history in a recent year:
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=Swarthmore&s=all&id=216287#programs
As a nearby alternative, Haverford graduated three times as many history majors, 15, in the same year:
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=Haverford&s=all&id=212911#programs
Anonymous
05/20/2025 10:03
Subject: Re:What makes an LAC "good"
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:It “a” LAC, not “an” LAC.
I've always pronounced it "Lack" in my head, ie, treated it as an acronym, not an initialism like ATM.
Exactly. No one says their kid goes to an "el ay cee".
Actually,most do.
Correct.
Agreed. I have actually never known anyone who doesn’t say “el ay cee.”
We’ve sent two kids to LACs and met many families, faculty, and staff.
Interesting; I have a kid at a NESCAC, a nephew at W&L and a neighbor who is a very expensive College Counselor. None of them have ever said “el ay cee.” Maybe a regional thing?
Excuse me, it's "an NESCAC"
Huh? That doesn’t make sense…
Sound it out.
Anonymous
05/20/2025 10:01
Subject: Re:What makes an LAC "good"
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:It “a” LAC, not “an” LAC.
I've always pronounced it "Lack" in my head, ie, treated it as an acronym, not an initialism like ATM.
Exactly. No one says their kid goes to an "el ay cee".
Actually,most do.
Correct.
Agreed. I have actually never known anyone who doesn’t say “el ay cee.”
We’ve sent two kids to LACs and met many families, faculty, and staff.
Interesting; I have a kid at a NESCAC, a nephew at W&L and a neighbor who is a very expensive College Counselor. None of them have ever said “el ay cee.” Maybe a regional thing?
Excuse me, it's "an NESCAC"
NESCAC serves as an acronym, such that "a NESCAC" would be appropriate.
Just like "a LAC".
Anonymous
05/20/2025 10:00
Subject: What makes an LAC "good"
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Wait, people say "L A C" out loud? Why?
Where? When? To whom?
Mine goes to Williams and says it. “Lack” sounds stupid.
Why does she ever say it?
Anonymous
05/20/2025 09:39
Subject: What makes an LAC "good"
Anonymous wrote:Seven pages of what makes a LAC good and most of it is people debating how to pronounce LAC.
Which is why I don’t engage with lac threads here. DD is interested, but people here are useless and try to drown out any helpful voices.