My deepest hope is that Za's college stays alive; that it beats the odds and continues to make a difference in the lives of its students.
Which, in my Father's words, hits the nail on the head. Ideally, higher education is supposed to make a difference, but what seems to be stated here is that generation after generation there is no real difference; people just get what they expected and anticipated all along.
This is just another example of why we need to bring back the glory days of rock and roll. We gotta stick it to the man somehow, and rock might be the only way left to us.
The end of your post and C. Ewing's comment brings up the point that "quality education" is not identical with "attended a prestigious institution." Finding a college is all about fit, and there are wonderful (read, better) instructors at institutions that see faculty as teachers and not mere researchers. There is no doubt that the elite institutions play a special role in the culture of the elite and powerful, but that role is as much (if not more) a question of social networking and old boys' as it is educational.
As someone who teaches at a community college, I can tell you that my students are nearly as "well prepared" (whatever that means) as the students I had at the high-priced liberal arts college down the road.
The difference was financial. Many said that they didn't get into the liberal arts college because they had to work and thus couldn't do the ACT prep and extra-curricular activities. Others said they couldn't afford to either take the time to be full-time students or didn't have the financial resources to attend where they'd been accepted.
For those who complain about a sense of entitlement in their students, I don't see that attitude in mine -- sure, they have the "I'm the consumer, I'll take from your class what I need" attitude, but they don't think the world is owed them for nothing.
Posh liberal arts colleges are as over-rated and as inessential as any other highend luxury item. But they're status symbols for those who can afford them, and nothing sells like status. Bah. Give me a good state university anyday.
Then you would be stuck with me, Kerry...
There's no point admitting people who lack an expertise that the university requires but is unwilling to teach. So to the extent being poor correlates with a lack of such an expertise--a huge extent, many of us suppose--it's not a problem if poor applicants get no breaks in admissions.
Many schools do administer a special summer or first-year remedial course in essay-writing to people with inadequate SATs and transcripts, who they admit contingent on their success in these remedial course or on scoring well on a subsequent test. But do these courses really teach all the university requires? I doubt it: Universities have evolved to work with people who graduate from good high schools, with good grades, and the teaching they provide isn't explicit instruction nearly so much as its the provision of cues by which students are supposed to understand how to teach themselves, or else are allowed to drown. Presumably only a dismal share of smart, poor, hard-luck people even think to apply to a university, let alone find their way into the remedial courses on offer, so I doubt we can even assess their ability to mitigate most low-class childhoods. What a lot of these people would need falls in the category of social work, and in an amount that only the society as whole could afford to administer; except that we couldn't get 51% of society to agree on what this social program would be, even if there exists excellent ideas about what would work. Society has been heartless long enough that large segments are bound to be lost causes. I think a gesture and a model and/or an outcry is about the best we can expect universities to provide. They could be doing all that better than now, I imagine, but I don't see what isn't being tried already that ought to be tried.
Just a note - I graduated from Gettysburg in '06, and my tuition was covered in full. I am the first person in my family to graduate from college. I am a female. I worked my tail off in high school to get good grades and graduated at the top of my class. I paid for my own SAT's (6 rounds of them to boost my scores) and also my own application fees. It was the only way I COULD go to college. My family is far from well off and I have two younger siblings. My dad worked three jobs at times to support us. I didn't have a car at the 'burg, and usually scraped through school on under $1,000 a year for expenses. I was extremely blessed by the school and its large endowment. I received a merit scholarship and the rest in grants. I realize small private liberal arts schools can have their downfalls, but for a student like me, who has now earned my MA in an accelerated program, it made all the difference. I didn't qualify for aid at UMASS or any other MA state school. I would have been thousands of dollars in debt. Gettysburg gave me a first rate education and a solid academic grounding. Don't be so quick to condemn-I know many others like me that valued our experience and every penny that went into funding it. Recognize the tremendous good that these institutions can do!
MAExpat,
The students aren't the only ones who get jaded. Stories like yours make us realize how much it can mean to show up and go to work, that we can, in fact, make a real difference with some folks.
Congrats on the MA!
Steve
MAExpat--
Well done! Congratulations! You're really a success story, and I applaud you. And I think you're absolutely right to point out that posh liberal arts colleges (PLACs) aren't rotten commodities. My point, though, is that they're overpriced for what they deliver.
For example...
The PLAC from which you graduated debt--mirabile dictu!--free has a current price tag of $40,270 per year (that's with "regular" room, as opposed to "middle rate" or "single" ones). Astoundingly, this is only $8000 less than the national median income of $48,201 (US Census, 2006).
You were one of the lucky graduates of PLACs to graduate debt-free. Most graduates are saddles with debt in the tens of thousands of dollars. Why? Does anyone really want to argue that an education at the nation's best state institutions isn't as good if not better than that offered by most PLACs? Is it really credible that Gettysburg College (for example) offers a superior educational experience to, say, the Universities of North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, or California at Berkeley? But it charges more:
University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill): In-state tuition: $5,340; Out-of-state: $20,988; Room & board: $7,696
University of Wisconsin (Madison): $6,000; $20,000; $6,920
University of Michigan (Dearborn):
$10,341; $30,154; $8,230
University of California (Berkeley):
$0; $18,684; $13,074
Even top-notch Ivy Leagues, which NOBODY thinks offer educations inferior to that offered by PLACs, are better bargains for what they deliver. For example:
Harvard: Tuition: $31,456; Room & Board: $14,164; Total: $45,620
Yale: $34,530; $10,470; $45,000
Duke: $34,335; $10,786; $45,121
Stanford: $34,800; $10,808; $45,608
To paraphrase General Smedley Butler, PLACs are a racket. They sell educations, true, and sometimes quite good ones. But they also sell status. What else could justify their outrageous pricetags?
Why is college tuition so high?
What is driving the cost?
"But they also sell status. What else could justify their outrageous pricetags?"
Kerry, while I agree with you that college education has become ridiculously expensive, I'm not sure your conclusion that status is responsible for the higher price tag completely holds water.
1) as you note, Stanford and Harvard cost (slightly) less than Gettysburg. Which name commands higher status? Gettysburg or Stanford and Harvard?
2) one big difference, both financially and, I'd argue, pedagogically, between large universities and small liberal arts colleges is the student-to-faculty ratio. If you can plant 100-200 students in a lecture hall and have one professor and an underpaid TA or two teach the class, you can charge less tuition for said class.
3) One thing driving the price tag up at expensive colleges (though it is clearly not the only thing to blame) is the pressure on such colleges to offer a "country club" experience, as some call it. The college that can't boast a fancy fitness center or whose landscaping falls by the wayside, or whose buildings look industrial and unfriendly (cough, Stony Brook) as opposed to collegial and, well, collegiate, is going to be (unfortunately) passed by for a similar college that "looks" nicer. In this case, it is what the "consumer" wants that's driving up the cost of the education.
Anyway, please don't take this as a wholesale rejection of your claims; I just think things are a little more complex than the claim that small liberal arts colleges have nothing but status to distinguish themselves and (try to) justify that price tag.
it's interesting, on the one hand we are saying "the quality of the eduction big research institutions and PLACs provide is overrated"; while on the other we are saying "we are doing a crappy job helping minorities and low income students get into these institutions (that provide a quality of education that is overrated)." Somehow there seems to be a disconnect here.
Another important issue to consider is the fact that Gettysburg gives out "merit" scholarships now instead of "need-based" scholarships. While MA Expat is an important exception a large number of the "merit" scholarships go to students whose parents make plenty of money and could pay full tuition. Furthermore, these students have scored such high SATs and gotten such excellent grades from good high schools precisely because of their socio-economic status.
So, by handing out "merit" scholarships, we are further rewarding socio-economic class. We aren't really holding true to our goal for diversity or any sort of mission to recruit students who would not ordinarily have such an opportunity to get a PLAC education.
yeah, I think you're right, I. it is more complex than my rant suggests. 
Gettysburg is paying a good chunk of my education, and while it might be called a "merit" scholarship, it was also very much "need-based."
Have you read the new book "Bridging the Class Divide"? It exposes that cost is not the primary block to college attendance and success, but preparation, and the differences between a poor/working class school and a middle/owning class school (all public schools).
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