Posts
‘SUNY to boost online offerings, push early graduation’
Grace's post reminds me of something a student in one of my classes told me. It was very sweet.
I teach in a small, non-selective college that has no campus life whatsoever and is short on dorm space to boot. So a lot of the kids live in a large chain hotel and are bused back and forth.
My student was from Staten Island and had chosen to live in the hotel instead of commuting to school because, he said, "I wanted to have the college experience."
Meanwhile C. tells me he's not getting the "college experience" because he attends a university with neither a campus nor a football team.
He has a point.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
12 comments:
Wait, I thought C was at NYU. That campus is incredible. It is urban, yes, but completely a residential college experience. I went to a similar university myself.
Yup - he's at NYU.
He doesn't think he's on a campus!
Maybe he's not talking about the campus so much, though, as the no-football.
Where did you go?
One can have a campus and no football. The UCSC campus has one of the loveliest settings of a campus anywhere, with miles of meadows and redwood forests and lovely views of Monterey Bay (it is a mile from the entrance to campus to my office).
But there is no professional athletics (that is, no athletic "scholarships") and no football stadium.
Actually, he's not too far off, RE the football team.
Kids generally shop based on amenities, but what really matters is the alumni network and the career tracks open to the school's graduates. Especially on the East Coast, if you're not from the right school, the career tracks to the upper echelons are closed to all but the most gifted and tenacious.
Also, MOOCs are a red herring just for this reason. The naive and ever more exploited middle class will fall for it, but if you want to make it at Goldman or it's equivalent in the Federal bureaucracy, it's an on-campus network from a top 20 or no-dice.
I saw a quip a while back about the number of Harvard & Yale degrees among the last 6 or 8 Presidential candidates in the general election... there's more degrees than candidates.
As the middle class shrinks, and the avenues into it get more crowded, those already there will ensure their progeny have an inside track.
Just like the Constitution states, BTW, but seems conveniently forgotten in the immigration debates; along with supply & demand curves for labor prices. Curious that.
"We the People of the United States... to ourselves and our Posterity"
Nothing wrong with that. And I don't see it requiring us to extend the same to 11 million and counting foreign nationals just because they had the wherewithal to make it to our shores by hook or crook.
I saw a quip a while back about the number of Harvard & Yale degrees among the last 6 or 8 Presidential candidates in the general election... there's more degrees than candidates.
yikes
Especially on the East Coast, if you're not from the right school, the career tracks to the upper echelons are closed to all but the most gifted and tenacious.
Wall Street is especially bad that way.
Someone in town told me the big banks have ***separate*** 'welcome' parties for new hires who went to the Ivies. (That is, they have one party for new hires who went to Ivies & another party for new hires who didn't go to Ivies. The woman who told me this is married to a man who works on Wall Street, so I'm inclined to believe her.)
I don't know whether two-tier parties are still going on 5 years after the recession.... but they may well be.
The Stephen Colbert Show is chock full of interns from NYU......
NYU is actually a feeder school for the financials, who snap up PhD's from the Courant like hotcakes
froggiemama -- interesting!
Thank you!
C. is not en route to the financials, but good to know! (I'm not being sarcastic---)
I know nothing about hiring in NYC, but I have the impression that NYU kids are at least in the running.
A friend of mine who runs a music management business has hired an Ivy League & an NYU grad, and he says the NYU grad is better ---- I take that to heart!
I have a bit of a fantasy that his Jesuit high school gives him a Jesuit high school network (I bet that's true) & NYU may give him something of an NYU network --- neither of which will mean anything if he lives elsewhere, of course.
I'm guessing that there's a fairly strong Jesuit 'connection' or 'network' ---- something of that nature.
C's guidance counselor turns out to have been right: Midwest Jesuit colleges do give substantial scholarships to the graduates of his school.
There's a quality to the graduates of Jesuit schools that's colleges want (and certainly Jesuit colleges want).
btw, this is something I don't think I've said before, but Jesuit high schools, at least in my experience, aren't just good schools, and they aren't just religious schools.
They're a kind of "finishing school" for boys. When you visit one of these schools, you see that the boys have manners that are really pretty unique to them, I think.
A parent in town told me that Catholic boys schools in general "make men of their students" and I think that's true, too, at least from what I've seen.
Post a Comment