After my newspaper column about college admissions, I heard from readers on topics that ranged from part-time faculty to relatively unknown schools that are gems. Parents offered encouragement, and bosses who've hired one too many "lazy" employees from the Ivies offered a different perspective on how graduates of top schools are perceived in the workplace. Thanks to Mark, Candace Tema and Tim for these comments:
"When I was at the University of Chicago for grad school I wouldn’t work with Harvard or Berkeley grads because they would not pull their weight. Now that I have my own company (15 employees,100% annual growth, etc.) I won’t even look at a Harvard, Berkeley and Stanford grad who hasn't already had two other employers. Who wants the headache of having to train someone to be minimally productive? I found that the grads are academically lazy (after they worked their butts off in high school to get to college, nothing was really required of them to get A’s), entitled (“What do you mean I didn’t get the promotion?” ) and ripped off (get them drunk and many reveal they are pissed about the quality of their education. They worked harder to get to X school and when they got there it was the old bait and switch. They were promised Prof. Y and got harried grad student Z)."
"A key factor which ought to shape the decisions families make regarding their children's college attendance is the ratio of part-time to full-time faculty. About 48% of all college teaching in the US is done by part-time faculty. (I'm one, working at <a school whose name Michelle deleted to protect the writer>.) If I were full-time, the school would pay me, say, $100,000 for teaching 4 courses per year. Since I'm part-time, the school gets away with paying me $5000 to teach a single course, and won't allow me to teach more. When a full-time instructor teaches the very same course that I do, he earns $25,000 (not to mention benefits). The school saves $20,000 by using part-time faculty to teach a course, which of course it does systematically, semester after semester, department after department. Colleges don't reduce tuition for students taught by part-time faculty. NYU, for example, charges two distinct groups of students the same tuition ($35,000 or so), but one group is taught almost exclusively by part-time faculty and the other group is taught by full-time faculty. The school pockets the immense difference."
"I would like to suggest Elon University in North Carolina. I work in a school and come in contact with students while they are doing their student teaching. They love Elon. It is located in a beautiful small town environment with all the conveniences of a larger town that is 5 minutes away."
"With 2 kids at an Ivy League college (that begins with a C) who actually were camp counselors during the summer, I schlepped both my son and daughter to a total of about 25 colleges in the course of about 3 years. I really thought it was ridiculous for people to spends hundreds, some probably thousands of dollars on college advisers. Anyone who is really interested can figure the process out themselves. There are plenty of books. The same went for tutors. Like a friend of mine once said, 'It’s not if you have a tutor, but who your tutor is.' " Bull. Who is going to tutor them once they are in the college they really should not have been admitted to because they did not reveal their true abilities?"
I spent most of last week driving around the Midwest, visiting colleges with my 17-year-old daughter. On every campus tour, we ran into families who, just like us, were looking for "the right fit" and who had traveled hundreds of miles to investigate.
