The Higher Education Thread

[LA Ute]

This is a thread about higher ed, including professional schools like medicine, dentristry, law, and business. I think we can have some interesting discussions here about all of that. We even have a professor or two among our ranks.

I'll start with this:

The Golf Shot Heard Round the Academic World

Funded by Mr. Klingenstein, researchers from the National Association of Scholars studied speeches by Bowdoin presidents and deans, formal statements of the college's principles, official faculty reports and notes of faculty meetings, academic course lists and syllabi, books and articles by professors, the archive of the Bowdoin Orient newspaper and more. They analyzed the school's history back to its founding in 1794, focusing on the past 45 years—during which, they argue, Bowdoin's character changed dramatically for the worse.

Published Wednesday, the report demonstrates how Bowdoin has become an intellectual monoculture dedicated above all to identity politics....


The Klingenstein report nicely captures the illiberal or fallacious aspects of this campus doctrine, but the paper’s true contribution is in recording some of its absurd manifestations at Bowdoin. For example, the college has “no curricular requirements that center on the American founding or the history of the nation.” Even history majors aren’t required to take a single course in American history. In the History Department, no course is devoted to American political, military, diplomatic or intellectual history—the only ones available are organized around some aspect of race, class, gender or sexuality.


One of the few requirements is that Bowdoin students take a yearlong freshman seminar. Some of the 37 seminars offered this year: “Affirmative Action and U.S. Society,” “Fictions of Freedom,” “Racism,” “Queer Gardens” (which “examines the work of gay and lesbian gardeners and traces how marginal identities find expression in specific garden spaces”), “Sexual Life of Colonialism” and “Modern Western Prostitutes.”

Regarding Bowdoin professors, the report estimates that “four or five out of approximately 182 full-time faculty members might be described as politically conservative.” In the 2012 election cycle, 100% of faculty donations went to President Obama.

I'm one of those conservatives who supports and thinks he understands higher education. One aspect of attending the U. of U. that I loved and am grateful for is the exposure it gave me to different ideas, different worldviews, and the like. I feel I had a truly liberal education, in the classical sense. I want that for all my kids. But based on the above I wouldn't want to fork out the money necessary for a Bowdoin education.

[Solon]

That was a good read. Thanks for posting, LA_Ute

I'm the first to agree that there's a lot of BS in today's Academy, and it sounds like Bowdoin has some big problems, but the article's injection of liberal/conservative politics to suggest that those with liberal politics are somehow unpatriotic is nonsense.

This paragraph is particularly galling:

The school's ideological pillars would likely be familiar to anyone who has paid attention to American higher education lately. There's the obsession with race, class, gender and sexuality as the essential forces of history and markers of political identity. There's the dedication to "sustainability," or saving the planet from its imminent destruction by the forces of capitalism. And there are the paeans to "global citizenship," or loving all countries except one's own.

These are the issues of our day. Of course the Academy should be fostering debate on them.
Obviously, we should condemn one-sidedness (from those in either political camp), but the fundamental elements of a college education aren't just swallowing information (you can do that for free at wikipedia). It's learning to engage and to interpret and to rationally inquire into things like cause/effect, ethics, values, justice, and to solve problems using this information. Only a poor professor would insist that all students agree with him/her personally. The students should learn to draw their own rationally based conclusions from their own critical analyses. There are plenty of so-called "conservative" colleges where rational debate in certain fields is discouraged. These deserve the same condemnation as the departments offering lame fluff-classes to promote social agendas (and, really, to bump enrollments).

In response to the condemnation of Bowdoin's History offerings, it sounds like that school has some real problems. But the Gen. Ed requirements at most colleges & universities today require some type of US History or Civics course to familiarize students with the basics of American history and the ethics & values of America's political system (nevermind that US students should have learned all this in High School). Bowdoin College aside, there's a healthy amount of effort that goes into fulfilling this requirement at many universities, sometimes to the detriment of the program's overall health (i.e., a bunch of highly educated people teaching course after course of high-school-level US history).

Second, for better or for worse, the overall trend in History Departments today is away from political or national histories per se, since these institutions are often anachronistic to the place/time in question. Plus, historians are often affected by the pressing issues of their own times, and these issues are projected into their inquires into the past. For instance, the 1960s saw a proliferation of monographs about race/ethnicity in historical contexts. The 1970s witnessed more studies about women's issues and history in the past. In the 1980s & 1990s, it was economic theories & gender studies. Today, it's about trans-nationalism, migration, and memory in a rapidly changing world. For better or for worse, the questions historians are asking are closely tied to the questions working through contemporary society. In a sense, this relationship between the past and present is a strong justification for the reasons why we study history, that is we study history in order to better understand ourselves.

In this sense, it is absolutely relevant to focus on the "Identity" component of historical inquiry. Furthermore, the underlying assumption of a shared US identity is increasingly coming under attack. More and more, I think, we can identify a 'Western' ethos in the liberal democratic societies of today, but the deconstruction of the US foundation myths isn't just gratuitous iconoclasm, it's a realization that the experiences of rich, white, educated (mostly male) people aren't the historical norm in the US or any other country. Other people's stories bring texture, depth, variety, and context to the narrative. Don't get me wrong. Students should still learn the basics of US history, especially those values/ethics components that connect back to the ancients and forward to the present, but women's history, African American history, Native American history, etc. are relevant voices too.

[LA Ute]

That was a good read. Thanks for posting, LA_Ute

I'm the first to agree that there's a lot of BS in today's Academy, and it sounds like Bowdoin has some big problems, but the article's injection of liberal/conservative politics to suggest that those with liberal politics are somehow unpatriotic is nonsense....

In this sense, it is absolutely relevant to focus on the "Identity" component of historical inquiry. Furthermore, the underlying assumption of a shared US identity is increasingly coming under attack. More and more, I think, we can identify a 'Western' ethos in the liberal democratic societies of today, but the deconstruction of the US foundation myths isn't just gratuitous iconoclasm, it's a realization that the experiences of rich, white, educated (mostly male) people aren't the historical norm in the US or any other country. Other people's stories bring texture, depth, variety, and context to the narrative. Don't get me wrong. Students should still learn the basics of US history, especially those values/ethics components that connect back to the ancients and forward to the present, but women's history, African American history, Native American history, etc. are relevant voices too.

Thanks, with that added perspective you've taken the sharp edge off my annoyance at Bowdoin. I also think the WSJ piece was a bit too right-wing in its criticisms. Still, I'm concerned about what I see as a tendency for universities to be ideologically one-dimensional. My son took a social-behavioral science course at the U. last fall and shared with me the study guide for the final exam. In the guide the professor supplied the "right" answers to the questions. Those answers read like a Saturday Night Live parody of a left-wing college professor's world view on controversial issues. If I can find it I'll share it with you. Stuff like that just seems intellectually dishonest to me. I still like the idea of the university being a place where ideas collide and are analyzed, and thinking is prized over orthodoxy.

EDIT: I also think what the American Founders accomplished was terribly and globally important and deserves study, even if they were white privileged males.

[LA Ute]

I'd just like to talk with my kids (and their generation) about Shakespeare's great tragedies and not get blank stares.

[wuapinmon]

I'd just like to talk with my kids (and their generation) about Shakespeare's great tragedies and not get blank stares.

And people of a century ago felt the same way about Plato and Xenophon.

I understand the ideas behind Great Books. I think it's discouraging that someone can graduate from Coker College without ever having taken a single history course. There are some classes that make me scratch my head, but the level of inspection of themes and ideas has never been broader. While I scratch my head at a course on gay gardening for credit, I don't know the syllabus, I don't know the way the topic is approached, and I don't know the way the course is credited. I do know that it's easy to go WTF at course titles, but there are many ways that that course might be beneficial. For example, have the dual incomes of homosexuals allowed them to revitalize the urban garden (or rooftop, or suburban)? If so, are we reading the gardens as texts. Gardens have long histories, including significant religious ones, is the course examining the history of gardens vis as vis modernism, via queer theory, via nature theory?

These kids come to me at 18 cocksure, overblown, yet asking for permission to use the bathroom and sharpen their pencils, confident that their parents had it all figured out. I'd like for them to get outside of their comfort zone and study things that make them uncomfortable, that make them question everything, that make them learn new systems and cultures.

They get a steady diet of teaching to the test about curriculum standards in high school. College shouldn't be about that (though the accrediting bodies are flexing ever more muscle as legislators require proof of "mission" from the public higher-ed schools.

For Liberal Arts required credit (they make choose options from 'baskets' like "Humanities," "Cultural Diversity," "Natural Sciences," "Behavioral Sciences," "Arts," and "the United States.") I teach or have taught courses called, "US Latinos" (United States), "Reggae, Rastafari, and Robert Nesta Marley" (elective), "Banana cultivation and Latin-American Literature" (Cultural Diversity), "Spain: Culture & Civ" (Humanities), "Latin American: Culture & Civ" (Cultural Diversity), "Latin American Literature" (Cultural Diversity), Latin-American Film (elective), and Afro-Hispano Literature & Culture (Cultural Diversity).

I use the Socratic Method when I teach. I'm also not convinced that a curriculum built around identity politics is necessarily a bad thing. While it certainly differs from what's been done in the past, evolution often requires a culling of that which no longer keeps up. Kids don't want Great Books classes, legislators and parents want them.

I just want kids to be intellectually curious, but until we disrupt public education at the primary and secondary levels, we'll be waiting for that to return like a certain carpenter.

[tooblue]

I just want kids to be intellectually curious, but until we disrupt public education at the primary and secondary levels, we'll be waiting for that to return like a certain carpenter.

This statement perfectly illustrates the real problem. Who’s lead do you think primary and secondary education follows? Curriculum is a top down phenomenon. Those who write it were trained in the hallowed halls of academia, subject to liberal education in copious amounts. Standardized curriculum and testing is ultimately a consequence. The real question is, is it a type of rebellion?

You may be right about one thing. The culling is coming but it may not be what you think:

http://www.wired.com/business/2013/0...rm-capitalism/

Howe: If you had to list some industries right now that are either in a state of disruptive crisis or will be soon, what would they be?

Christensen: Journalism, certainly, and publishing broadly. Anything supported by advertising. That all of this is being disrupted is now beyond question. And then I think higher education is just on the edge of the crevasse. Generally, universities are doing very well financially, so they don’t feel from the data that their world is going to collapse. But I think even five years from now these enterprises are going to be in real trouble.

Christensen: The availability of online learning. It will take root in its simplest applications, then just get better and better. You know, Harvard Business School doesn’t teach accounting anymore, because there’s a guy out of BYU whose online accounting course is so good. He is extraordinary, and our accounting faculty, on average, is average.

Howe: What happens to all our institutions of advanced learning?

Christensen: Some will survive. Most will evolve hybrid models, in which universities license some courses from an online provider like Coursera but then provide more-specialized courses in person. Hybrids are actually a principle regardless of industry. If you want to use a new technology in a mainstream existing market, it has to be a hybrid. It’s like the electric car. If you want to have a viable electric car, you have to ask if there is a market where the customers want a car that won’t go far or fast. The answer is, parents of teenagers would love to put their teens in a car that won’t go far or fast. Little by little, the technology will emerge to take it on longer trips. But if you want to have this new technology employed on the California freeways right now, it has to be a hybrid like a Prius, where you take the best of the old with the best of the new.

---------

It’s not that established players can’t see the disruptions coming; they almost always do.

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/02...-going-really/

[tooblue]

This statement perfectly illustrates the real problem. Who’s lead do you think primary and secondary education follows? Curriculum is a top down phenomenon. Those who write it were trained in the hallowed halls of academia, subject to liberal education in copious amounts. Standardized curriculum and testing is ultimately a consequence. The real question is, is it a type of rebellion?

You may be right about one thing. The culling is coming but it may not be what you think:

http://www.wired.com/business/2013/0...rm-capitalism/



---------



http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/02...-going-really/

I shared this video elsewhere. It's applicable:

[wuapinmon]

This statement perfectly illustrates the real problem. Who’s lead do you think primary and secondary education follows? Curriculum is a top down phenomenon. Those who write it were trained in the hallowed halls of academia, subject to liberal education in copious amounts. Standardized curriculum and testing is ultimately a consequence.

Pedagogues and Ed.D. are a special breed bureaucrats and Napoleons combined. They don't give two shits about the Liberal Arts. If they had it their way they'd only teach 4 years of education classes.

Since SACS began assessment standardization what has happened to primary and secondary education? It's gone to shit in this country. That you think that the consequence of copious amounts of Liberal Arts education is the cause of standardized curricula indicates to me that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

[tooblue]

Pedagogues and Ed.D. are a special breed bureaucrats and Napoleons combined. They don't give two shits about the Liberal Arts. If they had it their way they'd only teach 4 years of education classes.

Since SACS began assessment standardization what has happened to primary and secondary education? It's gone to shit in this country. That you think that the consequence of copious amounts of Liberal Arts education is the cause of standardized curricula indicates to me that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

My thoughts are speculation based upon personal experience as a curriculum specialist in my particular area of concern. I am on record in support of liberal arts. Hence I chose to pursue a masters and a PhD in the liberal arts. Perhaps you are reading into my comments what you want to read in place of what is written. Your emphatic use of vulgarity is telling. Regardless, curriculum is a top down phenomenon. And there are many types of Pedagogues directing it, present company included.

[tooblue]

The death of the university at the hands of the internet is a very popular prophesy these days. The New York Times seems to have an article every other week on the subject. I hope they are wrong, or at least that they are wrong on how fast it will come.

I don't see it as death per se, more an evolution through natural selection. It's happening quickly but, not as quickly as the media has prophesied.

[UtahDan]

I don't see it as death per se, more an evolution through natural selection. It's happening quickly but, not as quickly as the media has prophesied.

I hope you can leave space for people to believe that this process you are describing is divinely guided, either directly or using this "natural selection" you speak of.

[LA Ute]

This is a review of what appears to be a balanced look at an old subject:

Self-Fulfilling Professorial Politics

Conspiracy theories abound when it comes to professors and politics. To hear some conservatives tell it, a liberal-dominated professoriate attempts to brainwash students and to keep out of the faculty club any who challenge leftist orthodoxy. Ph.D. programs in the humanities teach some sort of secret handshake that lets those with politically correct views land the best jobs. To hear some liberals talk about it, there is no such thing as a liberal professoriate. Rather, a well-financed group of conservatives and their foundations use the politics issue to trash higher education. If there aren't more conservative professors around, it's because those on the right prefer the world of money to the world of ideas, and flock to Wall Street.

Neil Gross will disappoint most of the conspiracy theorists with his new book, Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care?, which is being released today by Harvard University Press....

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2...#ixzz2Q0nw5Wx0
Inside Higher Ed

[Harry Tic]

I'd just like to talk with my kids (and their generation) about Shakespeare's great tragedies and not get blank stares.

This is right on. It astounds me how culturally illiterate young people are today. Nothing can get me to go into cranky old man mode faster than talking to someone in their early 20s who has no idea about the fall of the Berlin Wall or who Fidel Castro is. Hell, I'd be happy if they could get an occasional Seinfeld reference.

[Solon]

This is right on. It astounds me how culturally illiterate young people are today. Nothing can get me to go into cranky old man mode faster than talking to someone in their early 20s who has no idea about the fall of the Berlin Wall or who Fidel Castro is. Hell, I'd be happy if they could get an occasional Seinfeld reference.

I also feel like a "you kids get off my lawn" old man, but the ease of acquiring information has both spoiled and empowered this generation of college kids to an amazing degree, and I think educators are still trying to catch up. My students can find information in a flash. They have a harder time assessing the reliability of that information. They have a really hard time interpreting that information to formulate independent or original analysis.

The information is important, but I've learned that students can always get information. I'm much more interested in training students to think. This realization has radically altered the way I teach.

[Scratch]

I'm fine with this thread as long as no one questions the value of three of my law school courses: Law and Film, Space Law, and Just War Theory. I didn't try to get into The Book of Job or Law in Japanese Literature.

[tooblue]

I also feel like a "you kids get off my lawn" old man, but the ease of acquiring information has both spoiled and empowered this generation of college kids to an amazing degree, and I think educators are still trying to catch up. My students can find information in a flash. They have a harder time assessing the reliability of that information. They have a really hard time interpreting that information to formulate independent or original analysis.

The information is important, but I've learned that students can always get information. I'm much more interested in training students to think. This realization has radically altered the way I teach.

Being a lowly Community College professor hired because of my success in my respective industry and with a mere MFA, that I recently earned, I may to be qualified to fully comment in this thread. Yet, your lament above strikes me as all too familiar and astute. Though, it's more than an inability to interpret or analyze information in my experience. The conundrum, as I see it, is a lack of self-awareness among my students. Virtually everything they submit in the form of research or project work is relational to their contemporary culture. If an idea cannot be distilled into a popular meme is has no influence on their perception of reality.

The goal for me as a post-secondary educator is not only to get them to think, but to awaken a primal creative capacity that seems to be lying dormant. It's difficult. There are only so many derivative designs or works of art that can be created based upon The Walking Dead.

[LA Ute]

Very informative, wuap. As a parting curmudgeonly note on this subject. I didn't want to study Shakespeare either, until I had a teacher who made him live for me.

[LA Ute]

This woman seems rightly depressed:

Thesis Hatement: Getting a literature Ph.D. will turn you into an emotional trainwreck, not a professor.

I had no idea it was this bad.

I now realize graduate school was a terrible idea because the full-time, tenure-track literature professorship is extinct. After four years of trying, I’ve finally gotten it through my thick head that I will not get a job—and if you go to graduate school, neither will you. You might think your circumstances will be different. So did I. There’s a little fable from Kafka, appropriately called ‘A Little Fable,’ that speaks to why this was very stupid. . . . Someone has to get these jobs. Well, someone also has to not die from small-cell lung cancer to give the disease its 6 percent survival rate, but would you smoke four packs a day with the specific intention of being in that 6 percent? No, because that’s stupid. Well, tenure-track positions in my field have about 150 applicants each. Multiply that 0.6 percent chance of getting any given job by the 10 or so appropriate positions in the entire world, and you have about that same 6 percent chance of ‘success.’ If you wouldn’t bet your life on such ludicrous odds, then why would you bet your livelihood?

[CardiacCoug]

This is a thread about higher ed, including professional schools like medicine, dentristry, law, and business. I think we can have some interesting discussions here about all of that. We even have a professor or two among our ranks.

I'll start with this:

The Golf Shot Heard Round the Academic World



I'm one of those conservatives who supports and thinks he understands higher education. One aspect of attending the U. of U. that I loved and am grateful for is the exposure it gave me to different ideas, different worldviews, and the like. I feel I had a truly liberal education, in the classical sense. I want that for all my kids. But based on the above I wouldn't want to fork out the money necessary for a Bowdoin education.

The importance that some families and kids put on getting into Ivy League or similar caliber schools is totally ridiculous.

A daughter of one of my colleagues just learned that she didn't get into Dartmouth and was completely crushed by it, totally out of proportion to any significance of this event. One of the main reasons students and parents continue to shell out ridiculous amounts of money is because it's not the education they are buying -- they (both student and parents) are buying status, validation, and self-worth. It's an interesting phenomenon but a lot of people relate to college (and obviously high school) choice a lot like they relate to what car they drive. They only enjoy the college/car for what they perceive it says about them and not for its own merits.

[LA Ute]

The importance that some families and kids put on getting into Ivy League or similar caliber schools is totally ridiculous.

A daughter of one of my colleagues just learned that she didn't get into Dartmouth and was completely crushed by it, totally out of proportion to any significance of this event. One of the main reasons students and parents continue to shell out ridiculous amounts of money is because it's not the education they are buying -- they (both student and parents) are buying status, validation, and self-worth. It's an interesting phenomenon but a lot of people relate to college (and obviously high school) choice a lot like they relate to what car they drive. They only enjoy the college/car for what they perceive it says about them and not for its own merits.

This Ross Douthat piece in the NYT is about how the Ivies are more about connections than education. It's a foreign world to me so I don't know if he is right. I have plenty of colleagues who went to Harvard Law School (and similar schools) and they don't seem any better-connected than the rest of us, but I think Douthat (a prep school and Harvard grad) is talking about the undergraduate experience.

[Scratch]

The importance that some families and kids put on getting into Ivy League or similar caliber schools is totally ridiculous.

A daughter of one of my colleagues just learned that she didn't get into Dartmouth and was completely crushed by it, totally out of proportion to any significance of this event. One of the main reasons students and parents continue to shell out ridiculous amounts of money is because it's not the education they are buying -- they (both student and parents) are buying status, validation, and self-worth. It's an interesting phenomenon but a lot of people relate to college (and obviously high school) choice a lot like they relate to what car they drive. They only enjoy the college/car for what they perceive it says about them and not for its own merits.

I agree that it is silly to make college attendance a status symbol, but as this thread has shown, there are plenty of instances where attending an Ivy (or, more importantly, an elite institution in the given field) is vitally important. For example, if you're getting a Ph.D. and want to teach college, you better be going to one of the absolute elite Ph.D. programs in the country. I'm a lawyer, and law is very similar, especially now. Now, I don't think where you go to law school has a lot to do with how good of a lawyer you will become (assuming you have the abilities in the first place), but if you look at the hiring patterns right now, it's pretty hard to get a good job out of law school unless you went to a top school. The difference between going to law school at a top 10 or 15 school and a very good but not great law school like Utah or BYU is so monumentally different in the opportunities available at graduation that failing to get into such a program in the current legal market could be a justifiable cause for concern. I don't know exactly how it shakes out for other professions, but this is undeniable in law right now.

Again, I'm not saying that there is some sort of automatic significant difference in a graduate of these institutions, or the actual education a student will receive, but it's impossible to deny the actual numbers that are seen for recent law grads.

[concerned]

I agree that it is silly to make college attendance a status symbol, but as this thread has shown, there are plenty of instances where attending an Ivy (or, more importantly, an elite institution in the given field) is vitally important. For example, if you're getting a Ph.D. and want to teach college, you better be going to one of the absolute elite Ph.D. programs in the country. I'm a lawyer, and law is very similar, especially now. Now, I don't think where you go to law school has a lot to do with how good of a lawyer you will become (assuming you have the abilities in the first place), but if you look at the hiring patterns right now, it's pretty hard to get a good job out of law school unless you went to a top school. The difference between going to law school at a top 10 or 15 school and a very good but not great law school like Utah or BYU is so monumentally different in the opportunities available at graduation that failing to get into such a program in the current legal market could be a justifiable cause for concern. I don't know exactly how it shakes out for other professions, but this is undeniable in law right now.

Again, I'm not saying that there is some sort of automatic significant difference in a graduate of these institutions, or the actual education a student will receive, but it's impossible to deny the actual numbers that are seen for recent law grads.

It has always, always been hard to get tenure track teaching positions at every level. When I was in college, I was an English lit major and thought long and hard about going to English lit grad school. My sophmore year, I took a Shakespeare class, where the TA was about to get his PHD. He was possibly the most insightful grad student I ever had as a ta, and he had a great pedigree (Princeton undergrad, yale PHD). He posted all of his rejections on his office wall. There were dozens of them; they covered the entire office. I dont remember where he finally got an offer and where he ended up. but it convinced me to go to law school (after a frolic and detour in journalism).

[Scratch]

That is absolutely correct about PhD programs and law schools. I have also seen it with MBAs. I am less certain about med schools, since my doctor friends who went to fancy med schools and my doctor friends who studied in the caribbean all ended up with similar jobs.

But grad school is not really the issue here. The question is - does it matter where you go as an undergrad? There's no simple answer, and it depends on your goals.

If it's just undergrad, I agree that it's not terribly important for most areas. There may be some exceptions, but my take on careers that require post-grad studies is that you just need to get into an undergrad that is good enough that it will not foreclose grad school opportunities. In other words, an undergrad that is good enough to get you into any grad program if you do great in undergrad and do all of the other things necessary for a strong application. When I was deciding where to go to undergrad, an attorney who was a Rhodes scholar who did his undergrad at Oxford and Stanford gave me this exact advice and told me in the long run it wouldn't make a difference.

[concerned]

If it's just undergrad, I agree that it's not terribly important for most areas. There may be some exceptions, but my take on careers that require post-grad studies is that you just need to get into an undergrad that is good enough that it will not foreclose grad school opportunities. In other words, an undergrad that is good enough to get you into any grad program if you do great in undergrad and do all of the other things necessary for a strong application. When I was deciding where to go to undergrad, an attorney who was a Rhodes scholar who did his undergrad at Oxford and Stanford gave me this exact advice and told me in the long run it wouldn't make a difference.

You took advice from Pat Shea? I cant believe Scott Matheson would have given you that advice. (just kidding)

[OceanBlue]

I've been lurking this thread and find it interesting as I have a H.S. junior who is planning on going to college. Are you guys stating that what undergrad school you go to does not make a difference ? In job market or for grad school ?

My son is all over the place on what he wants to do for a living. One week it is law enforcement the next he is into economics. He has taken three languages in HS and his reading scores for the ACT and SAT are in the top 99%. Math is average. I wish he had one school he really wants but he doesn't. I am very stressed on where he will go to school.
Any advice would be appreciated.

[wuapinmon]

I've been lurking this thread and find it interesting as I have a H.S. junior who is planning on going to college. Are you guys stating that what undergrad school you go to does not make a difference ? In job market or for grad school ?

My son is all over the place on what he wants to do for a living. One week it is law enforcement the next he is into economics. He has taken three languages in HS and his reading scores for the ACT and SAT are in the top 99%. Math is average. I wish he had one school he really wants but he doesn't. I am very stressed on where he will go to school.
Any advice would be appreciated.

He should go where they want HIM. With that score, he could get all kinds of money from a mid-level private college. Has he looked at Elon or Furman?

[OceanBlue]

Sancho, Thanks for the response. His GPA isn't that good around 3.9 this semester weighted, higher earlier this year. 4.0 is safe to say. 28 ACT 1880 SAT. My wife really wanted him to go to Provo but I doubt it with his GPA. Eagle Scout, Natl Honor Society, football. Not good enough for UNC our state school but probaby good enough for NC State. We would like him to go to school at a place where he can meet other LDS kids. He is the only male LDS in his HS and he gets along well but doesn't have really tight friends. Thats why we are thinking of out west. We really wish he had a strong opinion on where wants to go but he is pretty open minded. Any thoughts ?

[Diehard Ute]

Well at least in Salt Lake businesses are allowed to decide for themselves if being open on Sunday is ok...it's not left to voters

[FMCoug]

Well at least in Salt Lake businesses are allowed to decide for themselves if being open on Sunday is ok...it's not left to voters

Hey if you're trying to get me to defend the crazies you'll be disappointed. I'm just saying it from a California/ Texas Mormon's perspective, all of Utah is pretty weird.

[Diehard Ute]

I'm not trying for anything. Just pointing out where the real oddballs are.

As someone who isn't LDS the northern half of Salt Lake county is pretty nice. The further south or north you go it gets weirder.