I really want to hear a good reason why we need these top universities ATM...if they even are top at science research still (the most important form of academia). I'm talking the .025% that really just serve as gatekeepers to high-pay low-effort work of Urban America.
Lower tier universities serve the same purpose these days. Maybe always -- IDK, I wasn't alive back then to look at Harvard classrooms and ones from a typical state university. But I have -- in person -- seen the difference in teaching quality today.
In general, the top tier universities do not teach better. They are just there with a clipboard to make sure those pre-selected for success make it. There is actually very little teaching. It's just lectures, scantrons, short-answer/long-answer test questions (the best way to determine if someone actually knows something) are graded by overwhelmed graduate students that grade you based on who you sit next to in a 2-hour crunch session.
Nothing they teach at Harvard (except graduate-level stuff) is unique to Harvard (Yale, Stanford, whatever). There are some private schools that do teach things uniquely....I tend to associate this with Christian/conservative themed colleges. They don't have a great rap these days with many people inside the academy.
So why go to Harvard? Because it's a class signal: "look at me I got into Harvard." I don't hate those people for that -- but that's what it is lets not BS. Harvard doesn't create natural superiors by educating them better -- it affirms their pre-existing status as children of the elite.
It's one of the primary means of wealth entrenchment.
Another form of elite is people born with extremely rare talent and get in too. That's just as good as being born with money to an extent. These people are always helped -- it's not like America has historically kept their most talented citizens down. In yet, Harvard et al. trumpet out these people like they are proven examples of their benevolent behavior toward the less fortunate. Like they should get a round of applause for letting some poor girl with a 3.9 in that wants to major in Bio-chem. Yea -- thanks Harvard -- no one could have managed that but you.
If you find yourself lamenting the bout of criticism directed toward elite universities -- maybe you should ask yourself what kind of society you really want. What kind of "quality leadership" have these institutions been producing recently?
|