But people do have an understanding that some schools are better than others. That's why Harvard has prestige and is well known even in those neighborhoods and some random school doesn't.
I'm not sure what your point is. Nobody mentioned Harvard. This de-values the efforts of parents to improve their kids education. If you devalue something, you get less of it. Simple as that.
I have 2 kids in college right now. One goes to a non-Harvard Ivy League school, the other one is at a state school. My wife and I both went to an average state school (as far as college rankings are concerned). We've gotten more insight than usual into our kid's academics as both of them have been home this spring and taking online classes due to the Covid outbreak. The level of academic rigor and the high expectations at the Ivy league school are through the roof compared to my own college experience and my other kid's academics. I frankly don't think I could have handled it had I been able to attend a school of that caliber. I can't speak for Harvard specifically but I have my doubts that an average student would survive for very long at some of these elite schools. I also have my doubts that their teaching style would scale real well to a large number of students. They rely heavily on hiring exceptional professors and giving them a significant amount of autonomy in the classroom. The class sizes are very small by university standards and the vast majority of assignments and tests are hand written and graded by the professor.
Some parts of Harvard are world class, while others are riding on brand recognition. I've been at Harvard and several other schools, and Harvard had the highest ratio of brand to substance and in many cases was strictly inferior to the good state schools.
Why tunnel vision on particularities of one private institution when the presumed reason for caring in the first place is fairness in access to higher education? Harvard enrolls 1,200 pupils/year. That's a rounding error.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, obviously they shouldn't fly completely under the radar on egregious shit (e.g. racial discrimination), but too much public attention on it reinforces the lie that admission to Harvard has any importance to society.
They want to be a 43% legacy/athlete/family school? Cool. When I hire applicants fresh out of school, I already operate with the understanding that most applicants managed to skate by in their studies. And after 5 years of experience, I couldn't give less of a shit about formal education.
Bay Area student here. I'm certainly not going to Harvard for my undergrad (and not like I care), but unfortunately the mindset within parents here (and students, to an extent) is that the arbiter of success is an elite institution like Harvard.
reply