How to fix the Big East

[boog204]

No schools outside of maybe 10 nationally make a difference when it comes to academics. You're buying a commodity.

I remember a kid showing me pictures from her visits to High Point and Alabama, and those campuses are insanely nice. Even with the changes at Storrs, there's really no comparison.

 

[upstater]

No schools outside of maybe 10 nationally make a difference when it comes to academics. You're buying a commodity.

What do you mean by difference?

Many colleges have their characters and particulars. I could name a dozen ways in which the selection of the right school matters.

But just to start:

1. Rigor. There's a world of difference between many schools and others. It doesn't mean students want that, but the schools offering it attract a different kind of student.

2. Specialties. If you're targeting a discipline, whatever it is, it could be theater, film, engineering, etc., some schools have it, some schools don't.

3. Campus culture (where is a school located? Who goes there? Networks?). This is why I'd say going to NYU gives you very hard to reproduce results if you attended, for instance, Miami FLA instead.

There are a lot more variables involved.

I had a parent of my child's classmate ask me to give my opinion of a department at a New England private university that is in the middle of the rankings. Clark U. I saw that the department of interest didn't have a single permanent faculty member, they were all contingent. The kid ended up at a satellite SUNY where she'll get a much better education to prepare her for law school.

 

[upstater]

Generally it's for the campus atmosphere. The kids want to be part of a spectacle. It's not for the academics (though a few schools in SEC such as Florida are good).

I do believe that, but we also need to look at what's changed to create the culture shift.

Since 2008, prices for university even at the public state level have skyrocketed. Some of that is increased costs nationally for things like health care and new tech. This has forced the hand of public schools especially down south which have seen a pullback in state support and state funding. So they've jacked up rates.

The counter to this is a move from admitting only 15-20% of out-of-staters to now going to 50% out-of-staters who will pay a higher rate and balance school budgets.

I just went through my oldest applying to colleges and we saw this same dynamic at work at U. Michigan and U. Virginia. For decades, these schools were legendary for being very hard to get into out-of-state. I knew kids that got into Ivys but were rejected as OOS applicants at UVa.

Not so anymore. Right now, you seem to have a BETTER chance of admission if you're coming from out of state than in-state.

 

[freescooter]

Who is going to be your new team? Alabama?

There are lots of people who root for Dayton and Faifield and I’m told even a few DePaul and Seton Hall fans. You can root for Providence even if they are not a major player any longer. No need to root for Alabama.

 

[freescooter]

I'm a high school teacher in CT, and while we still have the majority doing the New England college thing, we have more and more every year heading to Florida and SEC schools. The University of Tennessee and Alabama have become very popular destinations in my suburban CT high school.

This is a thing every few years. Maybe once a decade. It is usually followed up by the obligatory the northeast is destined to become the new Appalachia piece.