Front page article in the Boston Globe today tells the sad tale of "private colleges" struggling to attract enough students to keep their doors open, places like Stonehill College, Newbury College, Franklin Pierce University, Mount St. Ida, Marlboro College, Rivier University, Godard College, Northpoint Bible College, Boston Baptist College and Dean College.
The theme of the article is that two big forces are driving these colleges out of existence for want of customers: Demographic shifts with falling birth rates and fewer children and expense, where the cost of college now consumes too much of a family's budget.
As I was reading this I thought of Cambridge and Oxford, where an undergraduate degree is achieved in 3, not four years. For the sciences, engineering, computer, the degree is 4 years, but you get a Master's for that, not just the BA.
The medical school degree is an undergraduate degree--bachelor's in medicine--attained at age 20-21, unlike the American system which requires 4 years of college and 4 years of medical school, then 2-5 years of residency training. Are American doctors better than British doctors? Well, it depends when you look at them, at what age.
Makes one wonder: Why do our colleges have to be 4 years? If the English can educate undergraduates in 3 years, why must we take 4?
Of course, one possible answer may be that students entering Oxford and Cambridge can all read, write and calculate at grade level and so the high school students in England have been so much better educated, they don't need 4 years in college.
My father, who was born to non English speaking parents, not to mention parents with little formal education had to figure out how America worked, growing up in the New York City public schools, and he went to "City College" the nearly free college, "the Harvard of the proletariat" they called it. He worked and went to school during the Great Depression, sharing jobs with friends and he drifted into work at an employment agency, which, during the Great Depression, must have seemed relevant.
One thing he noticed was when young men who had gone to Yale came in, you could send them right down to Chase Bank or any of the big banks and they never came back--they were hired right away, but guys from City College or Brooklyn College--don't even bother. They were back in a New York City minute. The banks, the brokerage houses, the real estate companies, the advertising agencies weren't interested.
"Fair haired boys" from Princeton and Yale were what the WASPy places were looking for.
For those guys, a college degree was their ticket through the door.
"Once they got through the door, it might not have helped them. They had to make their own way, but if you couldn't even take that first step..."
Now I'm looking at people from Methuen, Lawrence and they have only the dimmest idea what "college" really is. They ask if Oxford is "Ivy League." They know Harvard and MIT mean success, but they couldn't say whether a degree from Brown or Dartmouth would give you any advantage over a person with a degree from Stonehill or Mt. St. Ida. It's all just "college" to them.
And who really knows? Does anyone actually track the job prospects of kids from University of Pennsylvania or Cornell and compare them to those of kids from Rivier or Northpoint Bible College?
We all hear about the "data" which says people with a BA earn significantly more over the course of their lives but can we believe it? Can we believe if there is a difference, it had anything to do with the school more than say, the family from which they came?
Electricians, plumbers, pipe fitters, carpenters, HVAC repairmen--what kind of earnings to debt do they have compared to a graduate of Boston Bible College or Franklin Pierce?
Is it possible that "college" is, for many people, for most colleges, just a big scam, sham colleges just riding on the wake of the big ships, Harvard, Stanford, MIT?
The theme of the article is that two big forces are driving these colleges out of existence for want of customers: Demographic shifts with falling birth rates and fewer children and expense, where the cost of college now consumes too much of a family's budget.
 |
| No college |
As I was reading this I thought of Cambridge and Oxford, where an undergraduate degree is achieved in 3, not four years. For the sciences, engineering, computer, the degree is 4 years, but you get a Master's for that, not just the BA.
The medical school degree is an undergraduate degree--bachelor's in medicine--attained at age 20-21, unlike the American system which requires 4 years of college and 4 years of medical school, then 2-5 years of residency training. Are American doctors better than British doctors? Well, it depends when you look at them, at what age.
Makes one wonder: Why do our colleges have to be 4 years? If the English can educate undergraduates in 3 years, why must we take 4?
Of course, one possible answer may be that students entering Oxford and Cambridge can all read, write and calculate at grade level and so the high school students in England have been so much better educated, they don't need 4 years in college.
 |
| No College |
My father, who was born to non English speaking parents, not to mention parents with little formal education had to figure out how America worked, growing up in the New York City public schools, and he went to "City College" the nearly free college, "the Harvard of the proletariat" they called it. He worked and went to school during the Great Depression, sharing jobs with friends and he drifted into work at an employment agency, which, during the Great Depression, must have seemed relevant.
 |
| No College |
One thing he noticed was when young men who had gone to Yale came in, you could send them right down to Chase Bank or any of the big banks and they never came back--they were hired right away, but guys from City College or Brooklyn College--don't even bother. They were back in a New York City minute. The banks, the brokerage houses, the real estate companies, the advertising agencies weren't interested.
"Fair haired boys" from Princeton and Yale were what the WASPy places were looking for.
For those guys, a college degree was their ticket through the door.
"Once they got through the door, it might not have helped them. They had to make their own way, but if you couldn't even take that first step..."
 |
| College: But did it matter? |
Now I'm looking at people from Methuen, Lawrence and they have only the dimmest idea what "college" really is. They ask if Oxford is "Ivy League." They know Harvard and MIT mean success, but they couldn't say whether a degree from Brown or Dartmouth would give you any advantage over a person with a degree from Stonehill or Mt. St. Ida. It's all just "college" to them.
And who really knows? Does anyone actually track the job prospects of kids from University of Pennsylvania or Cornell and compare them to those of kids from Rivier or Northpoint Bible College?
We all hear about the "data" which says people with a BA earn significantly more over the course of their lives but can we believe it? Can we believe if there is a difference, it had anything to do with the school more than say, the family from which they came?
Electricians, plumbers, pipe fitters, carpenters, HVAC repairmen--what kind of earnings to debt do they have compared to a graduate of Boston Bible College or Franklin Pierce?
Is it possible that "college" is, for many people, for most colleges, just a big scam, sham colleges just riding on the wake of the big ships, Harvard, Stanford, MIT?
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