Psycory wrote:
If I may...
Student loan availability is one factor, though I think it is not the main factor...yes there is more $$$ for student loans now, however there are more students so the amount per student is less. Personally, I would love to see student loan reform (tighter restrictions/usage demands) because I see way too many students coming to class in brand new $700 dollar shoes, new iphone, ipad and macbook but that cry poverty when they are asked to buy a textbook.
The bigger factor, imo, is administrative bloat. This article explains it:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-14/bureaucrats-paid-250-000-feed-outcry-over-college-costs.htmlMy favorite line: "Purdue says bureaucratic expansion hasn't led to higher tuition." So let me get this straight, bureaucratic positions at all universities have increased by 60% (10x the growth of tenure track positions) and the example of Purdue's tuition has increased by...60% at that time but they are not related?
And about the point regarding small liberal-arts colleges. I think that the main advantage of small lib arts colleges would be for students who are planning to get a graduate degree in a highly competitive field. I have heard and seen from personal experience that graduates of small schools have a better chance in getting in graduate/medical/law schools because they have more professor-student interactions (insert sex joke here) which leads to more knowledge and better recommendation letters. Currently, I write all rec letters for students who do research for me and have a really good success rate and getting them into graduate school. While I was in graduate school, I would write the rec letters for undergraduates who wanted the professor I was working with to write them letters because he had no idea who they were, let alone anything they did in the lab.
I do not get as sweet a deal as PittMike, but I do get 75% off at any Penn State campus for my three kids. Which is nice because they get their choice of 20 something campuses.
I agree with your point that students are much more likely to receive detailed and therefore more effective recommendation letters at a small private college or university than they are at a larger public institution. But that's not always the case. I did my PhD work at a large state institution where I independently designed and taught several courses as an advanced grad student. As a result, I was frequently asked to write recommendation letters for law school, med school, and grad school applications. Over the course of my grad career, I probably wrote more than 35 recommendations, all of them for A students. Not one of my letters was shorter than 2.5 pages, single-spaced. For students who had taken multiple courses with me, the letters were frequently more detailed. The vast majority of my students fared extremely well in the application process, moving on to a number of top programs across the country. On a few occasions, I had members of admission committees call or email to thank me for the thoroughness of my appraisals.
As a faculty member who now reviews hundreds of grad applications each year, I now know why my letters stood out. Many recommendations are approximately two or three paragraphs long, riddled with typos or grammatical errors, and written so broadly that they are almost completely useless. Mind you, these letters are frequently sent in support of students with sterling credentials from top academic institutions. There is also a genre of letter--written by "superstar" scholars--that are annoying because they are pretty close to form letters. The recommender and student are clearly relying on the reputation of the scholar as persuasive evidence of the student's potential. This trick works for many people, but not for me. Just to annoy the complacent asshats writing pro forma recs, I call them at their offices and make them talk specifically about students who are applying to work with me. By the end of our conversations, I think many of them realize they would have been better off writing a thorough letter from the start.
In any event, good, specific recommendations; well-written, compelling personal statements; and effective writing samples are the application elements I value most highly for admission purposes. Today I still write my letters with the same level of detail I used as a grad student. For my own grad students entering the job market, I am, of course, even more detailed. I also make sure I know where my students are applying for jobs and pick up the phone to call people I know on search committees. Some advisors do this, and some don't--and I think that shows in job placement rates. I am happy to do this for my students because I basically make them agree to a list of responsibilities they must fulfill (beyond the normal curricular requirements) when I decide to take them on: Typically I expect them to write one publishable paper from their first-year courses; to present at least two papers at major conferences and publish a second paper in their second year, and so on. Some applicants are intimidated by this approach because they don't realize I am doing them a favor. The "cool" profs who let you do whatever you want so you can "find yourself" in grad school are not necessarily the ones you want as dissertation advisors. I had one of those and he is now a very close friend. But he probably cost me an additional two or three years in school because I needed to assemble a competitive CV at the end of my studies rather than doing it from the start. And he's not one for "pushing" his students on the job market, either.
This is a long way of saying that the degree to which students establish close relationships with faculty members generally makes a HUGE difference in the degree to which they can realize their career aspirations. But being savvy about which faculty members with whom you ally yourself is also very important. Sometimes young and hungry grad students or faculty members can be more effective mentors than senior faculty who are resting on their laurels.
_________________
Antonio Gramsci wrote:
The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.
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