edededed wrote:My ideal university would:
- require all students to major in a hard science or engineering, and minor in a humanities or art (for utility and balance)
- evaluate potential students on academic merit only
- have academics for fun/health only
M.I.T. fits that bill, somewhat. However, it's specifically an engineering/science school. Cooper Union, otoh, specializes in art and architecture. Measuring academic merit depends on what a school focuses on.
But, there are plenty of colleges and libraries. The issues only occur because of competition for the "elite" colleges. Let's say there are 10 of them. Well, the "Ivy League" only has eight members. M.I.T. is right down the road from Harvard, but it isn't in the Ivy League. Afa selecting students, though, the problem is similar. There are close to 40 thousand public and private high schools in the US. An Ivy League college's freshman class may be 1500 for a large Ivy (like Yale) or 150 for a small college (like Dartmouth). Anyway, there may be 10K spots. That means that they wouldn't have space to accept the very top student from every high school.
So, if 40K A students apply for Harvard, 30 K will say that someone with a poorer record must have been accepted. But, maybe the one who was accepted was also a great athlete, or an Eagle Scout, or a musician, or an inventor, or was the school valedictorian in spite of being homeless, etc. Students with near perfect SATs are a dime a dozen for Ivy League schools. And, those schools, because their alumni have deep pockets, don't need the student's tuition. In fact, even the 50K per year tuition doesn't cover the costs.
Unfortunately, there are often students who are accepted and feel that the job is done. Actually, at those schools, it usually is. Those colleges invest in their students, who are only allowed to fail if they want to. Once the student graduates, the degree is his ticket. It won't matter that he graduated with a 2.5 GPA. Nobody checks that. Anyway, many instructors know that, if they fail a student, his parents will complain about the teaching. After all, how could their A student child star not pass? The solution to this is what is called the "Gentleman's B-." I.e., Johnny can write home and say he got a B from an unfair professor.
"A man is rich when he has time and freewill. How he chooses to invest both will determine the return on his investment."