Interesting article about college rankings

[marydell]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32483002/ns/us_news-education/

I went to Indiana University-Bloomington and, 20+ years later, am still very pleased with the education I got there.  They had a large set of core requirements in different areas, but were flexible as to the specific courses, so there was freedom to design a curriculum up to a point, but there was also an expectation that we would learn a good distribution of basic crap.  That's how I ended up taking stuff like "Land and Society in Southeast Asia" (part of the social sciences core set) along with more predictable fare like introductory Geology ("rocks for jocks").  They also limited how many courses you could take in your major, which is how I ended up taking a pile of Comp Lit electives as a sneaky way to keep taking courses I liked when I'd used up my allotment of English Lit credits.

What are some things you liked/disliked about your education? If you're self-educated (as we all are, eventually, no matter how much formal ed we get), do you have a curriculum of sorts, or do you just read as inclination takes you?  I'm very good at making reading lists in different disciplines, but my reading seems to have been following its own path lately.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

In my incarnation as a self-educated person, I read as inclination takes me, and inclination is often guided by previous bibliography--if I read a decent general history of a place and time, it will often have less general, more in-depth stuff in its bibliography. So that's neat.

I really disliked the way my college (Gustavus Adolphus in St. Peter, MN) set up distribution requirements, because only intro courses in a particular field counted. So I came in ready to take "England 1399-1688" as my first history course ever--but because it was a junior level class, it didn't count for distro, and I had to take boring things that were way below my level or else go through lengthy petitions to get them to count. I firmly believe in the liberal arts ideal--unlike many physics majors, I didn't piss and moan about having to take "squishy" courses. (And frankly, I didn't understand why people who felt that way went to a liberal arts college in the first place, when there are technical colleges out there.) But I wanted my squishy courses to be at a level I could sink my teeth into.

In its most ridiculous incarnation, none of the courses for a physics major counted towards the "quantitative reasoning" (math and science) requirement. They figured physics majors would take Gen Chem, which did count, and one of the calc courses, which also counted. But I'd already done calc and started off with diff equ, which did not count. I ended up petitioning for distro credit and had it approved: I had taken two chemistry courses, half a dozen math courses, and an entire physics major and was not going to have "enough" math and science courses to graduate without special approval. Ridiculous. (And I certainly wasn't going to skip taking England 1399-1688 so I could fit in Rocks For Jocks unless I absolutely had to.)

My alma mater has since fixed this problem, from what I can tell in their online materials. I'm very glad.

I loved my department. I think of myself more as an alumna of GAC Physics than of GAC generally. But then, GAC Physics was resisting any watering-down and did not succumb to whining about how unfaaaaair it was to have a paper due in one class on the same day as you had a test in another. I was amazed at how some of my classmates whined--and at the rewards it received. In the physics department we had more pride than that.

[evilrooster.livejournal.com]

Well, I see that my main alma mater (UC Berkeley) remains the best education you can get for under $31k (under $9k if you're in-state); it's at number 21 in the list.

As a Latin major, I loved being in a teeny tiny department (maybe 40 students overall) in a huge university (40,000 on-campus when I was there). I knew all of my departmental professors personally, but got my breadth requirement lectures (botany, astronomy, music appreciation, linguistics) from quite well-respected figures in their fields.

I hated that you could get lost in the college community, and if you sank without a ripple no one would notice. They tried to counteract the sea of humanity effect with departmental advisors, but I was always aware that I had to make it on my own.

(By contrast, my other undergraduate university, St Andrews in Scotland, was incestuously small and disconcertingly foreign to a Californian. But also very, very good, in the rumpled, ink-stained way that British Classics departments can be.)

My current continuing education is:
(a) Dutch, mostly by passive aquisition at the moment (ie, I'm slacking)
(b) C#, at which I am learning to suck and, occasionally, not suck
(c) Bookbinding where I occasionally reread instructional texts before going off and inventing my own techniques
(d) Community dynamics and community management articles on the web as I find them

[evilrooster.livejournal.com]

Forgot to mention: the one breadth course I really wanted to take was chemistry for non-science majors. But that was the one science they didn't offer, because "Chem 1 was the weeder class for pre-med". (Still never figured out how that worked, but that was the excuse.)

[kouredios.livejournal.com]

Well, I went to Williams, which is ranked #1 this year among the small liberal arts schools, and is pretty much always one of the top three. I don't know if it was the same report, but I heard this morning on NPR that Williams was also recently listed as a #1 best value school, which is saying something, because Williams is not cheap. It is, however, one of the best endowed schools of its kind, so it can afford to be extremely generous with its financial aid. I was a huge beneficiary of that generosity.

In terms of education, I adored Williams. I feel like I didn't know how to think critically at all until I left high school and started there. I was 3rd ranked in my class at high school, and had the highest SAT scores in my class, but I still had no idea what I was doing when I first got to Williams. Curriculum-wise, we had a great deal of freedom. All classes were divided into three divisions: humanities, social sciences (sometimes the decision to put a subject into one of those rather than the other was a bit odd) and natural sciences. You had to make sure you took at least 3 classes from each division, but it didn't matter what they were. There was a people's and cultures requirement (shortened to "PC" to be cute), and a physical education requirement, which I fulfilled with a lot of yoga, cross-country skiing and independent swimming. I absolutely adored Williams, and it's one of the reasons I still live in the Berkshires. My dream is to be able to teach there after the PhD is done. I don't know if it's possible, but I'm going to give it a shot. :)

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

I feel like I didn't know how to think critically at all until I left high school and started there. I was 3rd ranked in my class at high school, and had the highest SAT scores in my class, but I still had no idea what I was doing when I first got to Williams.

As a fellow Eph, I totally agree with this part. Entering Williams was a HUGE shock. But the overall experience transformed me, and set me on the path to becoming the person I am today.

As far as my self-education, I go through major phases. Since right now, I'm in grad school, my fun reading consists of a lot of childrens and YA stuff, which is comfort food for me. (And relates well to my library degree and my new library job, so that's good too.) It's lovely to put down professional journal articles for school, and read a little Lemony Snicket for a break. :)

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

I loved Hampshire--they basically surround you with resources and expect you to get an education. When I was there, it was still technically possible to graduate without taking any classes, although no one did it. Even so, most people did a lot of independent studies, put together a lot of papers and projects, and ended up with a 20-page transcript.

I wish I'd taken more science classes, and I wish they'd offered Yiddish when I was there. Otherwise, no complaints.

My job is essentially a way to avoid leaving school, so my self-education is sometimes more focused than I'd like. I get to read a lot of articles in my area. But S and I are supposed to be learning Latin.

[vcmw]

I went to Carleton in Northfield MN for undergrad, and to UIUC for grad work.
My favorite classes at Carleton were the math courses - I always felt like I'd actually worked hard and learned something new. I also loved Methods of Political Research and Introductory Psych.
And my political philosophy classes. The more typical liberal-arts classes often frustrated me because there was a huge emphasis on secondary material and journal articles, and I really prefer primary material and monographs.

Post-college I've been reading a lot of history, which is the one subject I never studied any of in college. It turns out that I really like history, which suprises me. Outside of college I'm free to just read whatever big thick books strike me as intriguing on the subject.

What I liked least in both colleges has actually been the most useful to me later, it was just a painful lesson: getting exposed to how political education is. Teachers who valued research based more on who the person was connected to than the rigor of their thoughts or method. Departments that valued classes or disciplines based more on internal politics than on utility or student interest.