Penn State – the 2nd private school in the B1G?

I don’t see how he in a public role would have control over BOD nominees.

They got a law passed in the legislature that the major state universities have to consider classes from community colleges equivalent to classes at the major universities at least for Core Curriculum classes. Some community colleges meet those standards, but many do not. We get people in our major with 3.5 GPAs from some community colleges who cannot write a sentence in proper English.

I think one aspect that is beginning to hamper people these days when looking for a job, and I am definetly speaking from experience, is that colleges have been expanding their degrees. Meaning that for every job these days there is a specific degree to go along with it. Therfore unless you have that specific degree, you need not apply. So if you want to change careers or anything of that sort, your now forced to go back to school and incure even more debt for the possibility of getting a new job.

Years ago, and not to long ago, degrees can be easily transferable for carerr paths, you can start out as one degree holder but have a career in somthing that you never intended, and no one thought anything differnet of it. I have been desperately trying to get a full time job for 4 years now in higher education. I am either to educated, or undereducated, never exactly educated. Even to be a academic advisor, I don’t have the correct degree, even though I do that daily while teaching my students, and many come to me asking my advise on their career paths. Yet when I apply for a position in this at a school, I do not have a degree in Higher Ed, so basically need not apply. I have talked to people who work in University HR, and told me I am more than qualified for the job, but don’t have the correct letters behind my name, so I will be overlooked when they sort through the job applicants.

So no matter where you go to school, the exact degree you get really will limit you , unless you know exactly what you want to do with your life. Heaven forbid you try and get a job doing something outside that major.

but I believe 100% (or maybe I should say 99% since I’ve already claimed in another thread how much I’m against absolutes) that an education is what the student makes of it. Outside of the prestige and connections one gets from attending those higher tier schools, I think the biggest factor is just how capable the student is (i.e. if you took the valedictorian from Harvard and went back in time and had him go to a community college, he’d still do just as well in life, again adjusting for the connections and brand prestige, which of course is impossible to actually do).

I also think that these higher tier schools have such good graduates more because they have the ability to accept a higher tier of student. Like in the above example, if you took the freshmen classes from both Harvard and a community college, and completely switched them around (so that the Harvard students were receiving a community college education and vice versa) that the Harvard standard students with the community college education would perform better than the community college standard students with the Harvard education.

Now, I do believe that for the most part the better schools will have better professors who can do a better job of teaching the material and challenging the students, but I just don’t think it has as much of an effect as people assume when they see the brand name and prestige. Of course I also am fairly confident in my ability to just pick up a textbook and (assuming I have already learned the prerequisite material) learn just as much as from a classroom.

I think the whole role of the classroom and teacher-student relationships is going to have to change in the (hopefully near) future. I was listening to NPR a couple weeks ago and they were talking about how lectures are pretty much outdated. They used to be important, especially before mass production of books, to convey information, but now it is stupidly easy to find any and all the information you want. What a professor should really be doing is engaging the students and facilitating their understanding of the material. Seriously, how many lectures consist of the professor basically just reciting the chapter of a book in powerpoint form? How useful is that? But I digress.

If you like hiking gorges and waterfalls, within 10 miles of their campus are three state parks with AMAZING hikes: Taughannock (highest falls east of the Mississippi), Buttermilk, and Robert Treman.

but one is not receiving a double-whammy from state cuts every time the economy goes down. Down economies tend to not bother well-managed Universities and the towns they are situated in (this is why “Happy Valley” got its name) because people go to school MORE when the economy is worse. But each time the state pulls more funding because of budget shortfalls, PSU has to absorb that in an already shaky economy. And do state revenues ever return to their previous levels? I don’t have a historic record of that, but I don’t imagine our budget is only 5% state funded because they enjoy jumping right back in to support PSU when the money comes back. Instead the sentiment from politicians becomes, “Well, they seem to be doing pretty well without our funding…” We could be doing better with it.

But, at least if PSU were private (and assuming if had smart leadership), we wouldn’t get the rug pulled out from under us every time the state has to grab the “oh shit” handle.

Another benefit is the incorrect notion that private schools are better than public schools. Sorry… lots of people think that. Just ask anyone from Penn how much they cringe when someone says, “oh, you went to Penn State.” About as much as I cringe when it happens the other way around… but for different reasons.

The real solution to this problem, though, is to make sure the tax payers understand the value they get from PSU regardless of whether they send their children there. It is an economic engine across the entire state. It gets and keeps talented people in the state. It is a far better investment than more prisons, endless expenditures on PennDOT construction and maintenance sites (which should be privatized so there’s incentives to actually finish jobs on time and on budget), and any number of other social welfare projects (many of which would not be necessary if people were better educated). This wouldn’t be a topic for discussion if PSU’s funding level showed a commitment to actually supporting a first-rate school in the state.

when there is a greater tax base to support them, plus better qualified people to take care of them