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“Because the Undergraduates are Better” (J. Stanley)

Jason Stanley

I spent the first five years of my teaching career at Cornell, and greatly appreciated both my colleagues and my students; if my personal situation had allowed it, I would almost certainly have remained for my career. If someday an Ivy League institution were to develop a philosophy department that could provide the sort of colleagues Rutgers now can, I might want to go there. But I am often surprised at what I hear from some educators at these institutions. For example, one comment I hear from acquaintances who teach at such institutions despite intellectually or personally more beneficial opportunities elsewhere is that they do so “because the undergraduates are better”. I find this comment, especially made by liberal arts professors, disturbing. It uncritically accepts a value system that it is our purpose as educators to challenge and critique. It also reflects a misunderstanding about how many educated youth think.

When I applied for college, I was spending my junior year in high school abroad in Germany. I had no idea how the application process worked, and simply quickly handwrote some essays on whatever forms I could get by mail. At the time, I was a rebellious 15 year old; though I had read (and not understood) a lot of Marx, I fancied myself an anarchist, and was particulary fond of Michail Bakunin. As I was an adolescent, my taste in literature was determined largely by what I thought revealed the most authenticity of experience. When I thought about it (which was rarely), it did not at all seem that attending an Ivy League University was a necessary step in crafting a virtuous life. All of my friends growing up had the same attitude. In the end, I was accepted at SUNY Binghamton. Many of my fellow students were just like me. I don’t recall a single conversation involving status anxiety. But I do recall many about ideas. As a result of the intellectual environment, when I discovered philosophy, I didn’t conceptualize it at as a career path, a way to achieve some abstract marker of success. Rather, the life of the mind seemed both authentic and meaningful.

The kind of student that ends up in an Ivy League Institution nowadays is perhaps not as often someone who rejects conventional definitions of success and achievement. But those who are drawn to books and ideas by their suspicion of conventional values and their desire to lead a life crafted by decisions of their own are no less compelling as students. The few students I have kept track of from my freshman year at Binghamton have gone on to careers that would be considered beneath the station of many Ivy League graduates; for example the one I spent the most time with went on to become a high school English teacher. Perhaps one difference between my fellow students at SUNY Binghamton and the students at Ivy League institutions is that the former for the most part did not grow up thinking of career success as a value in and of itself. Students passionate about career success no doubt will be better at achieving it; I’m sure there are few future high school English teachers at Harvard. But to claim that such students are better is doubly in error. First, it is a misunderstanding of the motivational structure of many talented individuals. Secondly it is tantamount to giving our endorsement to a value system we as educators should be trying to expose.

UPDATE: This post must have been a bit heavy handed, since it has generated my personal record number of anonymous furious comments (which I haven’t published) and angry emails. I did not in any sense mean to demean Ivy League students; there are obviously a huge group of terrifically intelligent and morally engaged students at Ivy League schools. The reason I wrote the post is because too many academics act as if teaching at an Ivy League School is obviously a superior teaching experience. In countering this, I produced the absurd unintended implicature that that Ivy League students were in some sense deficient. My only point was that, given the structure of college admissions, some very interesting students do not pursue that life path.

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50 responses to ““Because the Undergraduates are Better” (J. Stanley)”

  1. Matt

    I think that the sense in which it is, or ought to be, uncontroversial that undergrads at the Ivy League schools and top liberal arts colleges (and some of the very top state schools, I suspect) are "better" than those at other schools is that they are better prepared for college work on the whole. Having been an undergrad at a singularly undistinguished university (not even known for its football team at the time!), been a TA at one of the SUNY schools (one less well thought of for its undergrads than Binghamton, a school that has a pretty good reputation for strong undergrads), and at an Ivy League school the difference in the average level of preparation for college level work is obvious and significant. Nearly all of the students I have had here could write grammatically and stylistically sound essay of 4 or 5 pages without significant difficulty as freshmen and could do a reasonable amount of mathematics. This made teaching them significantly easier and was not the case either where I was an undergrad nor where I was a TA before. I generally agree with the point Jason makes above but think that what I've pointed to here is the reasonable core of the claim that the undergrads at the most prestigious schools are 'better'.

    Reply
  2. Steven Gross

    Hi Jason,

    Interesting post, as always; but I'm not sure what your remarks are based on. Is there a higher percentage of talented unconventional students at Rutgers than at Brown, say? I dunno. You cite one teacher from Binghamton; I can cite three Ivy League school teachers from my immediate circle (my wife's roommate, my roommate's girlfriend, and my sister-in-law). But what are the real numbers? When I taught at Penn, I found the atmosphere disturbingly pre-professional; but as a student at Harvard, my academic proclivities were encouraged by a very non-pre-professional atmosphere: Harvard in fact makes a big deal of having *no* pre-professional majors (no journalism major, no business major, etc.). I imagine that's not so at Rutgers, for example.

    In any event, I take it that your acquaintances meant that at some schools there's less of a spread across the full spectrum of talent and background skills — e.g., one has to deal with fewer students who just haven't learned yet how to write a decent paper. Insofar as that's true, their remarks are understandable. But you are certainly right to challenge them to reconsider what their goals as teachers ought to be.

    Steven

    Reply
  3. Anon ABD at Public Institution

    I take it there are two claims here: (1) Ivy League students are "better" than other students, and (2) it makes sense to prefer teaching at a place with "better" students. Jason seems to think both claims are false. Of course, one might think that (1) is true but still think that (2) is false.

    But first we should be clear about what (1) and (2) mean. If I heard someone say "because the students are better," I would think that she meant one or more of the following things: the students are, on average (a) better writers; (b) better readers; (c) better reasoners; (d) more intellectually curious; (e) more self-motivated; or (f) view their education less instrumentally (i.e., like learning for learning's sake rather than as a means to a degree to get a job). I would not read into "the students are better" anything about the students' views about traditional notions of career success. Now, whether any of (a)-(f) are true of Ivy League students is an open question. I tend to think that, on average, several if not most of them are true.

    Then there is (2)–what does it mean? Rather than an endorsement of any particular value system, it might just mean, "as a teacher, I find my job more fulfilling when my students are better able to to tackle tough material, and more enthusiastic about doing so," or, "as a teacher, I prefer when my students are good enough writers that I can focus on helping them with their ideas rather than helping them write clearly." Now, if you think all of (a)-(f) are false, then you might think that anyone who means this when they say (2) is deluded.

    Jason, what do you think about students at highly selective liberal arts colleges? These students seem to share certain things in common with Ivy League students, and other things in common with students at places like SUNY-Binghamton. They might share (a)-(e) with Ivy League students, but they might be less likely than Ivy League students to want to pursue traditional notions of career success. What about a professor who prefers teaching liberal arts college students?

    One final note: here is a way in which (1) and (2) might come apart. You might think that students at the Ivy League are "better" (say on metrics (a)-(f)), but think that you should teach where your talents are most needed, and think that this is someplace other than the Ivy League. So you might think (1) is true but still prefer to teach elsewhere. (However, you might actually think your talents are more needed at the Ivy League, if, say, you teach ethics, and you think that the future leaders of society are more likely to be at the Ivy League.)

    Reply
  4. Navidnak

    Profesor,

    My name is Navid and I'm wrapping up my third year in college. I transferred from a community college to UC Berkeley at the beginning of last semester, and I'm having a blast. 2 years ago, in high school, I barely had a 2.0 GPA and I was lucky that I was able to attend commencement. Now, I'm a double major in History and Rhetoric and I've already had the wonderful opportunity to partake in our Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program (URAP) under the tutelage of one of my wonderful professors in the Rhetoric department. Next semester I will begin working on my senior thesis and it looks like I'm en route to a good grad program.

    That being said, I definitely agree with you as far as the 'motivational structure' of young students are concerned, but on the whole, I really think that the crux of the problem lies in (public high) school education. Only about a third of college-ready young adults attended in 2002 (http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i27/27b05001.htm). The margin between young adults who do not attend college and students at public schools is MUCH LARGER than between those same state students and their Ivy League counterparts. I was lucky. I had an amazing teacher who called me out on my, ehem, B.S. Had it not been for him I would have been lucky if I had found the desire to continue getting my computer/net certificates (A+, MCP and Cisco) and even more lucky to find a job in the constantly shrinking computer industry.

    And at the same time, I can understand where you're colleagues at the Ivies are coming from. Here at Berkeley we have top notch programs but with a ridiculously high volume of students going through each classroom; the student to faculty ratio at Ivies surely facilitates a richer environment for learning and discussion.

    Coincidentally (or not), the programs over here with more students per class seem to have a lot more apathetic students- Good majors too *cough (Poli-Sci)*! Generally, large classroom sizes are at top public schools, such as Berkeley and Rutgers, rather than those Ivies. I can totally understand why they would want to stay there.

    Is the status quo classist? -yes

    Is it meritocratic? -absolutely not

    But I think it's fair for your colleagues to desire to stay at those schools. What needs to change, rather, is the funding for public universities in order to hire more faculty therefore reducing the student to faculty ratio. Once the playing field is leveled (I'll most likely be working in the field at the at point), I'll join you in critiquing those that continue to claim that they stay because of 'better undergrads'.

    Simultaneously, something needs to radically be changed in our delivery of high school education. Honestly, if they provided junior college professor type wages, I would easily go and teach high school after getting a masters degree. In fact, I would probably prefer it (as long as I had some mechanism to pursue my own academic interests at the same time).

    Reply
  5. Tad Brennan

    Thanks for posting this, Jason. It raises a couple of good points.

    One point seems to be about how reliable the institution is as a marker for the kind of student who goes there. The other point is about the relative importance of different kinds of success.

    I don’t think you are going to find many readers of this blog who think that the most important thing in life is a huge annual income, a seat on the Stock Exchange, and a spot at the country club. So nearly all of us here “reject conventional definitions of success and achievement.”

    But for that very reason, this surely cannot be what your friends mean when they say that the students at PrivateU are “better” than the students at StateU. Surely they don’t mean “my students are better than yours, because they’re the wealthy capitalists who will extract the surplus value from the labor of your poor proletarian students!” Surely they do mean, “my students are better than yours because they are more intellectually curious, more engaged with their studies, brighter, more fun to talk with, more rewarding to teach” and things like that.

    In other words, they are saying pretty much the same thing you are saying when you explain why you like Rutgers. They say they like spending their professional life engaged with the smartest undergrads they can find. You say you like spending your professional life engaged with the smartest colleagues you can find. (At any rate, you say you’d consider going to other places if they “could provide the sort of colleagues Rutgers now can”, and I’m guessing you didn’t mean to compliment their looks, their ability to extract surplus value, or their skills as Souzaphone players.) In whatever sense you feel that you have “better” colleagues, that’s the sense (I’m guessing) in which your friends think they have “better” students.

    So I really don’t see why the larger question of values arises. No one in this debate is championing “conventional definitions of success and achievement.” Nor, when your friends at elite privates say their students are “better”, could they possibly mean “better at attaining conventional measures of success.”

    Now to the question of generalizations. Can we make any meaningful population-based statistical generalizations about students, based on the institutions they attend? Yes, I think so. And of course, as with all statistical generalizations, we also have to be open to finding anomalies.

    You were an anomaly at SUNY Binghamton. Any kid who studies philosophy seriously is an anomaly at any institution, no matter how elitist.

    I agree that you can find interesting, intellectually engaged undergrads at every college in the country. You can also find careerist, materialistic drones at every college in the country. (Do you really want to argue that some large majority of SUNY B students, or even 50% of them, were actively “rejecting conventional definitions of success and achievement”? That would be astounding for any group of a few thousand young adults. Instead, you found a circle of like-minded people, and I’m betting it was a very small percentage of the total student body.)

    In a post designed to challenge stereotypes, this line comes as a bit of a shock:

    “The kind of student that ends up in an Ivy League Institution nowadays rarely is someone who rejects conventional definitions of success and achievement.”

    Is that accurate at the level of statistics? It probably is, because the rejection of conventional values is rare in the population at large, and so this claim would be true about any large subset of the population. But in the context, you seem to be making the claim that unconventional students are MORE rare at Ivies than elsewhere—is that true? It seems like quite a broad generalization—indeed it involves two levels of generalizing, since not only do students vary quite a lot, but so also do Ivies.

    I did some teaching at [Ivy 1] and formed the impression that the typical student there was, indeed, status-conscious and careerist, despite the fact that there were also some exceptionally talented and intellectually engaged students there. I also taught for a while at [Ivy 2], where I formed the impression that the typical student seemed far less status-conscious, more unconventional, and more intellectually engaged. (Indeed, the undergrads there were almost as good as students at Reed College!)

    “Rarely someone who rejects conventional definitions of success and achievement”? That may be true of many students at Ivies. But it is also deeply unfair to many others. It is just as unfair, and for the same reasons, as saying that students at big state universities are “rarely” capable of living the life of the mind. There are a lot of big state universities, and a lot of students at every one. So making generalization about “Ivy League Institutions” seems like it loses a lot of information about individual students, at both levels of generalization.

    For that reason, it also seems to me implausible to suggest that your friends are somehow buying into or supporting “conventional definitions of success” when they say that they find the students at their elite colleges more rewarding to teach. Look, the ones who are fun to teach, even at the Ivies, are almost always the very same ones who are rejecting (or at least seriously questioning) these conventional values.

    I conclude with three platitudes.

    1) It would be a shame if any teacher, anywhere, was not open to the full variety and diversity of students that they teach, and was not on the look-out for anomalous talent to foster. No matter where you teach, you get blessed sometimes with exceptional students. (And no matter where you teach, students like you, Jason, will be exceptional). Sure, you start thinking and talking about your student body as though it has a corporate personality and aggregate attributes, but if you’re a good teacher, all of that goes out the window when you are dealing face to face with this individual student.

    2) The existence of such anomalies and exceptions really does not tell us much about the validity of various statistical generalizations we might want to make. If the average family income of students at FilthyRichIvy is higher than the average family income at PoorDeservingState, this remains the case even if Poor Deserving Polly gets into FRI, and Filthy Rich Fred goes to PDS. You were a highly anomalous undergrad; I was a highly anomalous undergrad, too; our autobiographies really don’t provide much insight into the broad make-up of higher education. We still can and often must try to develop generalized overviews.

    3) When we do try to make such generalizations, it turns out that the students at selective institutions are, on average, smarter and more academically successful than the students at less selective institutions. (It’s almost like they select for that stuff!) Some of those students are going to use their smarts to make a lot of money and reinforce conventional values. (Those are almost certainly not the ones your friends are boasting about). Some will use it to think deeply about their own lives and the structure of the world. (Those are almost certainly the ones your friends are referring to.) Same thing applies at Big State U, only on average the students do not write quite as well, have not read quite as much, are not as original in their thinking, not as quick on their feet, and so on. On average, they are not as good—-in exactly the same ways that, on average, the faculty in most philosophy departments are not as good as the faculty at Rutgers.

    But I understand your desire to stay there, "because the colleagues are better".

    Reply
  6. harry b

    Hate to hoist you on your own petard, especially as you're right, but…

    "Students passionate about career success no doubt will be better at achieving it; I’m sure there are few future high school English teachers at Harvard."

    If so, few Harvard students will have success in a career more important than most of them will choose.

    Reply
  7. anon

    What exactly is wrong with conventions of success and achievement such that all educators have an obligation to expose it? Perhaps some professors prefer students with just those standards to those with strange anarchist (or whatever) ones, and there's no misunderstanding about how the latter think. There's also the issue that even if they make equally good students, there are percentage-wise more of the former at Ivy League schools than the latter at any school.

    Reply
  8. Alan

    Wouldn't this be compatible with what you've said above?

    At places like SUNY Binghamton, there are some really excellent students, who have a good basic skillset (writing and reading ability) entering the university and who are motivated by a real love of learning. Also there are students who are not interested in learning, and there are students who do not have a good basic skillset. There is a lot of variation in student at schools like SUNY Binghamton.

    Maybe the people who say "Ivy league undergrads are better" mean that Ivy league undergrads have on average a better basic skillset?

    Do you think that's not what they mean? Or that that's not true? Or that that's not a good thing for educators to prioritize?

    Reply
  9. Jason Stanley

    Harry,

    Yes, sorry, that was a typo — I meant to place scare quotes around "career success", and only realized that after I ran out the door to go to the conference I've been attending all day.

    Steve and Tad,

    Good points, of course. You are right I was generalizing from personal experience. There is a huge amount of work to be done investigating which undergraduates are more likely e.g. to spend careers in public service (e.g. teaching in public high schools and such like). It gets more complicated evaluating the effects of such schooling on a number of issues, though, because going to such a university gives one such a huge advantage in a number of careers (including, unfortunately, to some extent in philosophy), that it's difficult really to compare.

    Reply
  10. Cihan Baran

    Hello,

    As an undergraduate at Stanford University, I definitely agree about the motivations of students at top colleges. People, here, are definitely more motivated by career plans than an intrinsic desire to learn. (At least amongst the electrical engineering majors, of which I am one.)

    On the other hand, I think people here are much more hard working, dedicated and talented than your average college students, even though one might argue that their (and my?) dedication stems from the wrong, careerist reasons.

    Reply
  11. Susanna Schellenberg

    There seem to be two very different questions. One is what the qualities are of a good student. Here are some suggestions (most of which have been mentioned in previous posts): creativity, intellectual curiosity, being an independent thinker, logical abilities, acumen, brightness, having good writing and reading abilities.

    A second question is what the connection is (if any) between these qualities and a student’s goals and values. I take it that the interesting controversy is about whether students who spent their high school years preparing to get into an ivy league institution are more or less likely to have the qualities of a good student than those who spent their high school years being rebellious. No doubt not all students at ivy league institutions spent their high school years focused on what college they’ll end up going to. Many are naturally talented. No doubt not all students at non-ivy league institutions were rebellious in high school. It strikes me as plausible that there is a correlation between the kind of person who was rebellious in high school and certain of the qualities of a good student, and a correlation between the kind of student who spent his or her high school years preparing to get into an ivy league institution and certain other of those qualities. Obviously this is the kind of thing that we’d need statistics on.

    Possibly, the statistics will show that the kind of person who was rebellious in high school is more likely to be creative, intellectually curious, and an independent thinker than the kind of person whose thoughts in high school were focused on getting into an ivy league institution. Arguably, creativity, intellectual curiosity, and being an independent thinker are among the most important qualities of a good student. Of course, the best students will have it all.

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  12. Margaret Atherton

    Many of the things that I have ended up doing in my life have been more accidental than because I deliberately chose them as the morally superior thing to do. We bought a house on the city side rather than the surburban side of my campus because we liked the house but I am now very firmly committed to an urban public school system and very happy we were able to give our daughter the opportunity to go through an such a system. Similarly there are lots of reasons why I ended up teaching in a non-flagship public university. But now that this is the case, there are things to be said in its favor. One of the virtues, I think, of the American University system is the options it provides to students who, for one reason or another, do not attend the elite universities. Even though many students in such systems do choose fairly vocational majors, it has remained possible for students at these universities to follow their dream, and when it turns out that philosophy is what excites them, then philosophy is something they can choose to study. It can be very rewarding to find such students and to send them on to careers in philosophy. In what I take to be the spirit of Jason's original post, there are many different ways of finding satisfaction as a teacher of philosophy students–teaching well-prepared and well-motivated students at private colleges and universities is certainly one of them, and I wouldn't want to knock it, but its not the only one.

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  13. Anon. Phil. Grad Student

    Jason-

    I am very sympathetic with what you've written about yourself qua teenager with philosophical proclivities.

    I hope this is not too far off topic, but it seems like a good place to consider the professional fate of such teenagers and I think it does connect up with a number of issues in your post.

    Anyhow, If you are right then I think it is fair to say that a good portion of the students who will or would make good philosophers often do not engage in the activities that earn one admission to elite undergraduate institutions.

    For example, they write college entrance essays on punk rock music or Marxism (or whatever it is unconventional teenagers are currently interested in). They probably also fail to participate in the sort of extracurriculars that make undergraduate applications look good. Further, they don't always have the knowledge or foresight to seek out colleges like Reed or Oberlin.

    Thus, many such students end up at unremarkable institutions, and this should, in some very general sense, present some worries for philosophy as a profession.

    Consider this kind of (very generalized) case:

    These students find themselves at unremarkable undergraduate institutions (or enormous state schools) where there is a much smaller chance that they will have the opportunity to engage with any prominent philosophers one-on-one.

    Then, when it comes time to mail out applications to grad. programs, such students will be applying without letters of rec. from famous (or even 'well-known' philosophers) and often without the support of a name-brand B.A.

    Although the writing sample is often touted as the make-or-break piece of an applicant's folder, it seems fair to assume that the applicant with letters from unremarkable philosophers and a degree from an unremarkable institution is at a severe disadvantage.

    We can generalize even further and suppose that the student in question goes on to a good (but not elite) graduate program and then ends up with a job with a heavy teaching load (certainly the brand names and letter of recommendation function similarly in procuring a job, especially when most of the folks competing for jobs have not yet achieved a significant publication history).

    Now, we find ourselves with a situation in which (even if some of these people are *truly* brilliant philosophers) it seems fair to say that folks have been professional disadvantaged by a combination of teenage iconoclasm and the general preference (reverence?) for name-brands when it comes to making hiring and admittance decisions. I think we ought to find this troubling and we ought to at least worry about how often this sort of thing happens, especially as the teenage iconoclasm often undergirds the inability to get the right sort of professional connections early on.

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  14. Johannes Namenlos

    I really resonated with Jason's post — although I will not try to support or to dispute its factual claims. I am often frustrated with the attitude of my students at [unnamed Ivy League university]. These students are mostly well-prepared to achieve "success" according to the currently popular use of that term. But not many of them are thinking critically about what "success" should mean for them. It seems that it is sometimes easier for those outside (or excluded from) a social practice, than for those on the inside track, to question the values of that practice.

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  15. Jon H

    Chances are that students that end up going to LowertoMiddleClassState (LtMCS) also went to LowertoMiddleClassElementary and LowertoMiddleClassSecondary, whereas students that go to FilthyRichIvy (FRI) also went to FilthyRichElementary and FilthyRichSecondary. (There are exceptions, of course.) At both LtMCS and FRI you will find a mixed bag of students: those of the careerist disposition, and those independent, creative thinkers we all desire to teach.

    That one will find more of the more desirable students at FRI doesn't say much about the students themselves, I tend to think. Instead, it has a lot to say about the resources and opportunities that were available at their pre-FRI institutions that helped foster such independent and creative thought, etc.

    I don't think that it's very contentious to say that students that went to FRElem and FRSecondary probably had better resources and more creative opportunities than the students that passed through LtMCElem and LtMCSecondary. This is one reason–and a major reason, I think–that the students at FRI are "better" than those at LtMCS. Just a thought.

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  16. Tom Hurka

    If Ivy students are 'better' it's because they start out higher up the scale of intellectual achievement. But that suggests to me that you can do more good, i.e. make a bigger contribution to intellectual achievement, if you teach students who start out lower down the scale, especially if they do so because, despite native smarts, they've had inferior schooling.

    It also suggests that all the Rawlsian egalitarians in Ivy League philosophy departments are, in their academic lives, following (and according to Jason saying they prefer to follow) the un-Rawlsian policy of concentrating their efforts on the intellectually best-off group.

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  17. Manyul Im

    I'd like to know (not really; this is a rhetorical point) how many faculty really, sincerely would turn down offers that are in fact economically or personally better for them for the primary reason that "the undergraduates are better" at their current institutions. That strikes me as highly unlikely to be a strong motivation in most of the philosophers I know for turning down better jobs. It seems more likely to me to be a slightly disingenuous but noble-sounding deflectory answer to the subtext of the questioner. A: "Wow; so you decided to stay at Brown instead of taking the Rutgers offer…Why?" (subtext: "You're really staying at Brown even though your spouse works in New York City and they've offered you a significant pay raise? Are you irrational or just some kind of Jersey hater?") B: "Because the undergraduates are better." (subtext: "I can't bring myself to give up the yacht club membership here; and yes, I'm kind of a Jersey hater. So, in fact, given what I value, it wouldn't actually be a better job for me.")

    Although I understand that Jason is really after the pedagogical point about whether students of one kind of background do in fact generally make for better students as opposed to those of another, just for curiosity's sake, I wonder if there are actual persons out there in blogland who made such a decision based sincerely and primarily on the Undergraduates Are Better (UAB) principle. Anyone?

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  18. RCinProv

    Two thoughts from a prof who teaches at one of those Ivies and has for a long time: (1) yes, we have great undergraduates–but don't forget, it is also well known that many students are admitted for non-academic reasons, such as "legacies." As a result, a lower percentage of our students than than you might expect are here for all the right academic reasons. (2) When you reject the vast majority of applicants, it means that we all know students, through families and friends, who we think are terrific but did not get in. That is, we are under no illusion that we have a corner on the market.

    The irony of the original post, I think, is that Ivies tend to pay too little attention to teaching in general. Yes, the students are great, but that does not mean the teaching environment is.

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  19. Lisa Shapiro

    I'm surprised that the economics of higher education hasn't entered directly into the discussion. The cost of a private university education in the US has skyrocketed since I was an undergraduate. I am not sure that either my parents or I would have been willing to assume the amount of debt that would have been required of a middle class/upper middle class family to attend the private liberal arts college I did attend (or an Ivy for that matter). While it is true that many Ivies do have large endowments and offer substantial aid, there are quite a large number of folks whose families make too much to be eligible for sufficient aid. Sheer economic pressure is no doubt driving very talented students to enroll in state schools with good reputations — off the top of my head: UC schools, Virginia, Michigan, Maryland, Rutgers, SUNY Binghamton (which has always been the flagship of the SUNY system), and I'm sure there are others. This no doubt is making for stronger applicant pools and students at state institutions.

    My experience here in Canada is somewhat different, as all universities (worth going to) are public. (If you've heard of a Canadian university, its public. The private universities tend to be religious.) One thing I appreciate as a teacher is the diversity of the students — the range of ethnic, economic and family backgrounds. And at least to my mind there are many extraordinarily talented students (enough to dominate class discussion). I suffer through some bad papers, its true, but I suspect that even at the most competitive institutions there are bad papers.

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  20. David Hilbert

    I'm in the middle of finishing up my grading for the two courses at the large, second-rate, state institution where I teach (University of Illinois at Chicago). I'm also in the middle of preparing for a class tomorrow at the small elite, private institution where I am moonlighting this term (University of Chicago). It's been interesting (and exhausting) to interact with both sets of students simultaneously. I'd say that my state-school students are much more career-oriented than my private-school students. To judge by my sample, philosophy students at the University of Chicago seem to be thoughtful, interesting people who are genuinely interested in intellectual questions. Many UIC students are also thoughtful and interesting and genuinely interested in philosophy but they are also much more willing to talk about their need to find a paying job immediately after graduating. I'm not sure how deep a difference this is. What we have in the state school context, that I have found much rarer in the elite instituions where I have taught, are a significant number of students who are so career focused that they treat their undergraduate education as primarily a credentialing process. I'm sure there are such in the private world as well, but I suspect they are less open in their disdain for philosophy in the presence of their philosophy professor.

    Like Margaret Atherton, one of the things I like about teaching at a second tier urban institution is running across those talented students who for various reasons didn't start on the fast track and watching them prosper. Before starting at UIC, I was deeply concerned about what the teaching would be like (after an educational careeer spent entirely in elite private institutions), because of the quality of the students, but after a decade here I can conclude that my concerns were misplaced. It's not that the students are that much better than I was expecting but because teaching can be rewarding in a number of different ways. Consequently, I'm in partial agreement with the original post. For myself, at least, it was a mistake to think that student quality was, in itself, a significant factor in my job satisfaction. On the other hand, I really wonder whether its true that students at elite institutions are more conformist and careerist than those at less selective ones. I'll close by observing that Jason Stanley is at New Jersey's flagship state university, I'm not quite that high in the educational pecking order, and that both of our institutions are at least moderately selective in who they let in. Neither of us could plausibly claim to be on a mission to bring philosophy to the underprivileged. I don't think he claimed that as his mission but the question was raised by some later commenters.

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  21. Charlie Huenemann

    My experience is that students at not-very-good, public universities are at least as pre-occupied with the "what will this do for my career" question as students anywhere else. What they lack, on the whole, is intellectual preparation for any kind of challenging college experience — especially philosophy. My guess is that at very good schools, you can usually count on students knowing how to write complete sentences and knowing that Socrates and Julius Caesar weren't contemporaries. Not so at other places. On this score, I bet the undergraduates really are better, much better, at schools with big reputations, and there's less remedial work to be done.

    There are exceptions, of course, which come along like oases in the desert, and make the job of teaching at a not-very-good university very exciting: for here are students who can be helped along and "coached" into opportunities they maybe didn't know existed. I was such a student (or so I flatter myself to think), and I'm surely grateful for the coaching I received. There may also be some gratification in teaching the other students how to write complete sentences, etc., but the task becomes so wearisome that the joy in it disappears pretty quickly.

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  22. John Protevi

    I'm not sure that students at big state schools are going to be less career-oriented than students at Ivies. Let's say that the percentage of students at big state schools from the upper-lower-middle class — first identified I believe by Raymond Williams 😉 — and other aspiring classes is greater at state schools than at Ivies, which have a higher percentage of professional and other relatively secure classes due to legacy admissions and other class reproduction structures. I think it's reasonable to hypothesize that upper-lower-middle class students will tend to be more career-oriented since they have less of a fall-back position. In other words, a greater percentage of Ivy students can afford to be non-career-oriented in college because they know that Dad or Uncle Charles can always hook them up at the office after their degree, even if they did major in English lit, whereas a lesser percentage of state school kids will have that assurance.

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  23. harry b

    Tom Hurka's barb against Rawlsians in Ivies is right (though, of course, there are always good Rawlsian excuses; the basic structure objection etc..). BUT, those of us who teach at top-tier public institutions are hardly any different. I suggest that people here at top-tier state institutions (flagships) look at the demographic profile of their students relative to the demographic profile of their state. Most of our (Madison) students come from the top-10-15% of household income in the state, very few from the bottom 50%, and almost none from the bottom 25%. Our institution is here to ensure that all taxpayers subsidise pretty wealthy parents more-or-less-guaranteeing their kids staying in the upper-middle class. We shouldn't kid ourselves otherwise, even if Tom tempts us to. (Margaret is at a different UW campus, with a somewhat different profile, and I wouldn't say that is what is going on at her institution).

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  24. Matt

    Not to side-track things, but you'd have to accept the Cohen (mis)understanding of the difference principle or something like that to think that there is anything at all wrong with someone who thinks Rawls's views are right working at any particular university. Certainly Rawls's own view has no implications on the matter. Maybe the right view of justice has some implications for this (though I doubt it) but Rawls's certainly doesn't in any direct way at all. (Harry's more basic point, though, that even those at most state universities, and especially those at top state universities, are rarely among the least advantaged is right, though.)

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  25. anon

    Tom Hurka suggests it's unRawlsian for leading philosophers to teach at exclusive schools that cater to the top economic tier of society. I think I agree, but I would only add that it's not clear what Rawlsian philosophy demands here. The top Canadian schools (Toronto, McGill) are economically much more diverse than the Ivies. And, there are quite a few students at them who are interested enough to profit from a superstar philosopher to help them appreciate nuances.

    I'd like to know how often economic diversity and intellectual curiosity combine at universities in the US. I would expect that poor/middle class students who are motivated would tend to cluster at particular schools–probably quite often schools whose students are predominantly affluent. I TA at a relatively non-exclusive school in the US and my students are overwhelmingly working class (most of the students have jobs, some work full time). I don't think they would be better served by a superstar than by someone who would be equally good at teaching the basics of critical reading and writing. From what people are saying, it sounds like SUNY-Binghamton and some of the UC's might be relatively working class but also places where students would profit from good philosophers. I wonder how many schools there are like this, where Rawlsian considerations would compel good philosophers to teach.

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  26. ken

    I think there's an assumption running through this discussion that isn't entirely correct — though it does have some basis in fact. The assumption I have in mind is that kids who go to the Ivies and places like Stanford are highly privileged. Certainly, a lot of our students come from highly privileged backgrounds. Perhaps a disproportionate number do. But by no means all do. I can't speak for other elite universities, but Stanford makes a very serious effort to make the cost of Stanford — which is considerable — not be a barrier to either admission or attendance. OUr esteemed provost, for example, just announced the other day that our new financial aid model will mean that students whose family income is 60K or less will have to pay nothing to attend Stanford and students whose family income falls between 60 – 120k will be expected, for example, to take out no more than 8K in loans over their four years here. We've also reduced the parental expected contribution for that income group.

    The university really does strive to be more than just a place where already advantaged kids amplify their advantages. Of course, the improved financial aid model doesn't address the deeper social inequalities in our society that lock some into third or fourth rate schools that are very unlikely to prepare them for either an elite private or an elite public college or university. Flagship state universities, like Rutgers, no doubt do marginally more to address such inequalities, but I don't think they do a huge amount more. That, I think, falls to the more explicitly "second chance" institutions . In California, we have the Cal State system and the junior college system which educate very large numbers of students.

    Let me also say that I've taught at two elite liberal arts schools: Middlebury College and Wesleyan University, two large State universities: Rutgers and the University of Maryland College Part, and at Stanford. I was also a post-doc at the UNC Chapel Hill. So I've taught in lots of different settings. And here's what I think. At almost any institution, you will find all sorts of students, with different degrees of talent, with varying life plans and initial views about their careers. At Wesleyan, I had lots of students whose career ambitions were to be actors and artists and activists and academics. Some of them went on to be that sort of thing. I also had students there who wanted to be lawyers and doctors. And others who were completely lost. Same at Middlebury, Maryland, Rutgers, and Stanford.

    I'm not suggesting that there are no differences among the students at these various places. On average, the students at Stanford or Wesleyan were more prepared to do college work than my students at Rutgers or Maryland were. But that's just on average. I had many excellent students at both Maryland and Rutgers. And many students at Wesleyan, Middlebury and Stanford who weren't so special, after all.

    The main difference, I think, wasn't so much in the students but in the University's — in particular the faculty's — relationship to the students. At both Rutgers and Maryland, during my time in those places , though there were, and no doubt still are, many highly effective undergraduate teachers, there was a certain "distance" between the faculty and the students in general that didn't exist at Middlebury or Wesleyan. I think the students felt this distance and the structure of the institution did a lot to reinforce this perceived distance. It was very different at both Middlebury and Wesleyan and somewhat different here at Stanford. At Middlebury and Wesleyan, for example, my students somehow felt entitled to sit in my office for hours talking about life and philosophy. At Maryland, on the other hand, students who spent, say, fifteen minutes in my office would sometimes apologize for taking up my time. I would tell them that they had a right to my time. Though Stanford is a major research university, it is more like Wesleyan in its treatment of undergraduates than it is like either Maryland or Rutgers.

    I think this matters a lot. I like being at a place where the undergraduate student body at large feels more empowered and entitled in its relation to faculty than, in my experience, the undergraduate student body at large felt at Rutgers or Maryland. Not that there aren't local exceptions. Not that there aren't faculty at Rutgers or Maryland who work to overcome these perceived distances. I wouldn't say that at all. But it is a different institutional atmosphere and its something of value. It gives one a different relation to one's undergraduate students. And I could see choosing to work at one place rather than another partly because one valued having one sort of relation to one's students rather than another.

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  27. Margaret Atherton

    Ken,

    Don't you think that the feelings of empowerment and entitlement that the students you describe feel have as much to do with their privileged background just like their secondary school preparation, rather than with something specifically institutional? (Unless of course it is a feeling of "I paid through the nose for this guy's time") There are a lot of reasons why the very well socialized students who end up at elite colleges and universities are agreeable to be around.

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  28. Manyul Im

    Ken,

    Let me second Margaret's sentiment. It seems pretty clear to me that some of the "relationship" differences between students and faculty at Middlebury, Wesleyan, and Stanford versus say, Cal State L.A. where I teach, have to do with distance alright–the distance of class. Most of my students at Cal State L.A. are very respectful of my time (apologetic for taking it up) because they think someone with a Ph.D. is really important (little do they know). Students from a wealthier class probably have some sense already that Ph.D. holders are lower on the food chain economically than lots of other types, so why should they feel apologetic about taking up our time with their ramblings? Less cynically, they probably also can imagine themselves (sometimes accurately) as potential colleagues of ours in the future should they choose such a career path; on the other hand undergraduates at Cal State L.A. are usually not considering graduate school in philosophy as an option, or even a fantasy, even when they are enjoying the courses they take in it. I think most people who risk going on in philosophy have some sense of an economic safety net under them–which speaks to the class issue.

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  29. Jason Stanley

    Ken,

    You write:

    "I think there's an assumption running through this discussion that isn't entirely correct — though it does have some basis in fact. The assumption I have in mind is that kids who go to the Ivies and places like Stanford are highly privileged."

    You cite as evidence against this assumption that Stanford is taking steps now to make Stanford more affordable to the lower middle class and poor. But I wonder whether you have actual statistics to cite here, and if not, I suggest you contact your undergraduate dean of admissions to find out the facts. I'm currently giving talks in Scotland, and so I don't have my copy of Daniel Golden's book handy. But I do remember that only 10 percent of Princeton's class of (I think) 2001 or 2002 were from families that made the national median income or lower. I don't recall Stanford being any better. Princeton too has recently done similar steps to the ones you describe Stanford as having taken (and I believe Princeton's move was the impetus for Stanford's, if I'm not mistaken). I saw e-mail communication with a Dean of Admissions at Princeton last year, and their most recent class was up to 13 percent students from families that had the national median income or lower. That is great improvement from 10 percent, but there is still a long way to go. Anyway, what one learns from this is that the fact that a university talks a lot about economic diversity does not mean they have been successful (of course, this has largely to do with societal forces beyond the university's control).

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  30. harry b

    Actually, if Jason's right, 10% isn't too bad (as these things go); 13% is amazing, considering the relative quality of schooling the two kinds of children get prior to college admissions. Presumably the Ivys and Stanford get the first shot at the real high flyers from below median income and have the funds to support them (as long as there aren't too many of them which, of course, there aren't). Excellent reading here, by the way, is Robert Fullinwider and Judith Lichtenberg's book Levelling the Playing Field which is about college admissions generally, rather than elite admissions, and exposes the depths of the problem; as I said before, the flagship public universities have nothing to congratulate themselves for really. There is a dearth of well-prepared kids from not-well-to-do backgrounds.

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  31. ken

    Jason:

    You're wrong about a couple of things. First, it isn't that Stanford isn't just now "taking steps." It's now — actually last year in the case of lower income students and this year in the case of middle income students — taking additional steps.

    Stanford has had long-standing polcies of this sort and the long-standing goal of making its student body economically diverse. It keeps tinkering with the means, trying to improve.

    On thing I heard said is that the perception of the affordability of Stanford and the reality may be out of whack so that qualified students who would qualify for considerable financial aid don't apply in the first place because they may not be aware of how much aid is available and how affordable Stanford would be. The financial aid statement below makes explicit reference to that fact.

    Anyway, you seem to doubt that elite universities have any commitment to financial diversity. On what grounds?

    Also, to Margaret. No I don't think the sense of entitlement and empowerment just has to do with the students backgrounds and not with the structure of the institution. Institutions like Stanford WANT their students to have an enduring sense of ownership of the place and a sense of ownership that will persist long after they leave. We rely on that enduring sense of ownership a great deal in trying to raise money to keep the place a float. So there are all sorts of mechanisms in place that are, I think, directly intended to help foster a sense of ownership and empowerment on the part of the students. It's completely non-accidental.

    Back to financial aid, though.

    Here are two statements from the Univiersity's office of financial aid:

    First, a statement about making a Stanford education essentially cost free to lower income students;

    Q. Why did the University do this?

    A. Stanford has a long-standing commitment to provide financial aid to all admitted students to meet the gap between what families are expected to pay and our total costs, including tuition, room, board, books, supplies, personal expenses and transportation, which average $47,000 next year. Lowering expected parental contributions means more scholarship for students.

    Recent national research has shown that well-prepared students from lower-income backgrounds are not applying to highly selective institutions at the same rates as their upper income peers. Our concern is that low-income families are seeing the cost of attending Stanford and ruling us out as an option before investigating financial aid options. We hope that this very clear message will encourage those talented students from low-income backgrounds to consider Stanford. Also, our experience with current students has shown that even when only a modest parent contribution is expected, students are often picking up the slack through student loans so their parents will not have to pay. With this new policy, we are recognizing that issue up front and addressing it with scholarship rather than student loans."

    And about significantly lowering the cost to middle income students:

    "Q. Why did the University do this?

    A. Last year we implemented a new financial aid policy aimed at helping students from lower-income families (annual incomes under $60,000). But we realize that middle-income families also face a tremendous challenge in paying for a Stanford education. The new initiatives for the upcoming academic year will have the most impact on students from families with annual incomes between $60,000 and $135,000.

    During fall 2006 the Provost’s Office conducted a survey of a random sample of parents of current Juniors and Seniors about their experiences in financing a Stanford education and their feelings about the quality of that education. While we found that almost unanimously families would make the necessary sacrifices again, middle income families were in many cases seriously impacted by the financial commitment we were asking them to make. We recognize that we are still asking parents to make significant contributions toward the costs of educating their children; our hope is that these new policies will ease the burden"

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  32. Jason Stanley

    Ken,

    You say that I am "wrong about a couple of things". But you fail to provide any examples of things I am wrong about! Looking back at what I said, everything I said was basically correct. Princeton instituted tuition changes several years ago (so before Stanford). Princeton's class of 2004 contained only 10 percent of students from families with incomes below the national median. Princeton's class of 2009 consists of 15.9 percent of families from below the national median. So the tuition policies have been successful. But even so, having 15.9 percent of one's class being middle-class or lower hardly amounts to refuting the claim that generally kids who go to Ivies and Stanford are highly privileged! O.k., so maybe only 75 percent of such kids are highly privileged (upper middle class or over).

    Perhaps your claim is that Stanford has done *much better* than Princeton on this score. Can you substantiate that claim? As I recall from Golden's book, Stanford undergraduate admissions gets skewered pretty hard. What are your responses to Golden's discussion? Have you met with your dean of undergraduate admissions to go over the details of the various admissions formulas?

    I do not doubt that many people at boutique universities have a commitment to financial diversity. I greatly admire the steps that Princeton, and it sounds like Stanford as well, have taken, to make it more possible for someone of lesser means to attend. I hope they follow those policies up by changing the policies with respect to athletes, legacies, and children of potential donors. That said, I'm not sure much can be done. Whatever the changes in admissions policies will be, the children of the wealthy will learn to exploit them (short of affirmative action for lower income students). That doesn't show that there aren't very many people of good will at the boutiques, and they are doing what they can.

    It also doesn't show that we at Rutgers are doing a substantially better job. The budget cuts have forced us to raise tuition, and the elevated tuition has placed Rutgers outside the affordability range of many deserving New Jersey students. Though there is little we at Rutgers can do about it while maintaining first-class departments, I am nevertheless deeply disturbed about the current situation at my university. I worry you are a bit too complacent about the situation at yours.

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  33. Brian Leiter

    Jason reasonably asked for statistics about the *actual* economic diversity at Stanford, and none have been offered. I think Jason's original point, therefore, stands.

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  34. harry b

    Just to add to ken's just a handful of private universities is in a position to do what Stanford (and Harvard, and a handful of others) are doing, and this is because the vast majority of private colleges, including lots of good ones that you've heard of, operate on a hand-to-mouth basis, in the sense that they depend on next year's tuition to assure that they will meet next year's expenses. So, in fact, Stanford and the Ivies can be much more diverse than lots of less prestigious places. Harvard could probably afford to be flooded with low-income, non-paying students, and probably would be if there were a large enough very well prepared appplicant pool from low-to-middle-income backgrounds. There isn't (ken is right that some low income students who would be admitted don't apply because they think they can't afford it, but it is a small number; the real problem is poor preparation).

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  35. Jamie Dreier

    Jason hasn't given any statistics about the *actual* economic diversity at Rutgers, so I don't see what point you mean, Brian.

    US News and World Report lists the percentage of students at universities receiving Pell grants. Eligibility for Pell grants is restricted to low income students (I believe it's <$40k /year).
    Texas has 21%. Cornell has 16%. Stanford is 13%, and so is Michigan. But Rutgers does not appear on the list — the web site doesn't explain why.

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  36. Jon H

    Question (I'm genuinely curious about this): Being that Stanford, Princeton, boutiques, and company are private institutions, are they under any obligation (legal, anyway) to make an undergraduate education affordable for low-income students? My initial thought would be 'not-really'.

    Conversely, when it comes to State Flagships like Texas, Michigan, Berkeley, Wisconsin, and company my initial thought would be that they are under some obligation to make undergraduate education affordable.

    Thoughts? Would Golden's book have the answers?

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  37. ken

    For some more info on economic diversity at Stanford, check out this webpage

    http://www.questbridge.org/cmp/partner_schools/stanford/diversity.html

    About 12% of Stanford students receive Pell Grants. (incomes less than 40k)

    About 24% of Stanford students come from families with incomes less than 60K.

    Don't know how many students come from famillies with incomes between 60 and 135K (that's how the financial aid office defines middle class, it seems). But I'd guess a signficant chunk. So I'd say a lot less than 75% of our students count as "privileged"

    By the way, Jason, the two things you got wrong were that Stanford is "just now" taking steps to address this problem. In fact, Leland and Jane Stanford, who founded the University, wanted Stanford to be a tuition free University. Here's a quote from Leland Stanford. "The rich can get their eductation anywhere,, but the object is more particularly to reach the multitude — those people who have to consider the expenditure of every dollar." Stanford was, in fact, tuition free until 1920. Apparently when they introduced tuition, they also introduced need-blind admissions. Of course, times have changed dramatically unfortunately. But it's been along term concern here, from what I gather, to try to achieve some economnic diversity.

    Also, you said that Stanford took these steps in response to Princeton. Not quite right. When Princeton and Harvard first did this kind of thing. Stanford viewed them as "catching" up with Stanford — though I'm not taking sides on whether that is true or false.

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  38. Jason Stanley

    Jamie,

    I never made any claims about economic diversity at Rutgers. So I don't understand your comment to Brian. As I said above, I am extremely worried about the effects of the draconian cuts last year, and have talked to administrators about the matter. I do not think it is an option to make the university worse. We should not create a two-tiered system of universities in America. We need great public universities, and not just in California and the Midwest. But it is a very serious problem at Rutgers that it has gotten much more expensive. The solution is not to undercut the many excellent departments we have built, but to figure out how to advertise ourselves to the people of New Jersey.

    As far as economic diversity goes, here is our profile page:

    http://www.economicdiversity.org/profiles_system.php?unitid=999918

    About 28 percent of our students receive Pell Grants. But these statistics are misleading, because these are the statistics for all three Rutgers campuses. Assuredly, the percentage of Pell Grant recipients at the New Brunswick campus is less. I would guess that we have a far greater percentage of middle class students at New Brunswick than they do at Stanford, and percentage-wise far fewer children of the ueber-wealthy.

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  39. Tad Brennan

    harry b–

    "Harvard could probably afford to be flooded with low-income, non-paying students…"

    agreed. Like Amherst College, Harvard has a large enough endowment per capita that it could survive quite handily without charging tuition. And you are right that this is true of very, very few other private schools & universities. (Not that this makes them objects of pity–that would be like saying "poor Dodsworth–he has to work for a living, instead of getting by on his inherited wealth!")

    "and probably would be if there were a large enough very well prepared appplicant pool from low-to-middle-income backgrounds. "

    This I doubt, for two reasons:

    when you look at the indices of preparation that get people into Harvard–the double-800's on the SATs, the 4.0 and better GPAs in high school, the multiple AP exams, etc.–what you find is that there are a huge number of kids who fit these profiles. Harvard admissions will tell you that they could fill several more perfectly decent entering classes from the kids they turn away.

    And you meet some of these kids at the big state universities and other places around the country: kids who are every bit as bright as the median Harvard kid, but for one reason or another are going to State instead (applied but didn't get accepted; thought they couldn't afford it; family wanted them in-state; regional bias against MA; all sorts of things. I once taught a phenomenally bright kid at a mediocre institution who decided to turn down Harvard for the simple reason that his brother was already there.)

    In view of how many kids you meet elsewhere who are academically indistinguishable from the median Harvard admit, I think it is quite likely you could fill up a Harvard entering class with such kids drawn just from the "low-to-middle income background". (The likelihood will fluctuate of course with where we set the "middle" boundary).

    I'm not disputing the fact that socio-economic background has a large and often fatal effect on a student's chances of acquiring the preparation necessary to excel at college. But it's a really big world out there, with a whole lot of 18-year-olds. Let's not forget that many of them are getting great educations overseas, and living on incomes well below the US standards for middle class. Millions, even. And the entering class at any one place is only a few thousand slots. So I'm pretty sure that you could find enough qualified kids, even in the lower socio-economic strata.

    Second problem: Harvard has a bunch of goals in its admissions policies beyond simply accepting academically well-prepared students. (Or even "academically super-well-prepared students"). They admit a lot of kids because they are the offspring of alums. They admit a certain quota to fill out athletic teams in traditionally preppy sports (rowing, lacrosse, etc.). And they admit some purely at the behest of the "development office"; i.e., they get a file from the fund-raisers saying "this kid's family is so wealthy we would be crazy not to hook them into our alumni donation system."*

    So for these two reasons, I think it is false to say "Harvard *would* be flooded with low-to-middle income students if there *were* a large enough pool of well-qualified ones." I think there already *is* such a pool (though they don't all apply), and I think Harvard goes out of its way to make sure that its entering class is *not* flooded by them.

    * How do I know this about Harvard? I do not know this about Harvard. I know this about some other universities that are otherwise very similar to Harvard, and I reason from like to like.

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  40. Jamie Dreier

    Jason;
    Brian noted that nobody had provided economic diversity statistics about Stanford, so that your "original point … stands". I noted that nobody had provided any about Rutgers, and said I couldn't see which point Brian was referring to. No doubt I'm just being thick.

    The data at the site you linked to are not completely transparent. But suppose we take the percentage of students with family incomes $60k or lower who applied for financial aid. (I think that's what the 'Financial Aid' tables tell us.) Then at Rutgers, all campuses, that percentage is 55%, while at Stanford it's only 21%. On the other hand, at Columbia it's 43%, so if the New Brunswick campus is richer than the other Rutgers campuses, then Rutgers-NB and Columbia seem to have very similar profiles.

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  41. Jason Stanley

    Jamie,

    Columbia has long been the Ivy League University with the most impressive record of economic diversity. Unsurprisingly, it has also long been the Ivy League University with the worst sports teams.

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  42. ken

    Jamie:

    I think you're reading those tables wrong and drawing a mistaken conclusion from them.

    What the charts tell you is that:

    67% of all Rutgers students sought FEDERAL financial aid.
    38% of Columbia's students sought FEDERAL aid
    56% of Stanford's sought FEDERAL aid.

    Then the chart tells you how that aid-seeking % is composed, but in terms of % 's of the whole student body (not in terms of % of the aid-seeking subset)

    Rutgers: 19% of the entire student body (of the entire system) both seeks aid and has income less than 30K; 17% of the entire student body of the entire system both seeks aid and has income between 30K and 60K; 31% of the entire student body of the entire system both seeks aid and has income greater than 60K

    Columbia: 8% of the whole student body both seeks aid and has income less than 30K; 9% seeks aid and has income between 30k and 60k; 22% both seeks aid and has income greatn than 60K. and 62% don't seek aid at all.

    Stanford: 9% of the entire student body both seeks aid and has income less than 30k. 12% of the whole both seeks aid and has income between 30k and 60k. 35% both seeks aid and has income above 60K. 44% don't seek aid at all.

    I wouldn't draw too many conclusions from these charts as they stand, since they explicitly have to do with FEDERAL aid only. I assume that means not just pell grants but also Federal student loans.

    I don't know what this means for University supplied fellowships. I assume that most Universities factor in some outside student loan requirement for at least certain students in certain aid categories.

    There are also loan stats on those pages.

    If you assume that these data represented all facts about aid and income — which I think would be a mistake — you'd have to conclude that since Columbia probably costs something more like what Stanford does rather than what Rutgers costs, the table would suggest that Columbia is the least economically diverse of the three institutions you mention.

    That's because it might be a reasonable assumption that the students who don't seek Federal aid, don't qualify for any kind of university assistance. So those who don't seek FEDERAL aid, wouldn't need ANY aid. By that measure, Columbia would have a larger % of the "uber-privileged.

    But I'm not sure these are safe assumptions.

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  43. Brian Leiter

    Jamie: the point Jason was making here:

    http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2007/05/because_the_und.html#comment-69505556

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  44. Lisa

    Jason,

    On the more impressionistic aspect: There's something to be said for the student who has few (or none) of the advantages or hope for success characteristic of students at prestigious universities but who displays a deathless ardor for philosophy that appears unrelated to career goals, the cultural cachet of philosophical knowledge or even a good grade. Maybe it is a bit like seeing someone do something moral that's very contrary to her self-interest. The person whose motives are overdetermined isn't morally worse but the self-sacrificing person stands out. The kind of questioning student you are talking about–and/or the kind of student who takes Frege to read on his twelve hour shift as a security guard–affirms the significance of philosophy to human life. This says nothing against the student whose passion for philosophy is also mixed with a bit of career ambition–but this other kind of student is especially admirable (to me anyway) because it's so obvious they love philosophy for its own sake.

    One way of reading the comment about teaching that you criticize is that it is less worthwhile or enjoyable to teach students who are closer to the bottom of the social hierarchy and better to teach those closer to the top. I doubt this is what people mean, but the claim is at least consistent with the belief that the social hierarchy reflects (or is the result of) the actual abilities of those within it. It's probably a little uncharitable to interpret the claim that way but I hope you won't back off from the idea that we should expose the idea that this hierarchy is natural and right and how comfortable some are with it.

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  45. Jason Stanley

    Lisa,

    Great comment. You write:

    "One way of reading the comment about teaching that you criticize is that it is less worthwhile or enjoyable to teach students who are closer to the bottom of the social hierarchy and better to teach those closer to the top. I doubt this is what people mean, but the claim is at least consistent with the belief that the social hierarchy reflects (or is the result of) the actual abilities of those within it. It's probably a little uncharitable to interpret the claim that way but I hope you won't back off from the idea that we should expose the idea that this hierarchy is natural and right and how comfortable some are with it."

    I don't doubt this is what people mean. As soon as you dig a little, people (a bit shockingly) admit as much (stock answer: "O.k., o.k., so maybe my students are better because they went to expensive private schools — but surely that *makes* them better"). Of course the purpose of my post was challenge the belief that the social hierarchy reflects the actual abilities of those within it. Unfortunately, I suspect I'm not capable of backing off from trying to expose the fact that so many academics are comfortable supporting this extremely dangerously false belief.

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  46. Steven Nadler

    Just three (I would think uncontroversial) comments that, while peripheral, might address some of the premises behind this debate.
    1. As Tad's comment implies, getting into an Ivy League school often has nothing whatsoever to do with how good a student is. (What I really want to say is, it's a total scam, but I'll restrain myself.) My wife teaches at a high school (one populated by many faculty kids) here in the Midwest. I've seen some of her students get into top Ivies clearly (and I mean *clearly*) on the basis of personal connections alone, while other students, much more qualified in every possible academic and intellectual way, are rejected. A student's presence at an Ivy League school is, by itself, no indication of how good that student is.
    2. Given the realities of the academic job market, the faculty at very many so-called lesser institutions these days are going to be just as good as the faculty at one of the elites. Not every highly qualified, even brilliant Ph. D. from a leading program can end up teaching at a Harvard or a Yale, but s/he has to go somewhere. Conversely, a faculty member's presence at an Ivy League school is, by itself, no indication of how good that faculty member is. I'm just not convinced that a student at an Ivy League or some other "elite" school is therefore getting a better education than a student at a public or non-elite private institution.
    3. This might be more true of the Midwest than the east or west coasts: There are many reasons why an outstanding student would choose a public/state university over an elite/private one: cost, of course, but also proximity to home. I know that many of our very best in-state students here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison come to this campus not only because it is a hell of a bargain for their families, but also because they simply do not want to go very far from home, even to attend one of the Ivies.

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  47. Nathan Foell

    Tad:

    It's certainly right that not every bright kid in the country ends up at an Ivy, and that the Ivies adhere to policies that they full well know will ensure that they do not end up with entering classes full of kids of modest means. Having done my undergraduate work at a large state school, I naturally have some vested interest in saying that. And I was just one of those kids that Ken mentioned who didn't even know of the financial aid possibilities open to them at elite private schools, so I was more than happy to accept my full scholarship to my in-state institution. So I agree with much of what you have to say. I even share your sense that there is certainly something wrong about the children of the privileged effectively being guaranteed a certain number of spots at the Ivies. But at the same time I did not detect any sense of the dilemma that faces these institutions in your comment.

    For after all, where exactly are these institutions to procure the money that they dispense in financial aid packages if not from wealthy donors? This of course is not to say that I support every policy in place at such institutions, but just that we should not judge them too harshly before having made some effort to appreciate the difficult situation that they are in. Money doesn't grow on trees, and for private universities that don't receive even the meager funding on offer from state governments they have to get it from somewhere. If that involves some pandering to the wealthy that is unfortunate, but that's also life in America today. Perhaps I am injecting an implicit criticism in your comment that wasn't really there and if so I apologize, but this seemed worth pointing out regardless.

    Jason:

    As I take it from your last comment the "extremely dangerous false belief" that you are trying to expose is that children who went to "expensive private schools" are made better for it. I can't claim to follow you here, so perhaps I am just missing something. But as I see it it would be more than a little strange for those of us on the left to spend so much time advocating for more funding for and access to educational institutions at all levels if such expenditures did nothing to improve educational outcomes. Kids aren't better off for having gone to high schools with working computers and teachers with advanced degrees? I am sure you can't mean to imply this, yet I can't figure out how else to interpret your words.

    Of course being a child of privilege does not itself make you smarter or anything like that, and if this is what you are saying I am all with you. But now having spent some time as a graduate student at Harvard after having been an undergraduate at the University of Oklahoma, I can promise you that there are genuine differences in the mean ability of the students. If much of these differences is not to be laid at the feet of better preparation, where is it to be laid? Indeed it seems to me that to deny there are such genuine differences is not only simply false, but risks undermining the whole liberal case for equal educational opportunities in the first place. The social hierarchy does to some extent reflect the actual abilities of those within it, precisely because the social hierarchy plays a crucial role in shaping those abilities. Now as to whether talented philosophers should spend their time teaching the advantaged or the disadvantaged is of course a separate question, but regardless of that there is an obvious sense in which the empirical claim that your friends are making is undeniably true. I don't think I'm really saying anything here that hasn't already been said several times above; but your comments have seemed ambiguous to me on whether you accept this point, or are trying to refute it with some argument I have yet to discern. So this is more a call for clarification of your position than anything else.

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  48. bill wringe

    'I don't doubt this is what people mean. As soon as you dig a little, people (a bit shockingly) admit as much (stock answer: "O.k., o.k., so maybe my students are better because they went to expensive private schools — but surely that *makes* them better").'

    Hmmm. I think you might be interpreting the words you've put into the mouth of your straw professor a bit uncharitably here, Jason.

    Generally, when I've heard people utter sentiments like these, – and when I've uttered them myself, albeit in a rather different social and political context – what they've been intended to convey is not that the students in question are members of some natural aristocracy but that the students concerned are *better as students* ın various fairly clearly specifiable ways – eg better study skills; more socially confident and for that reason more willing to engage in in-class discussion; more aware of (roughly) what a student paper should look like, and more prepared to make some investment in mastering that rather unnatural literary form and so on.

    At least, I imagine that that is what I was being praised when – having been schooled at an expensive private school of the sort Jason is referring to -I was commended by some of my undergraduate teachers as someone who lived up to their ecpectations of what a good student might be like.

    (full context: in my case the expensive private school education was funded by a full-fees scholarship, but one I would never have been in a position to compete for if my parents had not been bookish, ambitious for their off-spring and pretty clued up about education in general) –

    I doubt that any of these features of 'good' students are good trackers of innate philosophical ability, moral worth, overall intelligence, or anything much other than (perhaps) chances of career success. And they may well be positively correlated with lots of traits that would be undesirable in a student ofd any sort, and especially a philosophy student (some kinds of conformity and deference to authority; expectations of effortless success etc). And I suspect that most people in the profession are well aware of both these facts – at least on a conscious level. (Gut instinct may be a different matter)

    But they can make teaching easier and more fun, or simply more like what someone entering the profession might have imagined being a professional philosopher would be like.

    And I suspect that this – or something like it – is what your interlocutors mean; and while it may show a certain degree of social and political disengagement (or more likely an attitude of not wanting to make their political engagement central to their professional careers) – and may even be a bad thing for that reason – I don't think it embodies the sort of dangerous and ideologically loaded belief that you suggest.

    To expand on the remark about 'what one might have supposed being a professional philosopher would be like': I'm sure that at least some professional philosophers choose the profession because what they really wanted to do was teach philosophy. (Given the structure of the profession, it's not entirely clear that they are making a wise choice in doing so, but that's another story). But I doubt they saw this as involving quite the amount of enthusiasm for teaching basic study skills to young adults that really good and dedicated teachers in many American institutions seem to need (and fortunately are able to develop in many cases).

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  49. Gary Bartlett

    Nathan:

    You said of Jason's recent remarks: "As I take it from your last comment the 'extremely dangerous false belief' that you are trying to expose is that children who went to 'expensive private schools' are made better for it. I can't claim to follow you here, so perhaps I am just missing something."

    Jason wasn't very clear. What he said was: "the purpose of my post was challenge the belief that the social hierarchy reflects the actual abilities of those within it. Unfortunately, I suspect I'm not capable of backing off from trying to expose the fact that so many academics are comfortable supporting this extremely dangerously false belief." My guess is that the dangerous belief in question is not that private school makes you a more able student (which, as you say, is surely true) but that the fact that you have been to a private school shows that you *started out* with more ability than someone who didn't go to such a school. Which is surely not true.

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  50. Manyul Im

    Gary,

    The idea that "you have been to a private school shows that you *started out* with more ability than someone who didn't go to such a school" is so "surely not true" that I doubt Jason meant this. It would be such a lightweight strawman that I don't see how it could be "dangerous" among academics in general, much less among philosophers.

    There have been at least two issues about "abilities" in discussion here, though I'm not sure Jason clearly delineated them from the start. One is the question of whether economic and social backgrounds of a certain privileged sort are more representive of undergraduates in, say, Ivy-league institutions, than are better academic backgrounds. I take it Nathan's point was that there *is* a likely correlation between privileged background and better academic background–and that this is neither a dangerous nor false generalization, just one that reflects the inequities of elementary and secondary education *in general* in the U.S. Indeed, some of the debate has centered on whether elite institutions have successfully tapped non-privileged backgrounds so that more students with good academic abilities from a variety of economic and social backgrounds might receive the benefits of the elite institutions.

    The other question is about academic "abilities" more broadly construed, as in the intellectual temperament of the students. Here I take it, Jason has questioned seriously whether the above correlation between socio-economic background and academic preparation also translates into better intellectual temperament for study of philosophy. I think Jason wants to deny that it does. With regard to this issue, I think, we haven't discussed enough the nuances in the matrix of intellectual temperament and economic need. A lot of students at non-elite institutions might have the temperament for interest in philosophical questions but be under a lot of personal and family pressure to succeed economically. On the flip-side, it might very well be that at elite institutions, there are more likely to be students who don't have the high pressure to succeed economically, though they might take it for granted that they will–even if they enter academia. Hence there are likely to be more engaged and interested students in philosophy courses at elite institutions. On the other hand at non-elite institutions, like my own, there may be fewer engaged and interested students in philosophy classes because their level of interest is tempered by the lack of interest in pursuing philosophical questions much further than for the purposes of passing or doing well in the course.

    To be frank, and changing the topic a bit, I'm of two minds about encouraging the few really good students in philosophy courses at my (non-elite) institution to pursue philosophy as a profession. Maybe they'd lead much better (prosperous) lives by going to law school or continuing their engineering program trajectory. On the other hand, maybe it would serve both their intellectual lives and our profession if they became philosophers. I'm sure many of us at non-elite institutions have faced this dilemma.

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