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Either it would have to expand its undergrad programs, or student quality (as Harvard measures it) would decline. Joseph Heath has a very interesting article c

by graeme 5y ago

Either it would have to expand its undergrad programs, or student quality (as Harvard measures it) would decline. Joseph Heath has a very interesting article comparing US elite schools (tiny undergrad program) and Canadian elite schools (massive undergrad programs, bigger than Ivy League) http://induecourse.ca/the-bottleneck-in-u-s-higher-education/ http://induecourse.ca/the-bottleneck-in-u-s-higher-education...

tedunangst 5y ago
I've seen this before, and I think it's ridiculous to assume that there's some arbitrary cutoff about top 10 colleges. Why is not percentile based? For reference, there's 12 Houses at Harvard. With a bit of paperwork, they could each be a separate college, pushing Dartmouth all the way down completely out of the top 20. But would the education at Dartmouth have gotten worse in any way? Rephrased, what if we instead classify the Ivy League as a single college with eight campuses? What's the difference?
- sokoloff 5y ago
  That’s in the same article where they compare the value of an endowment (measured in dollars) against the GDP of three random countries (measured in a different unit: dollars per year [per country]). Analytic rigor is not high.
  - gowld 5y ago
    It's interesting to note that Harvard could fund an entire country for a year.
    - tedunangst 5y ago
      You know GDP and budget aren't the same, right?
  - asciident 5y ago
    I've seen this comparison in a few articles. It makes no sense at all. It's like if I said Microsoft's market cap ($1.942T) is larger than the GDP of Russian ($1.7T), or Apple's Market Cap ($2.125T) is double the combined endowments of every single US university altogether (about $1T). Complete nonsense comparisons.
- graeme 5y ago
  It’s because for cultural reasons US people ascribe elite status to precisely those ten colleges. Or T14 in some cases. If the US ascribed sainted elite status to the top 100 colleges to the top 100 colleges, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. By contrast in Canada if you went to UBC, McGill or UBC people assume you are smart.
  - tedunangst 5y ago
    Tough break for the Berkeley grads widely assumed to be dumb idiots.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
rejectedandsad 5y ago
But...we already have elite large undergrad programs, they’re called the UCs and the UT systems and the rest of the systems that support public ivies (both flagship and secondary campuses). UToronto, Waterloo, and UBC are all public. Our public ivies are big and produce equivalent talent while being accessible to nearly everyone through CC transfer agreements. I don’t think there’s a bottleneck here. The real bottleneck is that people who don’t go to top schools are considered to be inherently inferior and objective failures like myself.
- catgary 5y ago
  I don’t think school really figures into people’s thought process in Canada. UofT and UBC are massive, and as long as you check the boxes you get in. People in the Saskatchewan may prefer URegina because it’s closer to home, someone from Newfoundland may go to Memorial. Faculty positions are so competitive that I don’t think there’s a huge difference in the quality of the younger professors, just the bigger schools will have more profs and bigger research groups.
  - rejectedandsad 5y ago
    This is the case for 90% of applicants to college (in general) in the states too, including my undergrad (which happened to exist in the city I was born and grew up in). I hardly went to a prestigious undergrad but I had several brilliant professors that had significant pedigrees, educationally speaking.
    - catgary 5y ago
      I think the unique thing about Canada is that students “fall into” prestigious institutions by virtue of being good students who grew up in the area. Basically every student in Toronto with a 90% average in high school can go to UofT. This is very achievable for anyone from a stable middle class family whose parents care about education.

by graeme 5y ago

tedunangst 5y ago

I've seen this before, and I think it's ridiculous to assume that there's some arbitrary cutoff about top 10 colleges. Why is not percentile based? For reference, there's 12 Houses at Harvard. With a bit of paperwork, they could each be a separate college, pushing Dartmouth all the way down completely out of the top 20. But would the education at Dartmouth have gotten worse in any way? Rephrased, what if we instead classify the Ivy League as a single college with eight campuses? What's the difference?

sokoloff 5y ago
That’s in the same article where they compare the value of an endowment (measured in dollars) against the GDP of three random countries (measured in a different unit: dollars per year [per country]). Analytic rigor is not high.
- gowld 5y ago
  It's interesting to note that Harvard could fund an entire country for a year.
  - tedunangst 5y ago
    You know GDP and budget aren't the same, right?
- asciident 5y ago
  I've seen this comparison in a few articles. It makes no sense at all. It's like if I said Microsoft's market cap ($1.942T) is larger than the GDP of Russian ($1.7T), or Apple's Market Cap ($2.125T) is double the combined endowments of every single US university altogether (about $1T). Complete nonsense comparisons.
graeme 5y ago
It’s because for cultural reasons US people ascribe elite status to precisely those ten colleges. Or T14 in some cases. If the US ascribed sainted elite status to the top 100 colleges to the top 100 colleges, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. By contrast in Canada if you went to UBC, McGill or UBC people assume you are smart.
- tedunangst 5y ago
  Tough break for the Berkeley grads widely assumed to be dumb idiots.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

rejectedandsad 5y ago

But...we already have elite large undergrad programs, they’re called the UCs and the UT systems and the rest of the systems that support public ivies (both flagship and secondary campuses). UToronto, Waterloo, and UBC are all public. Our public ivies are big and produce equivalent talent while being accessible to nearly everyone through CC transfer agreements. I don’t think there’s a bottleneck here. The real bottleneck is that people who don’t go to top schools are considered to be inherently inferior and objective failures like myself.

catgary 5y ago
I don’t think school really figures into people’s thought process in Canada. UofT and UBC are massive, and as long as you check the boxes you get in. People in the Saskatchewan may prefer URegina because it’s closer to home, someone from Newfoundland may go to Memorial. Faculty positions are so competitive that I don’t think there’s a huge difference in the quality of the younger professors, just the bigger schools will have more profs and bigger research groups.
- rejectedandsad 5y ago
  This is the case for 90% of applicants to college (in general) in the states too, including my undergrad (which happened to exist in the city I was born and grew up in). I hardly went to a prestigious undergrad but I had several brilliant professors that had significant pedigrees, educationally speaking.
  - catgary 5y ago
    I think the unique thing about Canada is that students “fall into” prestigious institutions by virtue of being good students who grew up in the area. Basically every student in Toronto with a 90% average in high school can go to UofT. This is very achievable for anyone from a stable middle class family whose parents care about education.