More stuff about college educations.

A few weeks back, I posted about the benefit I may have received from attending a big state school rather than an elite university. I've been thinking about it since then. Ultimately, I think that I do value the freedom I had in both high school and college to choose my own path. Since I didn't see myself as a student on the elite path, I didn't feel like I had to follow it. I think ignorance had a lot to do with it too. I really had no idea what college was going to be like or why it was valuable. I didn't have perspective on what a "better school" would get me. It didn't bother me that I was going to UGA and once I arrived, I found I was outclassed by most of the freshmen on my hall. After meeting the 15th person with enough AP hours to make him a sophomore, I decided that I was lucky to be there. I felt like I had been given a chance that I didn't necessarily deserve. Later, that same though process played into my switch from business to English. If I was getting a lucky break, I wanted to study something that I believed was valuable and enjoyable. Same thing with deciding to teach.

I found two more articles. The first is just a run-of-the-mill piece about the employment difficulties facing new grads. The other, is written by a Yale professor and meshes pretty closely with what I wrote about last time. The article is so similar I actually think I may have read it a year or two ago and forgotten about it.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-jobs-educate-20100612,0,1944150.story?track=rss

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-education/