Question: Besides, my Cornell education has repaid itself many times over in >> only a few years. It has led to opportunities I simply wouldn’t have >> had, had I attended a lesser school. It’s a gamble: you put in a lot >> more money to attend an Ivy-caliber school, but you have the potential >> to get a lot more out of it.

I would think that the potential is fixed across all schools (or even >skipping college completely). Rather attending a strong school >increases what you get out of it on average.

Answer: I tend to disagree. If you look at the ability level of students attending a university you can determine the level that the professors tend to teach too. If you have lower ability level students you would tend to put in less effort and be less knowledgeable about the subject because you would not be challenged very much. Further the brightest professors tend to teach the brighter students. In honors programs at huge universities I think that the brighter more knowledgeable professors teach those classes. So why not attend one of those schools and utilize the honors programs? Well, the honors programs are usually tailored to fit a very specific niche if you are not interested in liberal arts too bad because many of them concentrate on the liberal arts and even then the offerings are rather limited. Also, some Universities just continue the unsatisfactory paradigm (seen in many public schools) of giving honors students more work but not at a higher level.

Yes, you can skip college completely but why reinvent the wheel. It is important to have at least a vague knowledge of the basics. If you skip school completely there is the potential to have huge gaps in your knowledge. Further, to be respected in your field you have to know the common language of others in your field which entails having the same basic knowledge. Something that everyone else knows, a self taught scholar might not have deemed important to learn. In addition, you develop contacts through your educational institution that are important to further the scope of a person’s work.

I just think that our country sticks rigidly to its class system by virtually eliminating the conscientious, middle class tax slaves from the ranks of the ivy league. Our middle class also is big on teaching to the middle and leaving out the little genius kids because they should be like everyone else and/or they don’t need any special effort because they are smart. What is the logical choice for a kid-I can attend ivy, go in debt, start life with a huge debt or I can attend public U for free, have no debt hanging over my head when I start my career life?

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