If a Harvard Degree is So Valuable, Why Not Franchise It?

But what if higher education is really just the final stage of a competitive tournament? From grades and test results through the U.S. News & World Report rankings of the colleges themselves, higher education sorts us all into a hierarchy. Kids at the top enjoy prestige because they’ve defeated everybody else in a competition to reach the schools that proudly exclude the most people. All the hard work at Harvard is done by the admissions officers who anoint an already-proven hypercompetitive elite. If that weren’t true — if superior instruction could explain the value of college — then why not franchise the Ivy League? Why not let more students benefit? It will never happen because the top U.S. colleges draw their mystique from zero-sum competition.

Notes:

Folksonomies: education academia

Taxonomies:
/education/graduate school/college (0.496467)
/finance/personal finance/financial planning/retirement and pension (0.452753)
/education (0.433211)

Keywords:
higher education (0.940968 (positive:0.325818)), higher education sorts (0.926033 (positive:0.384926)), World Report rankings (0.854247 (positive:0.369739)), already-proven hypercompetitive elite (0.810737 (positive:0.261744)), Harvard Degree (0.631740 (positive:0.296962)), enjoy prestige (0.554964 (neutral:0.000000)), zero-sum competition (0.548355 (negative:-0.280120)), U.S. colleges (0.517859 (negative:-0.280120)), final stage (0.514970 (positive:0.266710)), competitive tournament (0.513791 (positive:0.266710)), test results (0.506807 (positive:0.410965)), Ivy League (0.499282 (neutral:0.000000)), U.S. News (0.492306 (positive:0.410965)), admissions officers (0.491629 (positive:0.261744)), superior instruction (0.488573 (neutral:0.000000)), hard work (0.481066 (positive:0.261744)), mystique (0.213221 (negative:-0.280120)), everybody (0.207689 (neutral:0.000000)), amp (0.206551 (positive:0.410965)), hierarchy (0.203983 (positive:0.384926))

Entities:
Harvard Degree:Degree (0.846884 (positive:0.296962)), Harvard:Organization (0.676727 (positive:0.261744)), U.S.:Country (0.644179 (positive:0.065422)), Ivy League:Organization (0.615843 (neutral:0.000000))

Thinking too highly of higher ed

Periodicals>Newspaper Article: Thiel, Peter (November 21, 2014), Thinking too highly of higher ed, Washington Post, Retrieved on 2015-04-15

Source Material [www.washingtonpost.com]

Folksonomies: education academia

Schemas

08 MAR 2015

Is College Worth It?

Are PhDs a pyramid scheme? Are college returns worth the risk of failure and massive debt?

Folksonomies: economics academia debt student loans