From "Shimer College: the worst school in America?"
The author, Jon Ronson, visits the school, which turns out to be one of those "great books" programs:
The great books of the western tradition, not the professors, are the teachers: Da Vinci’s Notebooks and Aristotle’s Poetics and Homer’s Odyssey and de Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity and Kafka and Derrida and Nietzsche and Freud and Marx and Machiavelli and Shakespeare and the Bible.How could that get rated the worst school?
Textbooks about the great books are forbidden. That would be too easy. It is primary sources only here. Students can concentrate on humanities, or natural sciences, they can take electives in feminist theories, or Auden, or Zen masters, but it’s all great books and nothing else. There are no lectures. Each class takes the form of Socratic dialogue between the students, guided by a professor if necessary.
Everyone here agrees that it’s unjust to reduce this strange, tiny, madly intellectual place to statistics. Isabella says that since 2008 they’ve lost between eight and 10 students per year, for various reasons like health, family, finances. One dropped out because they were offered a job as a professional musician. Even Ben Miller, the list’s compiler, seems remorseful that Shimer topped his list. ‘I think their story is at least partly due to small sample sizes,’ he emails. Then he reiterates this twice more in other emails to me.
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49 comments:
Perhaps the worst colleges are the ones where the students graduate and have learned virtually nothing. Or where they have seemingly learned a lot, but have been filled with notions of knowledge and superiority which are largely spurious? There are some students at (and graduates of) supposedly elite colleges who have received very poor educations. $250k for a badge of ignorance is pretty bad.
I bet they woulda beat the Badgers last night, at least.
Schools are defined by their students.
The only thing the schools define are the admission standards, and the tuition.....and perhaps the definition of rape-rape.
"I bet they woulda beat the Badgers last night, at least."
They never lose. They have no teams.
Reading Derrida without the aid of experts is a good idea.
The experts aren't interested eough in what he's saying, having their own programs.
On your own, you'll come across this or that very apt observation that everybody will miss.
That's the game in the thicket.
Each class takes the form of Socratic dialogue between the students, guided by a professor if necessary. How could that get rated the worst school?
Pretty easily, if neither the professors nor the other students were providing any useful input during the Socratic dialogue. At that point, why pay the college for an education you can give yourself at any public library?
Reading through the article, it sounds like the type of college I'd prefer to attend. Granted, I'm nowhere near Chicago, and too busy actually working to go to a brick-and-mortar school, but still.....
Just from a brief look, I'd rather spend money on Shimer than on BIG STATE U.
What's even weirder is that St. John's College (Annapolis & Santa Fe, from which Schimer copied its great books program, is now getting more & more praise in the media than I've ever seen before.
Then again, SJC isn't down to 74 students. I suspect that what has happened to Schimer is that SJC, Thomas Aquinas, & the various larger universities that offer great books "honor" programs within a fixed major (my niece at Baylor took such a program) are robbing the also-rans of students.
"They never lose. They have no teams."
The only winning move is not to play.
Wouldn't the data used to determine a 'worst college' include the number of student rapes? Seems like that would have an influence on the college experience...
I am Laslo.
"Pretty easily, if neither the professors nor the other students were providing any useful input during the Socratic dialogue."
I think you need to read Miller's explanation of how he came up with the ranking. Obviously, Miller didn't go to every classroom in every school. He relied on statistics. What is the relationship between your idea and the statistics Miller used?
In a great books program, they limit what they read to "primary sources" and students are forced, through the Socratic method to develop strong reading and interpretation skills.
By the same token, this blog post gives 2 readings, and I've asked some Socratic questions. Here's another: Is our discussion in the comments on a level above or below the discussion at the "worst" school in America?
The Socratic method works best when you have someone like Socrates interviewing someone like Plato. This doesn't sound like the kind of school that attracts a lot of Socrates and Platos. That said, the program sounds interesting, and the publicity is probably good for the school. A lot of students, misled by its reputation as the worst college in America, will probably enroll thinking that it's a big party school rather than the kind of place where they have to read books by Derrida.
I think any college rankings are B.S. You have to go there to know, and that is of course impossible. You pays your money, and youse takes your chances.
If your aim is to become a govenment poobah, then of course an Ivy League college, and especially Harvard or Yale, is a great advantage, but that is for "connections," not the quality of their undergraduate education programs.
If you are looking for an education to prepare for working at a job, asking around for a land grant college with a decent department in your chosen field might be a better choice and certainly cheaper.
[Bill and Ted are in Ancient Greece]
Bill: [approaching Socrates] How's it going? I'm Bill, this is Ted. We're from the future.
Socrates: Socrates.
Ted: [whispering to Bill] Now what?
Bill: I dunno. Philosophize with him!
Ted: [clears his throat, to Socrates] "All we are is dust in the wind," dude.
[Socrates gives them a blank stare]
Bill: [scoops up a pile of dust from the basin before them and lets it run out of his hand] Dust.
[he blows the remainder away]
Bill: Wind.
Ted: [points at Socrates] Dude.
[Socrates gasps]
Valery _Dialogues_ "Socrates and His Physician" is worth reading, the doctor being impatient to leave and Socrates asking philosophic questions, the joke being the doctor's contrasting brevity against for example
"...I ask myself how you know what hou know, and what kind of a mind can be yours for you to be able to speak to me as you did just now, without falsehood or presumption, when you told me, or foretold me, that I shall be cured tomorrow, and satisfied with my body from the dawn of the day. I marvel at what you must be, you and your medicine, in order to obtain from my nature that blessed oracle and to have a presentiment of its propensity for the better. This body, which is mine, confides and entrusts itself to you and not to myself; to which latter it only addresses itself in the form of troubles, fatigues, and pains, which are as it were the insults and blasphemies which it can utter when it is displeased. It speaks to my mind as to a beast, which one drives without explanations, but by violence and savage abuse; whilst it tells you clearly what it wishes and does not wish, and the why and how of its state. It is strange that you should know a thousand times more than I do about myself, and that I should be as it were transparent to the light of your knowledge, while I am for myself quite obscure and opaque. Nay more: you even see that which I not yet am, and you assign to my body a certain good, to which it must make its ways, as though on your orders and at such and such a moment fixed by you...Wait, you look at me as though my astonishment astonished you, and I were putting to you some childish question...
One of my HS classmates went to Shimer in the very early 70's. He was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but his folks were wealthy.
That was Shimer's reputation then - a small liberal arts school for dumb rich kids.
It started going downhill in the late 70's, maybe because the rich kids went elsewhere, like working for Daddy's business.
Actually, I recall that Shimer closed in the 80's. Did it re-open?
id think berkely and those bastions of left wing thought would be the worst because they charge the rich kids parents an arm and a leg to hate the country they live in and feel guilty for their skin color and who then go on to be protest kids who can be wound up like puppets as soon as their overlords find the issue that furthers the agenda they want the kids to conduct agit prop over. And they do.
Just the other day they went to the Apple store and did die ins right on the floor. If I was a protest kid I'd say "Wait, you want me to pretend to die on the ground. At an Apple store? Um, why exactly?" I'm not going to be led like a sheep and do some pointless theatrical gesture in a store where I want to buy an iPHone from. And which has nothing to do the event we'd be protesting.
I'd be embarrassed to show my face there later. Apple employee: "Weren't you the guy that was pretending to be dead on the floor here last week?"
Every time I see these protests put on by the left it always becomes about showing the evils of capitaliam. And the people look as silly as someone walking around dressed like someone at a Renaissance fair but out in public.
" Is our discussion in the comments on a level above or below the discussion at the "worst" school in America?"
Probably below, given the prevalent irrelevancies and rote declarations. But then there are the little gems. (Dr. Squid today. Betamax on many days. Freeman. Numerous others)
It would be interesting if commenters actually addressed the questions posed by the Blogmistress or other commenters, but often we are given to lone declarations, not Socratic response.
If I could wave a wand and force everyone to learn one concept, it would be the concept of variance.
Consider two universities, one with 100 students and one with 10,000.
Suppose that each student has a probability, known but to God, that they will drop out, and that probability is 20%.
We won't observe exactly 20% dropping out every year, just through chance. The variance on 20 people dropping out is 20, and the variance on 2000 people dropping out is 2000.
So in a given year the number of student who drop out of the small school is most likely to be between 15 and 25, and the number who drop out of the bigger school is most likely to be between 1955 and 2045.
And the percentages that will get reported will be between 15% and 25% for the small school, but between 19.6% and 20.5% for the larger school.
A small school is far more likely to have an exceptionally good or bad year than a large one, even if the probabilities are identical.
What is the relationship between your idea and the statistics Miller used?
A significant number of students think to themselves why pay the college for an education I can give myself at any public library?, so a significant number drop out.
And if that is the kind of questions you will be asking in our Socratic sessions, then I guarantee I will be dropping out before I graduate.
Especially since there is no actual way to graduate :)
By the same token, this blog post gives 2 readings, and I've asked some Socratic questions. Here's another: Is our discussion in the comments on a level above or below the discussion at the "worst" school in America?
Uh oh. I didn't know there would be homework.
Sorry, Ann. That's a response engrained into my nervous system. As an adjunct professor teaching a business law course at a very large state university, that's pretty much all I hear. No amount of cajoling, grade penalties and embarrassment seems to be sufficient to get them to read even an abbreviated version of a case so that the questioning can begin. They want to be spoon-fed the material through lectures and power points.
And yet they will graduate. They cannot write standard, grammatically adequate English prose...but they will graduate.
Shimer seems like an intellectual oasis compared to what I see in a "successful school".
- Krumhorn
The idea of the Federal Dept. of Education ranking private colleges on any pretext whatever is scary.
My biggest reason for opposing Jeb Bush is that he would be obligated to continue with his brother's biggest mistake - the U.S. Dept. of Education.
What a bizarre criteria since it doesn't measure educational worth.
Wouldn't it better to compare the median wages and salaries (to eliminate windfalls such as IPOs) for the first 15 years in the field in which the student majored in comparison to their college costs?
What's the worst department in the federal government?
What's the worst magazine in America?
I guess that's unfair. DOE (which shouldn't exist) should be compiling statistics like this. Even if they are too stupid to interpret them correctly.
I know nothing about Shimer, but I'm not surprised that it would do badly in these metrics. I think that the Socratic, great books approach is a very expensive and very inefficient way to learn - but maybe a good way. I'm not surprised that Shimer's program looks bad in this study. If they gave up giving degrees entirely and specialized in one-year programs of special study (which might be a good business model and a good pedagogical model) they'd do even worse. There is a limited market for this and St. Johns has it cornered.
Still, the bottom line is that "Great Books" is a serious effort at high quality pedagogy (however well executed.) It doesn't belong in the same category as egregious student warehouses.
@Krumhorn: As an adjunct professor teaching a business law course at a very large state university, that's pretty much all I hear.
When I taught in the UW-System, not only did my students refuse to read, I discovered that many of them COULD NOT read at the university level.
Any sentence that was more complex than subject verb object was unintelligible to them.
One of my colleagues got so frustrated at her students' refusal to read that she made them read aloud one after the other like grade school.
She had to stop, because she was humiliating them.
@Gabriel:
One of my mantras is "understand every word". Look 'em up! Every smart phone has a dictionary. It is distressing to deal every day with sub par vocabularies, even among native English speakers.
And yet, damned if it isn't the Chinese and Korean students who get the best grades....which is pretty amazing since legal analysis is pretty much all about English words.
There's an old case involving a contract for the sale of ten cars of mason jars. Long before you can get to the offer and acceptance issues, there is 15 minutes of ordinary vocabulary that has to be covered first.
I admire the great books approach because, if for no other reason, it places the central focus of study on Western thought.
- Krumhorn
"but it’s all great books and nothing else. There are no lectures. Each class takes the form of Socratic dialogue between the students, guided by a professor if necessary."
Do I need a college to do that? Can't I buy the books, get some folks to read them together then discuss. We could split the cost of the books (or read them online).
Tuition would be very low.
The homeschooling curriculum we use takes this approach. Simple, effective, and inexpensive.
www.amblesideonline.org
@Phil 3:14:Do I need a college to do that? Can't I buy the books, get some folks to read them together then discuss.
Colleges and universities don't teach anything that's not in public libraries.
Learning is free. It's credentials and networks that cost you.
A while back, I landed on the website for the Great Books college Tomas More College.
http://www.thomasmorecollege.edu
I spent quite a while reading through their website. Fascinating. 96 students. A standardized sequence of courses. Art and music and woodworking. I was completely immersed -- it sounded like a lot of fun, like a great empty-nester activity. But at the same time, I couldn't imagine attending for four years and having the content knowledge to go out and get a job afterwards.
Maybe it'd have to be done in conjunction with taking MOOCs to gain some technical skills. . .
@Jane the Actuary:Maybe it'd have to be done in conjunction with taking MOOCs to gain some technical skills. . .
I didn't have to take any classes to pass the actuarial exams I've been taking.
If you want to learn things, they're out there.
It's not the education you pay for, it's the stamp that certifies you learned it.
Actuarial exams are awesome! Which I say not because I loved taking them, but because the concept of credential-by-exam enabled me to move from liberal arts grad student to "analyst" (catch-all term at the firm for those who did work similar to entry-level actuaries but without advancement) to actually being Jane the Actuary -- something that wouldn't have been possible in another field.
The catch is that (a) there aren't the equivalent of actuarial exams (which, incidentally, aren't cheap, if you have to pay for them yourself) in most fields of study -- how do you demonstrate that you've learned programming, for instance? -- and (b) that, if you're in a "Great Books"-type program, it's meant to occupy your full study time, so that you wouldn't really have the means to add on additional self-teaching.
That being said, my pet answer to providing a non-traditional alternative to college for ambitious students is a sort of "liberal arts GMI" (http://janetheactuary.blogspot.com/2014/09/what-about-liberal-arts-gmi.html) in which such self-study does lead to, if not a bachelor's degree, then some sort of recognition that's recognized by institutions and employers.
It's just an anecdote, and may not be representative, but a Shimer graduate used to live in my building. She was a hooker. I met one of her friends once who also had a Shimer degree. She was a barista. They were interesting and fun, FWIW.
@Jane the Actuary:the concept of credential-by-exam enabled me to move from liberal arts grad student to "analyst" (catch-all term at the firm for those who did work similar to entry-level actuaries but without advancement) to actually being Jane the Actuary.
That' similar to my path--except I got a Ph. D. in physics--but now I'm an analyst and hope to be an actuary soon. Glad to see you did it that way.
(a) there aren't the equivalent of actuarial exams (which, incidentally, aren't cheap, if you have to pay for them yourself) in most fields of study -- how do you demonstrate that you've learned programming, for instance?
Jane, meet CLEP.
This has been around for decades. You take the CLEP exam and a university will give you credit.
So what do online courses have that CLEP doesn't? Online courses cost a lot more, and require almost no expenditure from the university, and for the students they also offer enormous opportunities for cheating. Win-win all around.
Speaking of "Socratic" and "primary sources", are they reading The Iliad in the original Homeric Greek?
That would be impressive.
My favorite tweet this morning:
On Wisconsin? No, the question is what was Wisconsin on?
Good luck Buckeyes.
If we're lucky, maybe we'll have a Bucks and Ducks natty!
Tuition and fees are in the $45,000 range. So, a bargain, relatively.
The professor makes a good point about many of the big name "successful schools". They are not about learning . It is an article of faith among all the HS and college students I have known, that the hardest thing about getting a Harvard degree is getting in. Then you sail through. Everybody gets an A! And, Penn, a party school? How depressing.
I wonder how far the typical young ideologue would get if they had to actually read Marx, Engles, Proudhon, LaSalle, Lenin, Marcuse, et al.? Not far I am guessing.
A couple of years ago Shimer was the target of a failed takeover by conservative interests led by Joe Bast of the Heartland Institute.
I read something a while back on the internet (so it must be true !); the premise was that at most colleges or universities there are two programs going on. There's the hard sciences and engineering side, where the work is hard, the grades matter and politics are not the major consideration. Then there are the "Studies" programs. where social justice, political correctness, etc. are king. A study such as this would completely miss this dynamic; if a kid is looking for a good civil engineering program studies such as this are beyond useless. My own opinion is that, regardless of what a person is trying to understand about higher education, studies such as this are beyond useless.
My own son is Mechanical Engineering at Berkeley and his experience bears this out somewhat. Hard Sciences at Berkeley continue a historically close relationship with the Navy, heavy duty physics and electrical engineering, the Lawrence Livermore Labs for heaven's sake ! They continue to operate in the shadow of the "Studies" side of the operation that gets all the ink...
But just being at Berkeley means that you swim in a sea of liberalism and can't help but get wet. Chances are your girlfriend is a raging liberal (a 17 1/2 year old, a "feminist", a know it all, evil corporations, the whole enchilada) and in order to, ah, keep the benefits flowing, you start using some of the vernacular. I think my boy will make it out largely intact, only a semester to go !
@twgin: There's the hard sciences and engineering side, where the work is hard, the grades matter and politics are not the major consideration.
This is largely true, but academic standards are sliding here. Standards will stay high at places like Berkeley for maybe ten or twenty more years, it's the small places that are corrupted first.
I never heard of Shimer, but I'm glad YoungHegelian mentioned St. John's College. We lived in Annapolis for a few years in the '90's, and my wife, a recently-retired high school guidance counselor, volunteered as an admissions counselor at St. Johns. The "Johnnies" (as they were called, to distinguish them from the Naval Academy "Middies") were mostly different-drummer types. Pretty smart, not necessarily all that socially adept, not highly competitive. St. Johns was great for a lot of them. I have no idea whether they got high-paying jobs in later life. I can't imagine the ones I met being highly successful in a demanding STEM program. But one size doesn't fit all. You know?
Jane the Actuary said...
-- how do you demonstrate that you've learned programming, for instance?
Both Microsoft and Oracle offer certification testing on various technologies. I got a java certification after I got laid off from my previous job. ( It didn't do me any particular good, as I got another C++ job instead. )
Next year I will be starting on a Master's in Computer Science through Georgia Tech's online program. It will probably cost ~$7000, not a bad price for a top-10 ranked degree.
Sounds like a poor algorithm.
I can't believe that no one commented on this:
an education so terrible that most drop out before graduation
Is it not obvious that people drop out for reasons other than that the education is "terrible"? Indeed, if the education is terrible (in the sense of not being demanding), people are less likely to drop out, not more.
How terrible the average mechanical engineering program must be! There's such a high attrition rate, as students discover that differential equations are hard and that they're better off in poly sci or something!
-----
And also: you prove that you can program by programming. This is the era of open source and easy access to an audience, not to mention free programming tools. You write code and make it publicly available, and this proves that you can write code. (Admittedly this doesn't work for things like embedded controllers.)
It might be of interest to note that Shimer graduates score in the top 1% on standardized tests, and that Shimer has a higher percentages of graduates earning doctoral degrees than 99% of all colleges and universities in the country...despite the fact that they are known for accepting high school dropouts and students who never even went to high school (my daughter, who just graduated from Shimer, started when she was 16). My son graduated from Stanford, and I guarantee my daughter, with her Shimer degree, is far more educated than he is. Though I will admit that he makes more money than her.
I've known a few graduates of St. John's (Annapolis). The ones I know seem to be doing quite well.
As do most of the graduates of the government run trade school across the street.
(That's a tongue in cheek comment. I'm a non-grad alum of the trade school.)
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