Re: Harvard
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Gary - I went to a "Timber College" (Northern AZ) but the same holds for
me... they could barely muster a BS program for Physics and I had
to supplement my curiosity with graduate Math/Chemistry/Enginering
courses while pursuing the Physics on my own and under the
tutelage of my undergrad physics professors ( who all had PhD's
themselves, some from "named Universities") Had *I* gone to a
"named University", maybe I'd be smarter or more well informed or
more capable... but after 30 years at LANL i *rarely* found the
fact of my educatational pedigree to get in my way in any
*practical* way. I learned SO MUCH more in the ensuing work years
it is hard to imagine how a more expensive, "better" education
might have made me more able... maybe sooner or in a more
specialized way. I don't begrudge those who had the resources or privilege to go
to ultra expensive schools and in some cases, I think they got
something really special (more as a consequence of a significant
advisor/professor than the school itself). If I *DO* begrudge
them anything, it is the presumption (or sometimes outright
declaration) that their education was proportionally more valuable
or high quality than mine based on how much they spent. My
measly $600/semester made it possible for me to GO to college (I
paid my own way, not grants, not loans, not parents... I worked
and saved and worked). I could have done my first two years a a
community college at $200/semester, and would have if I had to to
make it. Some folks I worked alongside at LANL (and colleagues in
academia, industry, and other labs) often were paying of $100,000
school loans for their education. They felt that the money they
had spent entitled them to extremely high salaries and special
treatment and extra credit on their publications. Maybe it did,
but I was glad I did what I did and I *don't* think most of them
were 2 or 10 times more able or insightful or productive than I
was as they sometimes indicated. My daughter went my route (self-funded, no loans, no grants) but with some tuition scholarships and a little more help from me than I got from my parents, but far from a free ride. She is now 10 years into her career as a Molecular Biologist and has bounced off a glass ceiling or two and is JUST NOW starting to bounce off the academic pedigree snobbery. She has friends from high school or undergrad who took the high/low road of ultra expensive education (she was UCSC/UNM) and some admit that their publications seem to fly through the review process based on their pedigrees. She is a very critical reader of journal articles and is *appalled* at how much "crap" makes it through peer review. I doubt she would claim that researchers from big-name pedigrees do *worse* work than those without, nor that there isn't some bias *toward* more likely being better work, but it is far from clear that her work is in any way inferior to that of those who seem to get a bit of a "free pass" because of their pedigree. I would amend your statement of "a high degree of correlation between academic prowess of an institution and the expertise of it's alumni" to say a "a measureably positive degree of correlation". If I had it all to do over again and resources were not an issue, I would pick my education based on one or two professors, no matter *what* institution they were at.
- Steve On 5/8/17 12:35 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote:
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