Skip to main content

What are the pros and cons of private vs. public universities?

We can look at this question from two different perspectives: That of an individual student, and that of society as a whole.

Private universities tend to be more expensive, but with a few exceptions (the top public schools such as UC Berkeley, Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Michigan) they are generally more prestigious than public universities. The quality of education is widely considered to be superior at private schools, and the opportunities a degree will bring are generally much better as well.

So from an individual student's perspective, it's really a question of quality versus cost: Assuming you can afford the private school at all, it is most likely better; but is it enough better to justify the higher price? The specific results will also depend on what kind of scholarships and financial aid the student is able to get, as well as what field they want to go into (some universities are very good in some fields but not very good in others). As a general rule, go to the most prestigious school that accepted you and offered you good funding. (The tricky part of course is if you have to choose between less prestige and more funding, or more prestige and less funding; statistically people seem to end up better off if they value funding over prestige---simply getting into a top school says a lot about what you're capable of, even if you never go there.)

But from society's perspective, there is a much bigger question: What is the purpose of higher education?

If our goal is to take the very smartest people---the top 10% or even 1%---and give them the resources they need to become a maximally efficient technocratic elite of scientists, doctors, engineers, and lawyers, then expensive private schools are accomplishing that goal well, because they provide top-quality education and price isn't all that important.

But if our goal is to provide equal access and opportunity to the entire population to provide upward mobility, public schools are far more effective at that goal, because their lower prices and more financial aid provide more opportunities for students from disadvantaged backgrounds to go to college.

Different people may disagree on which of those goals is most important, and how to trade off between them.

In practice, almost all schools, regardless of their official type, are some hybrid of private and public. The University of Michigan retains a large endowment of private donations, and Harvard receives a good deal of public funding; it's just that Michigan has a lot more public funding and Harvard has a much bigger private endowment, so we consider Michigan a public university and Harvard a private university. This hybrid model may reflect our disagreement and ambivalence about the two purposes of education; we're trying to do both at once.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more