And gladly teach

by Doctor Science

Sprog the Younger is beginning her junior year of high school, so we have to start thinking about "where do you want to go to college?" Which involves also thinking in a vague way about "what do you want to do for a career?"

What StY likes best (at the moment, subject to change) is explaining history to people. What that sounds like is "high school history teacher", which *should* be a good, respectable job for which there is a solid demand, and which she really thinks she'd *like*. She likes people younger than her, she likes the idea of not sitting on her butt staring at a computer all day long, she loves explaining things and watching kids *get* it, she loves the fact that there's always more history to learn, and she doesn't mind that the potential salary doesn't go up indefinitely, but tops off around $100K.

But how can I encourage her in this direction, when powerful people seem to feel that making a job worse is a brilliant strategy for attracting the best talent? History teacher is particularly thankless, because, as someone I can't track down said, "I don't know where you went to high school, but I know the name of one of your history teachers: Coach." She doesn't *want* to coach, except maybe Marching Band Color Guard, she wants to teach history! Because it's about How the World Works!

I know Americans tell pollsters they have great respect for teachers, but that's not how we've ever *acted*, as a society. If you look at Laura Ingalls Wilder's books, for instance, you'll see that the discipline problems and disrespect were much worse than today, on a per student-day basis. I don't see it likely that we'll get an educational system with the success or respect of Finland's anytime soon -- that is, in the next several decades or more.

Not least because

1. so many problems are blamed on "Bad Teachers"
2. but do you think the Bad History Teachers who are Winning Football Coaches will get fired? yeah, right.

So, what should we tell StY? What other careers besides teaching might fit her skill/interest set? While you're at it, nominate colleges she might want to visit:

1. in the Northeast or northern Midwest, not including NJ
2. not in NYC
3. with good History and teacher prep programs, but other liberal arts & sciences too
4. with a Marching Band & Color Guard, but easy-going -- so probably not a winning Div I football team.
5. (for extra credit) a good value for money, so less likely to result in a large burden of loans

The Young Schoolmistress, by Chardin. image source.

Comments

[russell]

I would tell her to pursue what seems good to her, with the understanding that she might change her mind later as her needs, interests, and understanding of herself changes over time.

Seriously, if someone that young can articulate that clear of a clue about what they want to do, they should at least take the first steps in that direction.

IMVHO.

A friend's son goes to Mass College of Liberal Arts. State school, so tuition and fees are not so bad ($8.5K in state, $17.5K out of state).

US News and World Report ranks MCLA as a second tier liberal arts school, so not A-list, but a good school emphasizing critical thinking and communication skills.

Small (~1700 students), nice area (Williamstown MA, northern Berkshires), lots of interesting culture nearby, along with some beautiful mountains. Or, at least what we call mountains up here in the northeast.

Maybe worth a look. Good luck!

[liberal japonicus]

This is really terrible timing, but reading about Christopher Stevens and the impact he had in Libya suggests the Foreign Service as a career where someone must be mindful of history and have the urge to explain. That's the 50 year old me thinking about what I should have done 30+ years ago. On the other hand, the parent me thinks that if my daughter expresses this kind of interest, I might be less than thrilled, given recent events.

Also, when I was in high school, I remember suggesting to my Mom that I might take a year off before going to uni and she freaked, being from the time when if you didn't go to college immediately after high school, you would never go. This was before exchange student opportunities really existed (they kind of exploded while I was in college) and she would have had no problem with me being an exchange student for a year before going to university.

[Tyro]

So, what should we tell StY?

Private school teacher. Less pay, but more respect and possible tuition waiver for her own children.

[CharlesWT]

So she's about 10-11 years away from being a public school teacher if she so chooses? The K-12 landscape will likely changed quite a bit by then. Recent changes are likely pass the tipping point and there'll be no going back.

[Laura Koerbeer]

I taught Social Studies to special ed kids at the seventh grade level. I loved it: building castles, playing role-playing games, putting on plays, making maps.

I liked special ed, and many people don't. It didn't bother me that I had the kids other people kicked out of class.

It's pretty naive to think of inspiring 150 regular ed kids a day to think about history. Regular ed is half crowd control, half paper work, half all sorts of responsiblities which used to belong to parents, and half drama. That's too many halves for one whole? Too bad, suck it up, your fault for being one of those union thug public employees.

In my state about half of the new teachers quit the profession within five years.

My advise is don't borrow money to go into teaching.

[Doctor Science]

russell: We'll look into MA College of LA, thanks. It might not be challenging enough for her -- her projected SATs scores are in the 2100-2200 range, quite likely to be 800 for Reading.

We're also looking at SUNY Geneseo, as another public liberal arts college. The College of NJ would be another, except we're too close -- she wants to be at least 2 hours away. No surprise visits from Mom, also no going home just to do laundry.

[Doctor Science]

Laura:

Holy cow, that's a demanding job. In a just world, you'd have made $200K/year.

What kind of training did you have?

[dr ngo]

I'm looking at it from the long (thus, wrong) end of the profession, having retired as a history professor eight years ago. I was lucky to be employed as a historian my whole career, but I looked down the barrel of unemployment a couple of times, and the same kinds of questions/options occurred to me, including the diplomatic corps (which I very nearly joined, which would have been a bad thing both for me and for US diplomacy).

But one of the options within the profession that is still growing nowadays is what is called "public history," which involves not classroom teaching but working for a museum, or library, or government agency, or corporation, using the skills developed in study of history to share with people what you have learned. It requires a fair amount of flexibility, and learning how to redefine your position and rebrand yourself, I understand, but you can make a decent living doing useful work on something you care about. Calls for creativity in setting up exhibits or events, figuring out who your "public" is and what it wants to see/learn, not as cut-and-dried as teaching US History (101) year after year to classroom after classroom of students you didn't really have to recruit. Or so I'm told.

So consider that - or have your sprog consider that - as one of the multiple directions you can go with a history degree. There are more; history is still one of the most general/useful of disciplines in teaching both (1) how to find and evaluate evidence; (2) how to express your findings cogently in English. LOTS of uses for these skills!

No real recommendations on where to go to college in the North/Northeast besides the obvious, from Ivies on down. I am personally a big fan of the small liberal arts college for undergraduate study - time enough for the Big U if you go on to graduate work (unless you already know you want to specialize in something like Chinese history) - which brings to (my) mind places like Amherst, Williams, Antioch, Oberlin, Macalaster, &c., but I don't have any up-to-date (= this millennium) sense of costs, marching bands, etc. Or if she's willing to float as far south as Duke, you'll always have a place to stay (with us) when you visit her. ;}

PS: If it would be at all helpful to her, I'd be happy to correspond with her (or you) directly about History or whatever: ngowen . . . at . . . N(orth)Carolina . . . R(oad)Runner . . . COM(mercial).

[dr ngo]

C(arolina) R(unner), that is. Silly old me.

[Marcellina]

Carnegie-Mellon? Lots of geeks, good arts school, nice city sort of between the northeast and the mid-west.It seems to fill all your requirements, although maybe very expensive. I went there on a combination of savings, grants and the work-study program.

Their marching band wears kilts. Iirc the football scene was relatively easy-going.

[Hartmut]

One thing to consider before going into history teaching is that it is nearly as much of a minefield as science. Depending on the state it can easily mean either teaching lies or risk reprisals for refusing to do so.

[byomtov]

If she'll consider going south take a look at Vanderbilt. Not huge - total enrollment is 10-15,000 - but plenty of options if she wants to change direction; lots of emphasis on undergraduate education; outstanding teachers' college (Peabody); expensive but generous with financial aid.

And they definitely don't have a top-tier football team.

[Tyro]

As far as which college to go to? Really, there's a list of the top liberal arts colleges in US news. Apply to a selection of those in the top 15-20 for which she has a possible chance of getting admitted to. Eliminate the ones too far out of her geographic preferences for employers to have heard of. The wealthiest ones will have decent financial aid packages.

[russell]

Private school teacher. Less pay, but more respect and possible tuition waiver for her own children.

I was out in OH a few weeks ago for a family thing. My brother in law has very good friends that we also like to hang with, a couple who both teach at the same private parochial school. They've both taught there for decades.

They're both around 60, trying to get set up for retirement. The diocese decided that the defined benefit pension that these folks had been relying on, and that had been part of their compensation agreement for the entire time of their employment, was going to be too expensive.

So, they decided it had to go. Gone.

Now these folks are 5 or 10 years away from retirement and are having to start from scratch.

Private school's nice, but if I'm not mistaken they usually are not union gigs. If I was going to teach, I'd go for the union job.

There's a reason that unions exist.

My two cents.

It might not be challenging enough for her -- her projected SATs scores are in the 2100-2200 range, quite likely to be 800 for Reading.

Kicking! Which is to say, fabulous!

You might be right, with those kinds of numbers she should shoot for a first-tier school. 800 reading should get her some $$$, I would think.

Congratulations! And best of luck.

[Laura Koerbeer]

The year I quit I was making about 60,ooo. I had nearly twenty years of experience and an MA from the University of Washington plus two other university degrees. Yes, I can type adequately, if sufficiently motivated.

I liked special ed because the class size is usually small and the class can become like a Boy Scout troop, very cohesive, lots of cooperation. Most of my students had learning disabilities, but I always had behavior disorder kids, too.

One of the advantages of special ed is independence. No one cares what you do as long as you keep the kids and their parents off the principal's back.

Another advantage is protection of the law: when the state legslature goes after school funding the sped teachers can stand on federal law. It was part of the yearly routine at my school to start the school year with class size and staffing out of compliance, go to the union, and sue based on federal legislation. We never had to actually go to court.

The down side is tons of paperwork. A typical IEP at my school was twenty-one pages long. That's twenty-one pages, and a minimum of one parent meeting per kid a year. Then I had my "monitors"--students who were not actually in my class, kids I never met, who I tracked by sending monthly progress roperts out to their teachers. Each month I would complie all the reports. If a student was getting a "C" or lower, I'd contact the teacher and the parents. That usually resulted in another meeting. In addition, the school was plannning to assign transistion students: regular ed seniors. I was supposed to guide them to career choices and help them prepare their senior year projects. I quit teaching, however, so that never happened to me.

Regular ed teaching is becoming more and more like special ed, only with much greater numbers of students and much less fun in class. Typically a regular ed teacher will see 125 to 150 faces a day. In addition to trying to teach something every day the teacher will be held responsible for:
the completion of homework
addressing non-attendance
responding to discipline problems of all sorts
documenting everything
working with the sped teachers on students they share
attending sped meetings, staff meetings, team meetings and meetings with parents,
grading the work generated by the 150 kids per day, for
helping the kids through their senior projects (if its a high school), and
designing some kind of intervention for every individual kid who is not meeting the standards of No Child.

That's not a complete list of expectations, of course. I didn't get into the hassles of dealing with parents, for example, but here's a clue: most kids don't screw themselves up. And here's a warning for your daughter: in general it the upwardly mobile parents who are the most entitled, the most irresponsible, the most prone to bullying, and often have the worst behaved kids. The best students come from settled stable middle or lower middle class or working class backgrounds. The kids of the poor are often needy, disconnected from school, sad, or angry but the students who are just plain mean are much more likely to come from an uppermiddle class background.

I hate to say it, but she needs to think long and hard about this. I know people who went through to their Master's, ran up a bunch of debt, taught for a few years and quit. They would have been better off it they had nver gone to college at all.

Do you see now why I was nostalgic for a nice, quiet union janitor's job?

[Tyro]

If I was going to teach, I'd go for the union job.

Honestly, if your big priorities are compensation and stability, then any protected union/civil service job will do, and teaching is probably the crappiest of the choices. Better to get a good position in a very high quality private school, and if you can't do that, find something else entirely.

Yes, if you're going to be a teacher in a mediocre or low quality school with poor funding, then a union job is the best option. But a better option is not to take that job in the first place.

Lots of people I know go into corporate training.

[sjr]

The rumor that teachers make six digits is a delusion. I am sure we can find exceptions, but the current history teacher will not top out at 100k. Many current history professor at a public university will not top out at 100k. Going into teaching is not a financially wise decision.

A history degree can lead to a wide variety of professions, I would investigate history programs that are innovative regarding student placement.

[russell]

It might already be too late to say "not to threadjack, but...", but, not to threadjack, but:

Honestly, if your big priorities are compensation and stability, then any protected union/civil service job will do, and teaching is probably the crappiest of the choices.

I would say that if your priority is that you want to *make a career as a teacher* - make a living, have a viable financial future, etc. - then it might be useful to work in a union shop.

If your top priorities are compensation and stability, you're probably not heading down the teaching path in the first place.

Better to get a good position in a very high quality private school

I'm sure that's a good way to go.

Yes, if you're going to be a teacher in a mediocre or low quality school with poor funding, then a union job is the best option.

The folks in the case I'm talking about actually work at a pretty good school, and until quite recently funding wasn't an issue.

Basically, the diocese ran into some financial difficulty and decided the solution was to screw the teachers.

Hard to predict stuff like that years or decades in advance.

Lots of people I know go into corporate training.

That's a great gig, but some folks like teaching kids.

I'm not an unqualified supporter of unions, your "teach private school" suggestion just put me in mind of the folks I'd spoken to a couple of weeks ago.

They worked for a private employer, it's not a union environment, they got screwed. They're not losers or crappy teachers, the school is not a sweatshop, it's actually a pretty good school.

The folks who run the place decided to make the numbers work by screwing them over.

Happens every day.

If you want to teach, prefer to teach in a top-notch private school, and that opportunity presents itself, mazel tov.

[Chicagojon]

Preface:
Me: College dropout, works at a computer all day, loves learning/talking/teaching history to anyone who'll listen (and relatives that have to) via direct contact, web, book recommendations, etc.
g/f: Northwestern University graduate in RTVF (radio television film) & International Studies with minor in Anthropology. Masters in Education/Secondary History. She never made it to a classroom job and is now working in IT while continuing to love history and learn/share/'teach'.

I'm rather biased here (obviously), but from my experience (history) education is broken and is better reserved as a hobby or interest than an occupation. My g/f is great at teaching...but student teaching did not go well. The city of Chicago school was predicably test-focused (no child left behind timeframe here) and the suburban school was narrow minded SUV driving religious suburbanites with a mind-boggling lack of world view. Your results may vary, but when I see reports about teachers complaining about not being allowed to teach I immediately nod my head.

Having said that...it's a big world. We're committed to Chicagoland for family reasons, but I'm sure my g/f could teach English or History anywhere in the world if she choose to. Depending on the willingness to travel/relocate there will always be great options and opportunities.

Also - NU scores highly in all of your categories except the bonus one. We had a lot of experience with people in the marching band and they're awesome with a football team that's adequate in its best years. As far as price, though, --yikes--. I find it hard to define 'value' for education costs, but it ain't cheap.

If you do check out NU check out the International Students Residential College (ISRC) -- best choice for a freshman dorm if you're looking for worldview. Lunches with various language & history profs were a highlight of her Freshman year. I'd also be happy to give additional info/direct contact to her. Your posts are great and I'm still excited about education and options for the 'next generation' even though I'm more in the camp of 'go to Europe/Asia for a couple of years and make enough to survive...then come back and go to a state college.

[Chicagojon]

I love dr ngo's comment about 'public history'. Northwestern has a museum studies program that my g/f took one of its classes -- was a very cool class about museum exhibit design that would be a fantastic career IMO and have a much wider reach of teaching history than a classroom. Considering how many 'top' museums there are these are highly sought after positions that require very smart people/teachers.

[Doctor Science]

Chicagojon:

Northwestern was already on the "list of schools to think about", so I'll put a little asterisk next to it -- the museum studies program sounds very cool.

Marcellina:

CMU was already on my list, nice to get another rec for it.

byomtov:

I hadn't thought of Vanderbilt, thanks! It's worth at least considering.

dr. ngo:

Duke and the other NC schools got a real downgrade with the marriage vote this past June, I'm afraid. She's the radical feminist of the color guard, and NC doesn't look all that free-spirited right now, you know? Her style is more Chapel Hill than Duke, if you know what I mean ...

[dr ngo]

Doc Science: The NC marriage vote was an abomination, I agree. But the "Research Triangle" is a big blue island in a red state, so the issue need not impinge on her directly at Duke or UNC unless she chooses to take it on. And both U's have good women's studies programs, with their fair share of radical feminists, I believe.
(Also, FWIW, both Chapel Hill and Durham rank among the most LGBT-friendly places in the state.)

I've lectured (part-time) at UNC as well as Duke, and both are fine institutions with good students. (More in-state at UNC; more out-of-state at Duke, if that matters.) Lovely campuses; good history departments; outstanding basketball programs; decent marching bands. My sporting loyalties are entirely with the Blue Devils - plus you have less to worry about in terms of likely football pre-eminence in the future! - but she'd do fine at UNC as well, and you could still stay with us. Chapel Hill is less than 10 miles down the road.

[McKinneyTexas]

Doc, my kids went to Vandy and loved it, but it's a pretty conservative campus, student body wise, or was when my last one graduated in 2004, which worked for them. It is a great school for a lot of reasons, but my guess is your daughter would prefer a more liberal, liberal arts environment. A kid ought to enjoy college. Half the student body at Vandy is in a sorority or a fraternity. I don't get the impression your youngest leans in that direction. Different strokes and all that. FWIW, I never liked the exclusionary, socially predatory nature of the greek system and said so at the time, for all the good it did.

[Chicagojon]

Okay, my best suggestion yet for a potential history teacher:
1. Check out more youtube education videos
2. Go to school
3. Work for new education group like Kahn Academy via new media (wide reach) & hands on conferences (still get direct contact & 'wow' moment with the students)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTbIDwgYVKo&feature=youtu.be

Pretty much the museum design of the future (though we still need people to make/improve/fix museums)

[peggy hopper]

Personally, I shudder at the idea of anyone majoring in the liberal arts because of the poor job prospects. But, a friend who ignored me became an official archivist. Besides curating documents and illustrations dating back to the colonial era, she has put on some interesting exhibitions becoming another "public historian".

The Washington Monthly has a good college guide. Its graduation rate corrects for the socioeconomic class of the student body, showing the effect of the school.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/toc_2012.php

[byomtov]

Doc, my kids went to Vandy and loved it, but it's a pretty conservative campus, student body wise, or was when my last one graduated in 2004, which worked for them.

You should have seen it in 1967.

There's some truth to what you say, but the one recent graduate I know is a woman from a liberal family here in MA who loved it, as did her parents. There's room there.

[Nous]

All other things being equal I'd advise her to go to a smaller liberal arts college that emphasizes breadth and not worry about what she wants to do until junior year. The people I know with the most positive view of their undergrad experience have all gone this route.

I teach writing at an R1 and, except for the rare student who has both a clear interest in and aptitude for a growing field, without exception my happiest and most engaged students are either undeclared majors or have just switched from the wrong major to a major that they discovered while taking breadth courses. The rest are all harried and too concerned with GPA and internships and letters of rec to actually learn anything.

As far as getting a job 'in your field', most studies I've seen show that people end up far afield of that within the first five years after college anyway. Having a degree is the big thing. Having a degree in X is only a big thing if she has specific vocational aspirations that require it and she'll figure that out pretty quick after a couple required courses. Meanwhile, all my former students I stay in touch with who followed their interests rather than trying to professionalize have landed on their feet within a couple years of graduating and seem to be doing no worse than their peers who slogged through the rat race.

If she doesn't mind *really* small schools she should take a look at Marlborough in VT.

[liberal japonicus]

Also, if she wants to do any 'funky' languages (non Indo European or with a non Roman script) or has an interest in areas where those are important, start studying now. Getting a handle on the language and all the newer ways to study will make a huge difference down the road.

[nous]

Oh, and if she wants to be an educator or at a non-profit like a museum she should aim to get out with as little student debt as she possibly can. I know a lot of college graduates who are trapped in jobs they hate because their student loan debt is too high. Education and non-profits tend to be on the lower edge of the pay scale and are hard hit by recessions and vulnerable to cuts when the public mood swings to austerity.

[sapient]

FWIW, I never liked the exclusionary, socially predatory nature of the greek system and said so at the time, for all the good it did.

Good for you, McKinney - me neither. But, I agree - kids make their own decisions.

[sapient]

I would send every child to Carleton College, Northfield, MN (if they wanted to go). Just my bias. it's the friendliest college. In fact, it really is.

[dissertation uk]

Its important that you tell her to pursue her dreams and not be affected with what's the world is telling her to take in college because its in-demand or something. Let me share to you the story of Tiger Wood who is now a golf superstar because he listened to what his heart wants him to do which is playing golf. He just wished to play golf and pursue his passion in the sport but where he is now?

[Doctor Science]

sapient:

Carleton was already on the list, never fear! Though AFAICT they don't have a color guard ...

[dr ngo]

Shoot, I forgot to mention Carleton (which I was reaching for when I remembered Macalaster). My niece went there Back In The Day and liked it greatly. (But no color guard, alas.) So I second (or third?) the motion . . .

[RP]

I'm a Carleton graduate, and while my education there was excellent, it was a horrid experience overall. I was never so isolated in my entire life - mainly because I'm an introvert with a low alcohol tolerance (also, loads of rich people there which isolated middle-class me even more). I should have gone to my home state's university: with a big state school, I think I could have found a niche.

So if a potential student is outgoing and finds drinking entertaining, they might like Carleton. Otherwise, run in the opposite direction. (Disclaimer: it was the 80s. It was also 1/3 the current price.)

[JohnR]

FWIW, I'd also recommend looking first at smallish LA colleges. I wouldn't rule out any because of apparent cost - the really pricey ones are likely to have a healthy enough endowment to allow them to offer a package that makes your costs (and loan burden) quite tolerable if they really want her. Between the older and younger sons, I've been exposed to a lot of the small LACs in the northeast and mid-Atlantic, and I have to say that after about the third one, they're all more or less identical (great food! tiny classes! happy dorms! rock-climbing wall in the gym! community spirit!). The ones I particularly liked, for various reasons, would be Swarthmore and Ursinus near Philly; St. John's and St. Mary's south of Baltimore, Loyola in Baltimore, Trinity up in CT, Bard and Hamilton in NY state and Bowdoin in Maine. There are plenty of others, and my opinion is they're all good in different ways, plus it's really her call as to where she feels like she'll be happy - such as small school vs. big school. The tricky bit is going to balance the "the more you apply to, the better your chance of getting good Financial Aid" vs "$50 fee per application" equation. Visit, visit, visit, I guess.

[CJColucci]

I'm glad to see that all involved are taking a sensible approach. The self-imposed pressure to get kids into elite brand-name schools as undergraduates is, in my view, misguided -- with a few exceptions: if you're the sort of person who ought to go to MIT or Cal Tech, then go for it.
There are literally hundreds of fine undergraduate institutions that give high-quality undergraduate educations for any student who wants one. And the admissions offices at the big graduate and professional programs know -- where elite, brand-name status actually does matter quite a bit -- know this. Find one you like and don't stress out too much. She'll find something she'll love, just as you found someone to love when you went about living and not obsessing about the "perfect" match.

[sapient]

Interesting perspective, RP. I didn't go to a small liberal arts college myself - I recommended it based on visits, and people I know who went there. I went to a larger university and felt lost and anonymous. I think I would have enjoyed a bit more attention, but who knows!

[RP]

Sapient, the academic attention was indeed excellent. Socially, there was only one way to be and I wasn't it, which was incredibly lonely. Add to that being isolated without (much) transportation in a town of 10,000 where I stood out ethnically by not being blond. I would have preferred being anonymous to being "not a real Carl", quite frankly!

[JustMe]

There are literally hundreds of fine undergraduate institutions that give high-quality undergraduate educations for any student who wants one. And the admissions offices at the big graduate and professional programs know -- where elite, brand-name status actually does matter quite a bit -- know this.

In my experience, this isn't true at all-- students from prestigious colleges and universities have a leg up in graduate admissions and competition for prestigious jobs compared to graduates of other, lesser-known colleges and universities.

[dr ngo]

Further random thoughts:

1) Undergraduate history is said to be excellent preparation for law and journalism, if either of these appeals.

2) Among small liberal arts colleges, which I favor, do consider William & Mary.

3) Vanderbilt (fine school - another niece went there) is in Tennessee; if she balks at North Carolina, that might give her pause!

4) "Prestige" schools matter, but not nearly as much as Finding Your Bliss (and doing well at it). Whatever, however . . .

[liberal japonicus]

students from prestigious colleges and universities have a leg up in graduate admissions and competition for prestigious jobs

While I think you are correct about jobs, I'm not so sure about the graduate admissions. Diversity is a key component for presitigious graduate programs, and coming from a less obvious location (with good recs and test scores, natch) gives you a leg up. And it's usually the last school you went to rather than your full background, I think.

[sapient]

Socially, there was only one way to be and I wasn't it, which was incredibly lonely.

Sadly, that was true where I was as well. At least, it seemed that way. Later, I met people who seemed like they would have been wonderful friends if I'd known them then. But would they have? Space and time are very weird things. For a human being trying to go through those dimensions - it's difficult to know what would have happened if the person had been in the next adjacent parallel path. I wish I'd known you! Or maybe I do.

dr ngo - William and Mary? A good school (and a bargain for Virginia residents). Wish it weren't in Williamsburg though.

[byomtov]

Just to add a name to the list that might otherwise go overlooked - Union College in Schenectady.

The bright and serious son of a friend graduated from there about 6-7 years ago and liked it a lot.

[JohnR]

"The self-imposed pressure to get kids into elite brand-name schools as undergraduates is, in my view, misguided"

I quite agree, but with a couple caveats:
1. It really does seem to matter to a degree (get it?, "degree"? Oh, I kill myself sometimes) where you went as an u/g, but then that wealth and family connections are at least as important if you don't really do well. A 3.9 from U of MD is better than a 2.5 from Princeton, all else being equal.
2. Some of these small LACs turn out to be surprisingly prestigious in a quiet, 'old-money' kind of way. It also depends on your future careers, of course, and I personally don't think that's important enough as a factor for most of us to take seriously. Take a wide range of courses and see what you come out of college wanting to do; for many of us it's rather different from what thought we going in. Fr many careers, grad. school or the equivalent is the key thing; less for the prestige than for the quality of the program.

[cbb]

Alumnus/shameless booster of St. John's College, Annapolis and Santa Fe. Very small (roughly 400 students per campus). Selective and quirky in equal measure. Many of us get graduate degrees and teach. Others get the degrees and grow grapes. Not much in the way of football, but Croquet against the Naval Academy draws thousands.

[Barry]

Tyro: "Better to get a good position in a very high quality private school, and if you can't do that, find something else entirely. "

I'm piling on here, but the original point of the union shop was that even a very high quality private (non-unionized) school puts the teachers in jeopardy for their entire career. They are subject to quite casual firing for no cause, given right-to-work laws, 'religious freedom' for employers, and the sheer difficulty of pursuing even a justified claim.

In the case mentioned, the diocese pulled the plug undoubtedly due to lawsuits for criminal negligence of the bishop(s) for a couple of decades, with the responsible (criminal) authorities still retiring on sweet pensions. However, even at a secular school, the administration can always simply hack at the teachers when and as they please, with no problem. Any drop in teaching quality will only cause trouble over the course of several years or more, long after the people running the school have collected their bonus for improving productivity.

And teaching is a highly sensitive profession. We live in a country where teaching simple history or simple science is a politically and religiously charged minefield.