Is ASU academically sound? (high school, graduates, best, career)

[Prickly Pear]

JG you should've known you would've ruffled a feather. Look at their name haha.

I'm biased obviously as I'm a Wildcat currently, so I won't comment.

[GeneR]

My 17-year old daughter will be an ASU student in the fall of '16. Her major will be Mandarin Chinese (she's in her 5th year of that study now).

At one point she considered going the ROTC route and having the military pick up the tab for her college education (she's since changed her mind). When she investigated that she found there were only about 5 schools in the nation that were approved by the military for their Mandarin Chinese programs. One of those is ASU.

[asufan]

Originally Posted by pbenjamin

The point is not how much money one can make by going to a given school. The point is that by objective standards the top colleges in this state are not as good as those in a surprising list of states, including such places as South Carolina, Alabama, Kansas and Oklahoma. If you're willing to settle for that, I guess that's OK.

You call it "settling" when a university is ranked well above average but not top-25 because it chooses to be inclusive in nature? What college you went to is more of a reflection of who you were at age 16-17. After about age 24 the relevance of your college choice kinda goes away and your work performance takes over. If we're talking Stanford or Ivy then yeah, it is kind of still something worth discussing but not Michigan or Kansas. My MBA from ASU certainly outweighs a Bachelors from Michigan or Cal. My undergrad in the college of architecture is no slouch either, spent many times in that building watching the sun rise in the morning and it was pretty competitive (had to apply and be approved to continue into the 3rd year). I just don't need to hear about someone's college education when they're a year younger than me but light years behind in professional accomplishments which is an example of the Cal grad I know.

[Arizona Mike]

Originally Posted by stevek64

Exactly.

I had a good childhood friend who went to some elite private college in Vermont(forgot the name) that was insanely expensive. What's he doing today? He's a handyman.

The moral of the story? Degrees are what people make of them and attitude rules in the end, not the piece of paper. I think there are more than a few college's out there that are very good at hooking parents and/or kids in to spending lots of money for little return short of huge student loans or making mom and dad much poorer.

And I believe there are many more smarter ways to play the game to save big $ in college expenses.....get as many credits at a community college as one can and make sure they xfer to a 4 year school of choice to save piles of money. One will still get the same 4 year piece of paper in the end for lots less money. Or get any job that pays for college while one is working. My wife did this when she wanted to no longer work in the accounting profession and wanted to get into IT. Full tuition paid at any private/public college of her choosing. And it showed management she was a go getter. Another friend got his masters this way taking one class at a time at night working his day job. And he built up experience/made good contacts at the same time while earning his free masters degree.

Very true.

If an ASU grad and a UofA grad's resumes are both in front of the same recruiter, I doubt there would be much difference. Much like being student body president in high school, who printed your high school diploma becomes increasingly less important as the years pass and the quality of your work becomes more important than which team you root for as an alumnus.

[Arizona Mike]

Originally Posted by pbenjamin

The point is not how much money one can make by going to a given school. The point is that by objective standards the top colleges in this state are not as good as those in a surprising list of states, including such places as South Carolina, Alabama, Kansas and Oklahoma. If you're willing to settle for that, I guess that's OK.

I'd say that is exactly the point, pbenjamin.

The overall average for how colleges are ranked are less important than how your particular college and field of study is ranked. My degree at ASU was in a foreign language, and I had no problem finding a job and establishing a career. If that is someone's particular major, ASU is well-ranked and has a highly rated program in Middle Eastern and Slavic languages, as well as other languages (such as Mandarin Chinese) that are desired in government and private industry. A person with a degree from ASU in business or engineering will probably not have a problem in establishing a career, which is the point of a college - not how it ranks overall compared with other states' institutions.

If someone's interest is in a field where it will be more difficult to obtain an entry level job* (i.e., journalism, many of the social sciences, education, women's studies, etc), I doubt that obtaining a degree in a higher-ranked university will help much - you will just have more expensive student loans to pay off while you work in a low-paying job outside your field of studies.

* Q: What is the difference between a Humanities Major and a 17" pizza?

A: A 17" pizza can feed a family of four.

[pbenjamin]

Originally Posted by asufan

You call it "settling" when a university is ranked well above average but not top-25 because it chooses to be inclusive in nature? What college you went to is more of a reflection of who you were at age 16-17. After about age 24 the relevance of your college choice kinda goes away and your work performance takes over. If we're talking Stanford or Ivy then yeah, it is kind of still something worth discussing but not Michigan or Kansas. My MBA from ASU certainly outweighs a Bachelors from Michigan or Cal. My undergrad in the college of architecture is no slouch either, spent many times in that building watching the sun rise in the morning and it was pretty competitive (had to apply and be approved to continue into the 3rd year). I just don't need to hear about someone's college education when they're a year younger than me but light years behind in professional accomplishments which is an example of the Cal grad I know.

Interesting that you concede a relevant difference between a #4 Stanford and a #20 Cal but not between #20 Cal and #129 ASU. (Those are rankings that include public and private.) As parents we are obsessed with getting our kids into the right K-12 schools, some people actually pick where they live based on that. But when it comes to colleges, not so much. Cost is definitely a factor and in-state public schools are what people logically go with. As taxpayers we should demand better choices in our state.

[Ponderosa]

I hired entry-level engineers, lots of them, in my day. If your degree is from other than a handful of highly recognized schools, it doesn't matter a hill of beans where you got it. Even then... Do you really think that the person making the hiring decision has any idea of how the state schools rank? If anything, a school is more recognized by its football program than by its academic excellence. A degree is a check box. It's your experience, if any, and the intangibles of your interview that land you the job.

[asufan]

Originally Posted by pbenjamin

Interesting that you concede a relevant difference between a #4 Stanford and a #20 Cal but not between #20 Cal and #129 ASU. (Those are rankings that include public and private.) As parents we are obsessed with getting our kids into the right K-12 schools, some people actually pick where they live based on that. But when it comes to colleges, not so much. Cost is definitely a factor and in-state public schools are what people logically go with. As taxpayers we should demand better choices in our state.

You don't compare UC Berkely to ASU as a whole, you would compare it to Barrett Honors College and they are comparable. Stanford, however is a different level. Someone who graduated from Stanford either was their class valedictorian, comes from a very powerful family, or has some other significant accomplishment such as athletics (they lower the standards for athletes but not too much). Cal and ASU BHC students are just your run of the mill HS graduates with 4.2+ GPA's and high test scores.

[ScottsdaleMark]

For new graduates, I do think your field of study matters a great deal, not just where you went to school. An engineering or computer science degree from a top school might equal a number of prestigious job offers right away; a more academic degree (this does not just apply to humanities, many fields of science are not particularly remunerative, either) could lead to applying for post-docs and hoping to latch on to an associate professorship someday.

Some fields place much more stock in where you went to school than others. If you want to work on Wall Street, going to certain schools is extremely important to many firms. But even if that Harvard degree gets you in the door over a better candidate with a lesser pedigree, if you don't cut the mustard, you'll be sent packing in a hurry. So after a few years in the field of anyone's pursuit, I think personal competency and track record is the vast majority of what matters. The degree is just a credential and once you check that box, for most adult employees, it becomes largely irrelevant since you're being judged on results, not how good you did in high school (which is all that the college you went to really says about you, since almost everyone graduates from every college...it may be hard to get into a top school but once you're there, 95-plus percent of them graduate.)

[asufan]

Originally Posted by Ponderosa

I hired entry-level engineers, lots of them, in my day. If your degree is from other than a handful of highly recognized schools, it doesn't matter a hill of beans where you got it. Even then... Do you really think that the person making the hiring decision has any idea of how the state schools rank? If anything, a school is more recognized by its football program than by its academic excellence. A degree is a check box. It's your experience, if any, and the intangibles of your interview that land you the job.

Exactly, the degree carries more weight in years 1-2 after graduation then quickly goes down to next to nothing. One of the strongest things I want out of my kids are strong social skills (ability to fit in with the "team", or ability to lead, etc) as I believe that, along with experience are what employers value the most.