**** Elections thread *****

[BananaStand]

Well I don't know the US system, but that sounds kind of dumb. You should have some distinction between a vocational school where you learn to (say) be a welder, and a university where you earn a college degree. And the latter should have some standards.

We do. If you want to be a welder....you learn in a vocation high school

Also, don't all colleges have some level of prestige attached to them? I mean isn't it better to have a degree from (say) WSU than (say) Butte Community College, which in turn is better than (say) Bogus U?

there are some 3000 colleges in the USA alone. Who could possibly keep all that straight? If you didn't go to one of the top 5% who have household names....it's pretty much all the same.

[Poopadoop]

there are over 4000 colleges in the USA alone. Who could possibly keep all that straight? If you didn't go to one of the top 5% who have household names....it's pretty much all the same.

I'm not suggesting an employer should memorize every college name and the value of a degree from each. What i was getting at is this - isn't there a place you can find an independent evaluation of a college? Like a ranking system?

Beyond that, how do people decide where to go? They must have some idea of which places are better than others, apart from the top 5%.

[BananaStand]

I'm not suggesting an employer should memorize every college name and the value of a degree from each. What i was getting at is this - isn't there a place you can find an independent evaluation of a college? Like a ranking system?

Kinda, but not really. The school I went to claimed it was ranked in the top ten in the country for Accounting by US News and World Report. Deeper digging revealed that it was in the top 10 out of a list limited to certain schools that meet various criteria for school size, geography, demographics, etc. I don't remember exactly. But basically my school, out of ALL schools that offer accounting degrees was way down in the middle of the pack. But if you throw out schools that aren't in the same region, don't have comparable tuition, don't have comparable student body size, and keep narrowing the list like that....then it ranks in the top ten.

So, yes there are rankings. But they're really convoluted, subjective, and irrelevant.

Beyond that, how do people decide where to go? They must have some idea of which places are better than others, apart from the top 5%.

I live in New Hampshire. UNH is the beer school. Keene is the weed school. Plymouth is the liquor school.

Pick your poison