University of Oregon

Keith Todd, Admission Dean, Reed College, Answers 8 Questions

Posted on Wed, 04/03/2013 - 14:07

Founded in 1908, Reed College is a liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon, known for its rich intellectual life.  Dean of Admission Keith Todd joins us this month to answer not five -- but eight questions -- in the generous spirit of inquiry that exemplifies Reed College.

Located on 116 acres in a residential neighborhood, the Reed campus is just five miles from downtown Portland, and about 90 minutes from the Pacific coast.  Featuring a lake and Reed Canyon, a wooded wetland with abundant wildlife and native plants, the campus is home to 1400 students.

The quirky intellectualism Reed is known for is on full display even on their website, which reads like a series of droll literary vignettes -- with comic overtones. (Not to go too Reedie on you.) In fact, Reed has produced 31 Rhodes Scholars, as well as numerous winners of the Fulbright, Watson, and National Science Foundation fellowships. Classes average 15 students with a 10-to-1 student-faculty ratio. Reed offers 22 department-based majors (from Anthropology to Theater), 12 interdisciplinary majors (including History-literature or Mathematics-economics) and 6 dual degree programs (such as applied physics and electronic science).  And students can also work with their adviser to design alternate interdisciplinary majors.

Roger J. Thompson, University of Oregon

Posted on Mon, 04/02/2012 - 20:21

Roger J. Thompson, Vice Provost of Enrollment Management at University of Oregon, joins us this month to answer our questions about admissions and the state's flagship public university.

Founded in 1876, University of Oregon is organized into eight schools and colleges, including Arts and Sciences, Architecture, Business, Education, Journalism and Communication, Music and Dance, and an Honors College. Located on 295 acres in the Willamette Valley, between the Pacific Ocean and the Cascade Mountains, the Eugene campus hosts about 20,600 undergraduates.

Fun facts:

College Admission in the Wall Street Journal

Posted on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 19:24

Te Wall Street Journal, February 21, 2012 Should Colleges Be Factories for the 1%? Obama wants the feds to report what a college's graduates earn. That's no way to judge an educational institution. By Robin Mamlet and Christine VanDeVelde In his recently unveiled Blueprint for College Affordability, President Obama calls for "collecting earnings and employment information for colleges and universities, so that students can have an even better sense of the life they'll be able to build once they graduate." In other words, the government wants to publish statistics on what graduates earn after leaving Harvard or Ohio State or Duke. The results are unlikely to surprise. For all the costs of collecting and collating this information—for the sake of reducing the costs of education, no less—it will show what is intuitively obvious: On average, Ivy League grads earn more. But the information will be worse than useless for college-bound students because it will send them all the wrong signals. The Obama administration decries the privilege of the top 1%, yet the president is suggesting that the likelihood of joining that 1% should be a top factor in college selection. That puts the government's imprimatur on the idea that earning potential trumps learning potential—and it runs counter to everything most educators believe in. Earnings power is not a good proxy for educational excellence.