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College Goes to the Movies -- Part 2

Posted on Thu, 05/23/2013 - 05:38

We had so much fun with college-going movies -- and TV series -- last week that we had to add a few more. So here for your enjoyment submitted by friends of the blog:

Star Trek This 2009 film presents the origin story of the iconic main characters from the Star Trek television series.  Amidst the alternate reality of time travel and life on other planets, the age-old themes of college admission are a subplot with Kirk trying to gain admittance to Starfleet Academy and Spock turning down the Vulcan Science Academy for Starfleet. If that doesn’t hook you, go for the great characters, good fun, and excellent special effects.

The History Boys A view of university from the other side of the pond, The History Boys follows a group of British school boys with the highest A-level scores at their grammar school as they’re tutored for the exams for entrance to Oxford and Cambridge. (This film should also be prescreened due to sexual situations.)

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.