The CardBoard
There are ledes and there are ledes - Printable Version

+- The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board)
+-- Forum: C-House! (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-4.html)
+--- Forum: The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-5.html)
+--- Thread: There are ledes and there are ledes (/thread-3439.html)


There are ledes and there are ledes - yvonne - 07-01-2012

This article discusses how the number of California residents at the University of Oregon is burgeoning. The bulk of the article discusses how California residents pay a lot more tuition and receive a small town atmosphere with a rabid football experience.

However, the lede is not exactly flattering to the University of Oregon:

Quote:Three years ago, California high school student Michael Tallia wanted to study at one of the University of California campuses but was frustrated because he couldn’t get in.

His applications all drew rejection letters.

Then a classmate at Bishop O’Dowd High School, the private preparatory school in Oakland that Tallia attended, suggested he check out the University of Oregon.

“He said, ‘There’s a lot of North Ca1 kids coming up here. It’s really easy to get into,’” Tallia remembers. Now, Tallia is a UO journalism major, clad in a Duck Pride T-shirt, happy with his fate.

By the way, California students don't have to pay triple tuition to attend the University of Oregon. Through something called the Western Undergraduate Exchange, they can pay 150% of the in-state rate.

Re: There are ledes and there are ledes - yvonne - 07-01-2012

Some Western Undergraduate Exchange institutions limit the number of eligible applicants they accept, so many Californians are actually paying three times what instate students pay.

PS: nice edit CompSci87

Re: There are ledes and there are ledes - Nan3cy - 07-01-2012

The younger son of a good friend of mine went to Oregon in the honors college, that was supposed to be challenging and small-college-like and all that good stuff. He was bored to tears. Stuck it out for two years, stopped out for a year and then transferred to Northwestern, which he loved. He was from far northern CA and his brother had gone to Stanford.


Yeah, let U of O train you in the hottest of all hot employment fields - Redrum - 07-01-2012

...journalism.

With the signing bonuses they're paying, you'll have those student loans paid off in no time.

Re: There are ledes and there are ledes - pincemob - 07-02-2012

I had no idea how "admissive" Oregon was.

Acceptance Rate:
Oregon: 79%
Sac State: 71%
Chico State: 67%
San Jose State: 57%

Its U.S. news ranking is tied with Oklahoma.  Maybe that's the pitch now.  Oregon: the Oklahoma of the Pacific...  One mastered the option, the other mastered the spread option.  Both are in cities named after old men, Norman and Eugene.  Both have suffered embarassment and humiliation from player behavior.  I think the article hit on the unique selling point for Oregon:  the "Duck Bus".  Can you imagine what the Duck Bus smells like after 18 hours on I-5?  The emissions alone would be enough to knock out a small army. 

Re: There are ledes and there are ledes - flake - 07-03-2012

As much as I appreciate Stanford, and this board, and am not a big fan of UO, I find this denigration of UO annoying.

UO, for all of it's short comings, performs a role. As an Oregonian, there is much I loathe about UO. Still there are many good reasons to go to UO.
As one of the two major private universities in Oregon, if your child is liberal arts inclined and you are not able to afford the 40k tuition of most private schools, UO is probably the best choice for you (as a parent, i would love the 8k tuition). Is it a Stanford, or one of the more prestigious state school like the UC schools or UDub, of course not.

Will you get a good education?
It depends on what effort you put into your education.
In my career as a software engineer, I have worked with some very bright engineers from UO, as well as from Stanford, Princeton, etc. I am not saying that UO is as good as those schools, of course it is not, but the elite schools do not have a monopoly on bright folks.

There are many good reasons to trash UO, but its lack exclusivity is not among them.

By the way, one thing I appreciate about Portland over the silicon valley is I find this city much more literate. There is a reason the Portland  supports one of the best book stores in the country ( Powell's ), where the as valley can barely support Keplers ).

Re: There are ledes and there are ledes - flake - 07-03-2012

Yeah, I forgot my duck dislike for a moment. Go ahead.

Re: There are ledes and there are ledes - Extra Point - 07-03-2012

The entire State of Oregon is in a financial crisis. This is one of the ways they are dealing with it. I had the privilege of going to a school that did the same thing:

  Lower the admission standards.
  Admit all the foreign and out of state students you can.
  Raise tuition for all students, but target foreign and out of State students
  When the freshman arrive on campus, send a letter to their parents asking for donations.
  Weed out the marginal students in the first or second semester.
  Threaten to eliminate essential curriculums and sports unless alumni and fans increase their donations
  Minimize the embarrassment by cutting back on student tickets to games.
  Repeat until the university is in the black.

Re: There are ledes and there are ledes - flake - 07-03-2012

Is there a state in our country that is not in financial crisis?

Personally I am more concerned with the unsustainable cost of higher education. A standard private school was 8k per year in the 80s when I was in college, and is now 40k. While it is great that those elite students can get their tuition covered, I think it does not bode well for our country to have the cost of education so extreme.

And there are Leeds - jacketree - 07-03-2012

[Image: WhoLeeds.jpg]Or Lads as the case may be.

(07-03-2012, 08:33 AM)gesso link Wrote:As much as I appreciate Stanford, and this board, and am not a big fan of UO, I find this denigration of UO annoying.

UO, for all of it's short comings, performs a role.

In my career as a software engineer, I have worked with some very bright engineers from UO...... I am not saying that UO is as good as those schools, of course it is not, but the elite schools do not have a monopoly on bright folks....There are many good reasons to trash UO, but its lack exclusivity is not among them.

By the way, one thing I appreciate about Portland over the silicon valley is I find this city much more literate. There is a reason the Portland  supports one of the best book stores in the country ( Powell's ), where the as valley can barely support Keplers ).

100% in agreement with you. One of Stanford's worst traits, and one I encountered immediately in grad school, is that it spits out many graduates who seem to spend the rest of their lives absolutely convinced of a superiority born solely from the paper that hangs on their wall. At least outwardly, and in my experience. NB: The smartest engineer I've ever known is from Wayne State.

UO does perform a role and that role is increasingly going to be the education of California's children due to the mess we've made of our own schools. More than one of my son's friends will enroll there this fall.  Others friends have fled to public universities in Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, North Carolina and Virginia.  And many will brave the UC or CSU gauntlet of oversubscribed classes and out-of-control tuition increases. So good luck to all of those kids just embarking on their post-secondary adventures, wherever they may lead.

We just deposited our youngest in 100+ heat and derecho paradise.  (And isn't derecho the coolest name for a meteorological phenomenon ever?) It is a really strange time full of questions. What does it mean to fall asleep on the couch every night in an empty nest, just like you did when the nest was full? Will I get all those pairs of socks back? Did he really eat all that food? Why are there twelve rotting towels under his bed upon our return? Was it him or are there towel spores in our crawlspace?

Powell's rocks - it's my daughter's favorite hangout that doesn't sell doughnuts across the street from the Keep Portland Weird sign.  (She has one year remaining at UP.)


Re: There are ledes and there are ledes - Roberton3 - 07-03-2012

(07-03-2012, 11:51 AM)gesso link Wrote:Personally I am more concerned with the unsustainable cost of higher education. A standard private school was 8k per year in the 80s when I was in college, and is now 40k. While it is great that those elite students can get their tuition covered, I think it does not bode well for our country to have the cost of education so extreme.

That's a misleading comparison, because it's just looking at the list price, not including financial aid, which has been greatly expanded at the elite private schools.  The price that a poor or middle-class kid would pay hasn't gone up much at all, and in some cases has gone down.  (I was a Harvard undergrad in the early 90's, and a Harvard undergrad today with the same inflation-adjusted income that my family had then would pay significantly less than my family and I paid -- even though tuition has roughly doubled over that time, the increase in financial aid for a middle-class family like mine has been even bigger.)

At state schools, of course, the picture is different: the tuition increases have been brobdingnagian, and while financial aid has increased, it hasn't kept up.  But that's largely because of the brobdingnagian cuts in state government support for higher education (which had been trending downward even before the recession), not because of extravagant spending.

That said, I agree that the increasing cost of education is a problem.  But it's much less of a problem than people claim.  And it certainly doesn't warrant the kinds of quality-destroying cuts that have occurred at a lot of schools (including Oregon, where the previous president got fired because he wasn't willing to go along with gutting the academic quality of the school).

Re: There are ledes and there are ledes - washingtonismoney - 07-03-2012

(07-03-2012, 01:39 PM)Roberton3 link Wrote:That's a misleading comparison, because it's just looking at the list price, not including financial aid, which has been greatly expanded at the elite private schools.  The price that a poor or middle-class kid would pay hasn't gone up much at all, and in some cases has gone down.  (I was a Harvard undergrad in the early 90's, and a Harvard undergrad today with the same inflation-adjusted income that my family had then would pay significantly less than my family and I paid -- even though tuition has roughly doubled over that time, the increase in financial aid for a middle-class family like mine has been even bigger.

I think it's misleading, however, to focus on the differentiation between sticker price and actual price. This creates material distortions in the price signals most markets communicate for. In this case, such policies of unevenly distributed tuition rates tend to advantage people who know about them--who are deeply familiar with how to work the system--and therefore end up mostly helping the people the policy wasn't intended to help. There have been more than a few college administrators frustrated that they haven't seen better "returns" from the policy of radically discounting the cost of college for students from low-income families. 

Re: There are ledes and there are ledes - Roberton3 - 07-03-2012

(07-03-2012, 02:29 PM)washingtonismoney link Wrote:I think it's misleading, however, to focus on the differentiation between sticker price and actual price. This creates material distortions in the price signals most markets communicate for. In this case, such policies of unevenly distributed tuition rates tend to advantage people who know about them--who are deeply familiar with how to work the system--and therefore end up mostly helping the people the policy wasn't intended to help. There have been more than a few college administrators frustrated that they haven't seen better "returns" from the policy of radically discounting the cost of college for students from low-income families.

Sure.  Many people -- and particularly low-income people -- aren't aware of the difference between sticker price and actual price, and that's a big problem.  But it's not a college affordability problem, it's a misinformation problem.  The elite private colleges are working hard to get the word out: when admissions officers give a talk at a high school in a lower-income area, one of the first things they mention is financial aid, and they put it in simple terms (e.g., "If your family income is less than $65K, Stanford is free.  If your family income is more than that, but less than $180K, you pay roughly 10% of your family's income.")  And most schools' web sites now include online financial aid calculators that give you a rough idea of what price you'd really pay.

The problem is that for every time an admissions officer gives a talk like that or a kid uses one of those calculators, there are a ton of comments like the one Gesso made earlier in this thread, a ton of news stories about how expensive college is, etc., all of which add to the misinformation.  Some of that is people who genuinely don't know about financial aid, some is lazy reporting (it's much easier to report list price than to get an accurate measure of the actual price), and some of it is deliberately misleading.  But all of it is really harmful.  That's a big part of why I make a point of speaking up whenever I hear a comment like Gesso's: if we can do more to get the word out about the difference between list price and actual price, it'll help schools like Stanford and (more importantly) will help smart, hard-working poor kids.

Re: And there are Leeds - terry - 07-03-2012

(07-03-2012, 01:10 PM)jacketree link Wrote:Powell's rocks - it's my daughter's favorite hangout that doesn't sell doughnuts across the street from the Keep Portland Weird sign.  (She has one year remaining at UP.)
Voodoo Doughnuts and Powell's . . . two reasons to like Portland!