mattnewport comments on Open Thread: March 2010, part 2 - Less Wrong
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Anybody else think the modern university system is grossly inefficient? Most of the people I knew in undergrad spend most of their time drinking to excess and skipping classes. In addition, barely half of undergraduates get their B.A in 6 years after starting. The whole system is hugely expensive in both direct subsidies and opportunity costs.
I think that society would benefit from switching to computer based learning systems for most kinds of classes. For example, I took two economics courses that incorporated CBL elements, and I found them vastly more engrossing and much more time-efficient than the lecture sections. Instead of applying to selective universities (which gain status by denying more students entry than others) people could get most of their prerequisites out of the way in a few months with standard CBL programs administered at a marginal cost of $0.
College is often a way for 18 year olds to delay social adulthood for 4-6 years. This American Life did a very good episode on the drinking culture at the USA's #1 party school, Penn State, that proves this point beyond a reasonable doubt. Time and time again binge drinking students say that the reason they are doing it and the reason they love Penn State is because this is the only chance in their lives they are going to have to live this lifestyle.
TAL sells the MP3 of the show or it's widely available on torrent sites with a simple Google search.
It's not that meaningful of a ranking; Penn State was anointed the #1 party school by an online poll done by the Princeton Review. It did however prove that out of all of the schools with strong school spirit and insane binge drinking cultures, the students at Penn State are the best at rigging online polls. In other words, Penn State is the #1 party school because the students decided they wanted to be considered the #1 party school.
I think you are confusing Penn State with the University of Pennsylvania.
Penn is more respected than Penn State, but Penn State is one of the top public schools in the USA -- #15 on US News's rather controversial list. http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-top-public