Benefits of a public university that I find unique in comparison to my private-school experiences:
*A women and gender studies department. The lack of academic departments in this area in most Catholic universities points to an area of inquiry in deep need of Catholic academic examination and reflection.
*The ability to consider issues in class from non-church-sanctioned viewpoints without immediately being stomped upon by peers or professors. (This compares well with the "occasional flat-out hostility toward faith" I mentioned yesterday--I had very few classes where either uber-Catholicism or anti-Catholicism emerged, but they were still notable in both cases.)
*Open discussion and education about sex, birth control, and human sexuality. I realize it seemed like I slammed publics in the last post for too much of this, but I think it's important to hit a balance between "it's wrong to have sex outside of marriage and you shouldn't so let's not talk about it" (private) and "let's assume everyone's doing it and that's healthy and people who don't are a bit odd" (public). If only we could mix the accurate information and open discussion of human sexuality in the public colleges with the consideration of responsibilities and consequences in the private schools...I know parents should play a big role in this subject in earlier years, but wow, I have been surprised by the ignorance of undergraduates regarding basic human sexuality in both kinds of schools. (A sidenote: One of my friends has been posting lately about natural family planning, and public schools seem to do a pretty poor job of mentioning it or else mistakenly calling it the "rhythm method" even though that's two decades out of date at this point. So everyone everywhere could convey sex ed information a bit better.)
*Public funding and public-records requests mean a lot of processes at a public school must be transparent. A lot of info is easy to get with a little looking: average faculty salaries by department, number of majors, number of non-tenure-track faculty teaching courses, and so on. Private universities make a lot of decisions behind closed doors. This makes it almost impossible to find out, say, the average salary range for a position unless they post it in a job ad.
The flip side of public funding: the most ridiculous things must be approved by the state legislature instead of determined by campus officials, even though the state provides well under 10% of the university's funding. I really miss a chain of command where, if I could convince the right groups of 3-5 people, I could make something happen.
I'm sure there are other points I'm missing and would love to hear from other people who have worked at or attended both.
1 comment:
I can't really make a balanced comparison here because all of my education took place at one very large public school. What I liked about Texas was the ability to find any group you wanted--there were so many people with so many interests that one could carve out a comfortable niche, or niches. When I worked on the campus of Johns Hopkins, I was always struck by how few students there were and how quiet campus seemed. It made me wonder if, like high school, it was susceptible to the formation of cliques and a prevailing way of thinking that left you either "in" or "out." Was your private school like that in some respects, or am I stereotyping?
I can't say much on the topics of women's studies, religion, and sexuality. As an engineering major and then a scientist, these things simply didn't come up for me. I remember taking a class on Astronomy and Culture my senior year and for the first time running into some of the humanities students for the first time. One man objected to the description of an African hunter-gatherer tribe as "primitive" because the term is pejorative. A woman stated that the only differences between men and women were the product of socialization. I thought I had stepped into an alternate universe. I had, I guess: that of the liberal arts education, rather than the trade school training I was receiving in engineering. In trying to think on how public and private schools differ for the technical fields, the main one I can come up with is money. Boy, do some of those privates have serious cash for research infrastructure.
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