What makes a “good college” – and why it matters | Cecilia M. Orphan | TEDxMileHigh

[Music] [Music] because i'm a college professor i'm going to start with a pop quiz i want you to think of the best college in the country one that you would absolutely love to get into one that would change your life completely okay do you have it i'm guessing if i went to the audience right now and asked a hundred different people which college they chose i'd hear the same names over and over and over again and that's because we have a huge problem in higher education we say we want colleges to be more equitable more transformational more accessible but we tend to obsess over a tiny group of colleges most of us could never get into and it's not because we aren't smart enough it's because there isn't enough space for all of us these schools intentionally cap the number of students that they accept it's why a keel bellow an advocate for fairness and college admissions calls them something else they're not prestigious universities they're highly rejective colleges places like harvard stanford yale princeton mit and i'm not saying these schools are bad they're obviously major research institutions but our cultural obsession with a limited group of highly rejected colleges has major consequences i'm the first person in my immediate family to graduate from college and portland state university a regional public university in portland oregon truly changed my life but for a long time when someone at a networking event asked me where i went to college i worried that they judged my intellect and my aspirations when i answered now i research higher education to understand how our perceptions of which colleges are good shape important decisions we make about which schools to fund donate to attend and send our children to regional public universities or rpus for short are the exact opposite of highly rejected colleges you can spot them because their name tells you which communities they serve western colorado university northern kentucky university eastern washington university in new york they're the suny and the cuny schools in california they're the 23 csu campuses they're called normal schools in china faushulen in germany and provincial colleges in canada and italy these are the universities that train the nurses who take care of you when you go to the hospital the school teachers who educate your children and the small business leaders that create jobs in your hometown regional public universities or rpus pride themselves on accepting everyone or almost everyone who applies and rpu students are more likely to be first-generation college students like i was students of color low-income students veterans and adults balancing work and family while going to school and rpu students often don't have the test scores required to get into a highly rejected college not because they aren't capable but because they weren't given the same advantages as other students my mother was a brilliant woman who had an 8th grade education and she died when she was just 43 years old of a totally preventable asthma attack because she lived in a rural remote community and lacked access to health care i grew up in poverty and my test scores were lower because i prepared for the sats by showing up on test day with a sharpened number two pencil and a calculator rather than taking expensive test prep courses people sometimes talk about regional public universities in negative ways by calling some the 13th grade or saying anyone can get in as if that's a bad thing or saying they're not real universities but shouldn't colleges be judged by how many people they include and raised to the same level of academic excellence rather than by how many people they exclude by how well they address the pressing challenges facing their local communities take adams state university in southern rural colorado where two out of five people live in poverty 38 of the university students are latinx and half are first in their families to go to college this is colorado's most affordable university and it's one of just a few in the entire country to offer graduate degrees to students who are currently incarcerated and working to change their lives it contributes 83.5 million dollars each year to the local economy regional public universities like adams state university generate more upward mobility than any other type of college but you'll never find it on a list of america's most prestigious universities and it doesn't get the funding it deserves ironically the colleges that already have the largest endowments tend to receive the biggest charitable donations recently michael bloomberg gave johns hopkins university a donation of 1.8 billion dollars and this is an incredibly generous gift before the donation johns hopkins had an endowment of 3.8 billion dollars and it rejects 89 of all students who apply by contrast adam state university which prides itself by accepting the top 99 of students has an endowment of just 63 000 not million not billion 63 000 shockingly low now johns hopkins produces vital research but let's imagine if michael bloomberg had spread that donation across the 430 rpus in the country each would have received 4 million dollars now imagine if your net worth went from being 63 000 to 4 million dollars your life would be pretty different wouldn't it unfortunately the government only makes this issue worse in the united states and throughout the world far more public funding goes to highly rejected colleges than to regional public universities because of this rpus have become more expensive which hurts low-income students and has caused student loan debt to skyrocket if i were 18 years old right now i honestly don't know if i could afford to go to college given how much tuition has increased and how little public funding has kept up if we really want more low-income students to go to college if we really want equity in higher education we need to put our money where our mouth is and fund regional public universities now many of us have been on the receiving end of calls from our alumni association and i don't think the ink was around my diploma when my phone rang for my generous friends who may have gone to a highly rejected college and don't worry i'm not mad at you but instead of giving to your alma mater which is probably already very wealthy consider giving it to the colleges that really need it to the rpus that truly serve their communities last year billionaire philanthropist mackenzie scott gave 1.5 billion dollars to 73 different colleges and universities that serve low-income students and students of color xavier university of louisiana maybe not a household name but did you know that they send more black graduates to medical school than any other college in the country she gave them 20 million dollars and guess what that was the largest gift they had ever received and that was true for most of the schools on her list places like long beach city college the university of central florida csu northridge many of these schools are regional public universities that so rarely get large donations that her gift was transformative there's no better way than to make a difference in higher education than to give to the colleges that change the lives of their students and communities but this isn't all about money we all have the power to change the way we think about and talk about regional public universities or stop people when they frame them in negative ways so when you hear someone saying well anyone can get into that school push them away that's a bad thing you don't have to be rude about it you could just say wow that's amazing that that school gives so many people the opportunity to go to college i'm living proof that no matter where you were born or how much money your parents have you should have the opportunity to go to a college that supports your growth and fosters your dreams when we change the way we define prestige and fund regional public universities we will make higher education equitable once and for all thank you [Applause] you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 48,584

Keywords: Diversity, Education, Education reform, English, Higher education, Inequality, Philanthropy, Schools, TEDxTalks, [TEDxEID:49447], tedx talks, college

Id: NwzPSuriQMQ

Length: 11min 52sec (712 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 16 2022