There is almost nothing taught at the most prestigious schools that is not taught elsewhere, but some employers continue to filter their job applicant pool based on the school attended. Going even further, I wonder if my eldest son could teach himself enough computer science and math on his own to be a good programmer or quantitative analyst. But employers in those areas are still looking for college graduates, so he will attend college.
Twenty years ago, I would have disagreed with this idea and would have argued strongly in favor of liberal arts colleges and places like Penn and Harvard (e.g. smallish classes and rigor). Now I don't feel the same way.
I went to a small liberal arts college and got a wonderful education. They worked very hard at teaching us how to interpret a text, how to write, how to think like scientists, etc. That's changed now, and a lot of the rigor is gone. For example, everyone has to take 2 science classes. We could choose from physics, chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy, and a couple other classes. Two or three of these choices (e.g. physics and chem) didn't count toward major requirements, but they were still solid introductions to the subject from the ground up.
Now they offer forensics, "ocean life" (or something like that), and a variety of other courses that make me think of a live version of a popular science book. IMO, the college no longer has an honest requirement that its students learn science. I checked the Harvard catalog and it has the same types of fluffy courses. I suspect this trend is common to near-ubiquitous. While MIT doesn't have fluffy courses (!), Stanford does; e.g.
BIO 3N: Views of a Changing Sea: Literature & Science. Understand: I'm not saying this topic is worthless (it's important). I'm saying that it's not a proper introduction to a fundamental science.
My alma mater and many other very pricey colleges have also added a lot of majors that strike me as being bogus (e.g. 27 majors ending in "Studies," up from 2 or 3 when I was there) and not conducive to instilling an ability to analyze, think critically, question one's assumptions, and draw conclusions.
For this I would pay $60K a year? For this a person will rack up $50K or more (much more?) in debt?
I suspect that the science and engineering departments at these colleges are still excellent to world class, and might still encourage my STEM-y kids to attend one of them (MIGHT). But that doesn't detract from the reality of being able to pay a quarter of a million dollars for a degree Me Studies.
