Originally Posted by
English
My conclusion is that we can't replicate the eds-and-meds gentrification of other metropoli easily. Our path to solvency and renewal will necessarily look different than it has anywhere else in the country. As for Wayne State, while standards can [[and will!) be improved throughout the university, I don't think it will ever be an elite institution. There is only so much room at the top, and there is pressure all over higher education to climb the rankings.
In my field, we're ranked #154. I know what the top 20 or 30 colleges/schools of education are like. I just earned a doctorate from #9 a little over a year ago, and just visited a university in the #10-20 range. At these schools, there are MAT and Ed.D. students with undergraduate degrees from Berkeley, or Dartmouth, or Columbia. Some have had stints in the Peace Corps, others speak three or more languages, and still others have national and international teaching and administrative experience. In a discipline that famously draws those with lower test scores, at the top 20 ed schools, you have a small pool of people whose academic ability, life and work experience, and sheer discipline and drive means they could have done anything.
That isn't the kind of student I teach at Wayne State... and it shouldn't be that kind of student, quite honestly. How many Ivy League and elite public institutions do we need? Why can't Wayne State be comfortable with what it is? Certainly, we shouldn't have graduated students like the infamous DPS board member, but in recent years, we have closed entities and programs that did graduate those who did subpar work. We should strive to be a better us, providing a solid education for those who might be their family's first generation to attend college. We should not strive to be a poor man's Michigan or Michigan State.