I run across a NYT op-ed entitled Brand U, and my alma mater is the prime exhibit.
I recently did some research for a satirical novel set at a university. The idea was to have a bunch of gags about how colleges prostitute themselves to improve their U.S. News & World Report rankings and keep up a healthy supply of tuition-paying students, while wrapping their craven commercialism in high-minded-sounding academic blather.
I would keep coming up with what I thought were pretty outrageous burlesques of this stuff and then run them by one of my professor friends and he’d say, Oh, yeah, we’re doing that.
[...]
My final straw came when a friend at Case Western Reserve University (now referred to as Case, after their consultant concluded that all great universities have single-word names) sent me a packet of information on the university’s new showcase undergraduate seminar program. Called SAGES (this supposedly stands for Seminar Approach to General Education and Scholarship), the program offers as an essential component of its core intellectual experience an upscale cafe that serves Peet’s Coffee and is “staffed by baristas whose expertise in preparing espresso is matched only by their authoritative knowledge of all things SAGES.”
The cafe is for real, and the SAGES program is pretty much as ridiculous as the editorial implies. But the worst part is that the majority of the marketroid crap that’s been going on at Case isn’t even in this article!
There’s been a lot of talk about building up the school so it can compete in a higher tier, which is great. Except that the administration appears to have decided to aim for the Ivies, which is ridiculous, because Case’s strengths are more along the lines of Carnegie Mellon, University of Chicago, Berkeley: schools with smart, nerdy students where the sciences are emphasized but the liberal arts don’t lose out. It’s astonishingly stupid to throw away the particular strengths of the school just because some MBA type decided that the Ivies are the best so that’s what Case should become.
As a result, you get all the things that recent alumni are currently angry about:
In addition to the rebranding (it used to be that “Case” was the engineering school and “CWRU” was the whole university) they got a fancy new logo that doesn’t look like anything other than a fat man carrying a surfboard (it’s supposed to have some sort of symbolism about interconnectedness; the old one was a stylized sunrise).
They advertised on TV and altered their admissions criteria to get a different type of student - cute but dumb as opposed to the smart, nerdy type that made Case such a fantastic place for me to be.
Then, they segregated freshmen from upperclassmen to keep the old culture from being passed down. The talk was about “class cohesion” but — and I know this from discussion with people who were involved in the decision-making — the real problem was that upperclassmen were school-apathetic (or whatever the opposite of school-spirited is) and that was being passed down to the new classes. Granted, there were other problems like alcohol abuse, but overall, my experience was that being able to get tutoring and advice from older students vastly outweighed any downsides. And dorm spirit certainly existed, and that’s better than class or school spirit anyway. Finally, Case is supposed to be full of smart nerdy people; that type doesn’t do school spirit.
And they drove the engineering alumni association (Case Alumni Association) off-campus. There’s been a push to roll everything into one university-wide alumni association, and CAA felt that their particular calling was for supporting engineering students in particular, as they’ve been doing very well for years. That didn’t fly, and they were driven out. They are still allowed to give scholarships, and I hope that continues because CAA is the organization that will be getting my money (when I have some). I won’t be donating to the university at large unless things change drastically.
I guess I will just have to hope that the bad publicity will make the powers-that-be rethink their strategy. It’s probably the only thing that could.
April 26th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
Yes, it is embarrassing. However, it doesn’t seem to be the case (hehe) that they’re getting dumber incoming freshmen. A quick look indicates that these stats aren’t easily available to non-students, but Erin tells me that incoming freshmen SAT scores haven’t dropped. Now, you could still be right, but the dumbing-down of Case would have to be orthogonal to SAT scores. I suspect that what you are observing is actually the de-emphasis on engineering and hard sciences.
I did not know that the administration was specifically concerned about transmission of school apathy from upperclassmen - very interesting. I suspect that the lack of competitive school sports programs, plus Case’s reputation for being full of anti-social students, were much more important factors.
April 27th, 2006 at 12:21 am
Did you cringe when you saw Case mentioned in the New York Times?
Were you, like this alumna, embarrassed? I confess, I felt a moment or two of chagrin, but then I remembered the saying, “any press is good press.” I recovered my instinct to spin. We at Case should be *proud* to be the butt of a humor columnist in t…
April 27th, 2006 at 12:54 am
I found this article interesting, because as a Sages student, I have never been to the cafe or seen the professors use tactics recommended in the guide mentioned in the article. I have problems with some of the administration, but at least the faculty I have dealt with don’t seem to have gotten swept up by all this.
As far as the incoming students, some of whom I have hosted, they seem to be made up of the same mix of (smart) more social and nerdy kids, but of course I haven’t met them all…
Finally, I like some of what Case is doing, regarding recognizing the liberal arts here. As an art history student, I have access to some great resources (the CMA has the 4th best art library in the nation) and faculty that have been ignored, and I don’t think this deemphasizes the reputation of other programs such as engineering. (though I don’t think we should try to be an Ivy!) For perhaps the first time, an art history student’s research will be featured in the viewbook sent out to prospective students next year, and I’m excited about it.
April 27th, 2006 at 9:45 am
I was a Euclid-straddler myself - I hold a BA in German in addition to my BS in computer engineering. So the recognition of liberal arts and opportunity for interdisciplinary study is certainly important to me; in fact, it’s one of the things I emphasize when I encourage students to check out Case. (Which I still do, though not as enthusiastically as I once did.)
The environment at Case was incredibly important to me - the 2nd floor lounge at Hitchcock was the first place I felt that I actually fit in with the majority of my peers. It was an immensely valuable experience; at that point in my life it was vital to learn that I wasn’t a freak and nerdy could be cool.
Since college, I have learned that there are other milieus where I can have that experience, but I will never forget how it felt to first find my niche at Case.
It’s true that “cute but dumb” is not really an accurate descriptor of the type of student Case is going for these days. In fact, I’m surrounded by that type at medical school - they’re certainly smart, but I’m struck by how normal (i.e., not like me) they seem. Which is great for them, and they’re great people. But there are a lot of places for people with that lucky combination of attributes. There are not that many places for the nerds, and I’m sad to see Case rejecting that role.
April 27th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
I know I would’ve been embarassed if I had any emotional attachment to CWRU any more. I don’t have any antipathy, but when I made a list of my favorite things at Case, I discovered through press releases and friends who remain that they’ve changed nearly all of them. I don’t begrudge them their choices (although I obviously disagree with them) because I mainly feel like it’s not the same place from which I graduated.
Like Amanda, I covered both ends of the spectrum — a computer science undergraduate with a management/engineering masters. If there’s one thing I’ve learned (at Case) its that core competencies matter. Theirs was an incredible engineering college where engineers felt like they were they were the cornerstone of the university. Institutions should stick with their core competencies, and I feel they are not. Others things are nice to have, but should always remain secondary.
“I suspect that the lack of competitive school sports programs, plus Case’s reputation for being full of anti-social students, were much more important factors.”
Yet, despite the fencing team leading two successful years in Division One competition, (all other sports at Case are Div 3) they canceled funding for the sport the year after I left. I have no problem with trying to have a quality sports program. But why would you start off by canceling one of your most successful programs?
I don’t really argue with their goals, I am simply less than impressed with their methods, which often seem to create results that are diametrically opposed to their stated goals. I’ve given up on the university. They’ve chosen a path, and I think they’ll suffer for it. Oh well.
What it comes down to is this. They stated they wanted to rank higher on the ratings systems (for whatever stock you put in them), and even took steps to explicitly achieve that goal. They’ve also increased tuition. But here’s the problem — every single Ohio student who can get into Case can go to OSU and receive a massive scholarship. And, if you check the latest ranking,s OSU ranks just ABOVE Case in engineering programs. Purchasing a college education is a value decision. Why pay more for less? Case’s forte is engineering. If it can’t excel the local state school at it, what, I ask, is the point of the university existing at all?
http://www.sandiego.edu/engineering/news_events/news_details/cbeng.pdf
Sure, keep the stellar biomedical engineering department — it retains value through its special relationship with local hospitals and research. But you might as well kick out every other student, because if they’re engineers, they can get more (by the self-identified scale of the administration) for less at OSU, and the liberal arts majors can attend (for less) any of the few dozen excellent liberal arts schools that Ohio offers.
The first thing they taught in entrepreneurship class was “you must have a comparative advantage.” It seems that Case’s comparative advantage over OSU is now only poorly designed Frank Gehry buildings and stylish but meaningless logos. Good work.
May 1st, 2006 at 4:14 pm
I would be concerned if the U.S. News rankings are how you are judging quality of engineering education. These ranking are based on Deans and senior faculty in these programs. So, really is it just measuring perception or marketing to educators, and also could be open to large institutions pushing through more survey results. It says nothing about how current students, alumni, or those hiring graduates rank the programs.
May 1st, 2006 at 5:54 pm
I may bash Case, but I wouldn’t trade a freshman year anywhere for the one I am finishing now, here at Case.
May 5th, 2006 at 12:25 pm
How do you alter your admissions criteria to get cute students? (”Check here if you’re ugly.”) Neat trick!