This is the time of the year when about 4 million high-schoolers, and their frazzled parents, will be considering the important, arguably life-changing, decision about which college to enroll in. The well-prepared will have a wealth of desirable choices to choose from, while many others will be staring at a small set of unenviable choices. One of the several factors that this population will have to grapple with is whether to enroll in a private or a public college (I use the term “college” as a stand in for college or university). For those on a lean budget, this decision is made for them by their purses. For others in more plush circumstances, this is a vexing decision. In this article, I will give you my subjective, not rigorously data-driven, opinion on the pros and the cons of the two options. The title misleadingly suggests which way my heart lies — in reality, and like with most consequential things in life, the answer will depend on your personal traits and desires. My discussion of five primary attributes will lead you toward that decision yourself. Caveat emptor — my characterization of private and public colleges with respect to these attributes naturally covers the experience of a majority of students in a majority of colleges in that category; it does not, in fact cannot reasonably, cover all instances of colleges that fall in that category and the experiences of all their students.
1. The Prestige Factor
It is generally true that if you go to a top private college, your parents can brag about this to their friends a little more loudly … and perhaps jarringly to you. This is because the aura has built around them over many many years. This aura is built on the selectivity of these colleges, their flashy endowments, their world-changing alums. It is true that of the US colleges with the the lowest acceptance rates, the top 20 are all private colleges [ WWW ].
However, the prestige factor of top-ranked public universities for specific disciplines is not to be scoffed at. For example, close to my heart is University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign which has long had a top Computer Science program and one which has only increased in strength and reputation over the years. In the same vein, Georgia Tech, Michigan (a public university despite its pretensions to be private by having a sticker-shock price tag), and Berkeley’s CS programs are top notch. Sure, you would need to educate your family members some about the prestige factor of such public schools, and be specific about which departments, but that prestige is real and well earned.
2. Large Class Sizes
A commonly recurring bugaboo about public universities is large class sizes. Coming from high school classes of sizes 20 or 30, it does seem daunting to step into classes of sizes 200 and higher. The fear is the learner will get lost in the large classes, with no interaction with the faculty and if she stumbles, there is no one to care and try to get her back on track. The reality is that class sizes especially for underclassmen required classes can get uncomfortably large. It is not uncommon at the top public CS schools for freshmen or sophomore classes of 200, 300, even 400 students. That does not leave any room for interaction with the faculty and to get difficulties with the material cleared up.
What is needed to thrive in such environments is for the learner to take some initiative. All instructors have office hours and we know how many of our office hours are empty, specifically those not right before exams. At these office hours, the intrepid few who come can have undivided, one-on-one attention of faculty members. Plus, these classes all have help sessions (variously known as recitation sessions, tutorial sessions) where graduate Teaching Assistants hand-hold the learners through the material. Again, these are often not well leveraged by the learners, and this is an opportunity waiting to be grabbed.
The large size has a benefit, which is subtle and often overlooked. This affords the learner a large base of cohorts, with whom you learn together, with some of whom you will develop strong lifelong bonds. In professional circles from your first days, you can call on these cohorts to mutually help one another up the corporate ladder.
3. Attraction of Employers
A primary factor for school choice is how attractive is it to employers. In this, it is useful to pay attention to university/college ratings and specifically the category on feedback by employers about graduates from that place. Some universities/colleges/departments punch above their weight in terms of how well they are regarded by industry managers and recruiters.
If a company is going to send a team to recruit, then a large size of the department is often a positive. Many universities are geographically off-the-beaten path, away from large metropolises and if they are going to take the trouble of spending precious time of their managers and university relations teams, then they would like to have a large target to choose from. Here, size helps, directly — of course, we have the starting premise that there is quality in addition to size.
4. Quality of Peers
College is meant to be a lot of learning. And as much as some of us professors kid ourselves to the contrary, a lot of the learning happens through peers. This is from interactions with peers studying together for a class, working together on a project, or working together on a technical club activity. It is indisputable that these super-selective private colleges will have a higher quality for the average student body. But I have maintained persistently in various different contexts within academia that the top X percentile of peers across say top-25 departments is comparable — that X may be 20% across some places or 5% across some others.
So you as a learner need to pick your cohort more selectively at a large public university. It is as if you are the admissions officer and are deciding who to admit into your pool of fellow learners to learn with. An often overlooked benefit of a large student body during your college days, is the cornucopia of technical clubs that you have. At places like my own (Purdue University), and at comparable large public universities with top CS/ECE departments, you will have a club for whichever niche of technology or entrepreneurship you want to peek into — from the mainstream robotics and security hackathon clubs to the esoteric 3D printed prosthetics and AI safety clubs. I have been the faculty advisor to a club or two persistently and am blown away by the passion and the inventiveness our learners bring to their club activities.
5. Social Environment
This factor is distinctly less important to most people who I interact with (with children considering college options). However, I will round out my reasons with this rather inward-looking factor. In life we make a conscious choice to surround ourselves with people from our social and economic class, people who have similar sensibilities and beliefs. This makes for a comfortable place of existence. But at times, when making judgement calls, this seeming insularity hinders us from making the best decisions. It is oft mentioned in heated political debates that it is important to hear opposing points of view, hear and listen. The same can be said about our college experience.
It is a feature, not a bug, if we get to interact with people who are outside of our natural cliques. This will not make for a frictionless interaction, at least initially, but some friction is desired, lest we slip. In colleges of the right size and diversity (intellectual, class-wise, first generation learners, and so many other angles), we will encounter learners of all shapes and sizes and be made to interact at close quarters, whether we want it or not. This will help us pick up useful life lessons, that will armor us well for those judgment calls that we will have to make in our adult lives.
To Sum
So, to sum, the top-ranked, super-selective private colleges will continue to occupy the shiniest spots in our educational mantelpiece. And some of it is deserved. However, if one pauses to consider the five factors that I mention above, then you may decide to give well-reputed public colleges some careful consideration. If the price tag is a deciding factor, then this decision becomes easier; but even if you take that out of the picture, there are intrinsic college experience factors that may lead you to a Purdue, an Illinois, or a Berkeley, or one of several such top-ranked publics.
Distant Whispers from an Academic Engineer's World 