THE NATION’S BEST PARTY SCHOOLS—THE I’S HAVE IT…AGAIN!!!

8/15/15

I wrote the following missive to the Chicago Tribune; the Trib published it on Wednesday, 8/12 in slightly redacted form.   Their editing was largely mild and understandable, but they did drop the last sentence, which I thought was the best line in the letter.     

With all the bad news emanating from my alma mater of late, one would think the administrators at what remains one of the world’s great universities would have more to bewail than an award that should be far from a source of shame.

ILL--!

Thanks.

8/8/15

As a long ago graduate of the University of Illinois and a continuing financial supporter of my alma mater, I am bothered not a whit by the Princeton Review’s designation of the Big U as the nation’s Number 1 Party School.  The wailing and gnashing of teeth emanating from the school’s administration in response to the “award” is not only silly but also demonstrative of the pusillanimous attitudes that pervade modern day academia.

Who in the world thinks that my alma mater is “…a place where people can just goof off,” as a university spokesperson lamented after the Princeton Review’s pronouncement?   Illinois and its students consistently rank in the top five universities in the country by employers.  UIUC’s business, agriculture, and especially its engineering, math, and science programs, are among the best, if not the best, in the nation.  22 Nobel Prize winners are, or were, associated with the Big U as either alumni or faculty members.  If you are an Illinois resident, Champaign is perhaps the best bargain out there in higher education.  And if you a resident of South Korea or China, you know the U of I; much of the technological infrastructure of both countries, and of others, has been built by U of I alums.

Students at my alma mater work very hard under intense pressure just to keep up with their hyper-achieving colleagues.   Is it any wonder that they also play hard when given the opportunity?   Do we wish that some of the students would play hard in less destructive ways?   Certainly.   But kids are kids and temptation is temptation; attempts to keep our kids in cocoons can ultimately be as destructive as the activities about which the U of I administration is currently wringing its hands.  Part of going to college is learning how to deal with the stress and temptation that will be our near constant companions as we proceed through life.

Yes, students at the U of I work very hard and play very hard.   Is the latter so terrible?  The world is not run by people who spent their Saturday nights in college in the library, even so magnificent a library as those on the Urbana campus.

Mark M. Quinn

Naperville

“ILLUMINATING” THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS?

9/15/14

In a September 5 column, Chicago Sun-Times writer Neil Steinberg, under the cover of a disingenuous offer of “illumination” for my alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, delivered a back-handed slap to one of the world’s great universities and nearly an entire state. 

Rarely letting a slight of an institution I hold dear go unanswered, I sent the following letter to the Sun-Times.  As I anticipated, the paper didn’t print my missive and certainly won’t now that all this time has passed.  So I thought I’d post the letter on my blog for your enjoyment and consideration:

Neil Steinberg is a columnist and columnists are not supposed to be objective.  The columnist’s job is to be opinionated.   However, one can be opinionated without being extraneously nasty…and missing one’s facts in the process.

In his offer of “illumination” to my alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Mr. Steinberg fails on both counts.   One understands immediately that Mr. Steinberg doesn’t like the U of I, perhaps because it is too low brow for him.  But he can’t even offer the place a compliment (“bristling with programs and libraries and quirky collegiate peculiarities”) without prefacing those compliments with the back-handed slap that he expected my alma mater to be a “seedy sinkhole of downstate grimness.”   Mr. Steinberg has to go out of his way to insult not only one of the world’s great universities but the entire state of Illinois south of I-80.   But he’s only trying to help, don’t you see?

Mr. Steinberg, in his further denigration of the U of I, offers an absolutely silly criterion for judging the quality of a university:  he challenges us to name one University of Illinois professor.     How many people can name any professor anywhere?   Mr. Steinberg compounds his folly by answering his own question by citing Bill Ayers, who was on the faculty not at the University of Illinois at Champaign, the subject of his column, but at the University of Illinois at Chicago.   Perhaps a better criterion would be Nobel Prize winners; U of I has 11 Nobel laureates among its alumni and another 11 Nobel laureates among its non-alumni faculty.   Two Nobel laureates were both alums and faculty members.  Most people in my profession, investments, can name one of those faculty laureates, Franco Modigliani, the former UIUC professor who won the Nobel in Economics in 1985 primarily for his work on valuation of the firm.  Can Mr. Steinberg name any of the U of I’s Nobel winners?

One of Mr. Steinberg’s prescriptions for improving the U of I’s image is to admit fewer students, to lower its acceptance rate so that “those it did admit might get the sense they had achieved something truly significant by being admitted and actually go.”  Mr. Steinberg goes on, after that slap, to say that he doesn’t want to “minimize” that “a lot of kids work like demons to get in” and that “U of I represent(s) the attainment of their dreams,” but one can clearly smell insincerity there.  And how do you think the taxpayers of this state would react if U of I turned down more stellar students?   Who hasn’t heard the stories of kids with 33+ ACTS and perfect GPAs getting turned down for the engineering or business schools at U of I?   Mr. Steinberg wants more such stories?

We get it; Neil Steinberg, even though he “could see (his) boys going there,” doesn’t think U of I is up to his high standards.  But in explaining this position, does Mr. Steinberg have to go out of his way to insult not only an institution that continues to contribute so much to the worlds of business, technology, and the cause of academic excellence, but also nearly an entire state?

IOWA AND ILLINOIS: THE I SCHOOLS STILL HANG TOUGH IN THE PARTY SCHOOL RANKINGS

8/9/14

Now that, according to the Princeton Review,  Syracuse has knocked one of my almae matres (Iowa) from the top spot among the nation’s party schools and my other alma mater (Illinois) has fallen to #5, perhaps it is time to revisit my musings in the wake of last year’s ratings. 

Punch line:  Yours truly does not understand why the party school title carries such stigma; kids can study, achieve, AND have a good time.   Illinois and Iowa provide abundant evidence of what should be this self-evident truth; America (and the world, for that matter) isn’t run by people who spent every minute of their college years in the library.  Yours truly surely didn’t, but I digress.

Update since the below was written:  While our daughters continue to excel at Iowa and Indiana, our son has begun his college search and, while Iowa remains very much in his sights, he is quite enamored of Illinois.   While the party school reputations of Iowa and Illinois have not entered into his calculations, they have not dulled his, or his parents’, enthusiasm a whit.

Here is last year's post:

THE NATION’S GREATEST PARTY SCHOOLS:  THE I’S HAVE IT!

8/7/13

The Princeton Review has come out with the results of its 2013 nationwide poll of 126,000 students regarding the quality of, er, recreational activities, in our nation’s institutions of higher learning.   According to these observers, who apparently know of what they speak, the nation’s top five party schools are…

1. The University of Iowa
2. The University of California at Santa Barbara
3. The University of Illinois
4. West Virginia University
5. Syracuse University

As loyal readers know, two of these schools are very close to yours truly’s heart.   I got my MBA at Iowa.  My oldest daughter attends the University of Iowa.   And my wife and I aspire, at some point in the future, to live in or around Iowa City, which has to be, in our and many’s opinion, the best place in the world to live, but that is grist for another mill.  I got my undergraduate degree (BS, Accountancy, as they call it, which makes it sound not like a subject but rather a disease, but I digress).  Until I met my wife, those four years in Champaign-Urbana were the best four years of my life.

One supposes that, as an alum of Illinois and Iowa and the father of a student at the latter, I should be perplexed at the notion of these institutions’ being widely regarded as great party schools.  But I’m not.

While no one, and least of all yours truly, condones excessive drinking (or any underage drinking) or some of the other activities that fall under the general heading of “partying,” what is wrong with having a good time?   If my two almae matres were pure party schools, offering little academic challenge or opportunity for intellectual or career enhancement, I would indeed be sullen and down-in-the-mouth about this latest development.  But neither school is a non-stop party; far from it.

Regarding the Big U downstate…

Illinois and its students consistently rank in the top five universities in the country by employers.  Its business, and especially its engineering, math, and science programs, are among the best, if not the best, in the nation.  22 Nobel Prize winners are, or were, associated with the Big U as either alumni or faculty members.  If you are an Illinois resident, Champaign is perhaps the best bargain out there in higher education.  And if you a resident of South Korea or China, you know the U of I; much of the technological infrastructure of both countries, and of others, has been built by U of I alums.

Regarding the University of Iowa…

Iowa has long been widely recognized as both the easiest Big 10 University to get into (though with the entry of Nebraska (another great place to go to college), Maryland, and Rutgers (no opinion yet on these interlopers) into the family, Iowa may have lost that distinction) BUT the most difficult Big 10 University to stay in.   (This juxtaposition of the difficulty of gaining entry and maintaining student status makes Iowa something of the opposite of Harvard (i.e., the U of I (either U of I) of the East) and its Ivy League colleagues, where the only difficult endeavor is getting in, but I digress.  At least I do so parenthetically in this case.) Perhaps the attractions of downtown Iowa City have something to do with the latter, but mostly the difficulty of remaining enrolled at Iowa has to do with its very challenging general ed requirements.   Freshmen and sophomores at Iowa are frequently heard to complain that none of their friends at (name just about any other Big 10, or any, for that matter, university) have to work as hard as they do.   I know from personal experience; thank God my daughter is starting her junior year.

The health related fields at Iowa are always among the best in the country.  (Again, personal experience; my daughter is in the 6^th rated nationally Nursing program.)  The Tippie School of Business is perhaps the most underrated business school in the country, and I say that fully aware that it is always in the nation’s top 50 business programs.  The Iowa Writer’s Workshop is the best in the country.   And Hawkeye sports?   You have to experience the enthusiasm, near pandemonium, of an Iowa football game to believe it’s real.   And watch Hawkeye basketball this year; Fran McCaffrey and the guys are going to surprise a lot of people this season. 

And then…

there is just being in Iowa City.   What a beautiful campus and town, what great people, what a place…and this from a non-drinker, non-partier guy who has seen something of the world.  (Don’t misunderstand me; I was not a non-drinker, non partier when I attended either of these institutions.  I am speaking of my current status in my advanced age.)

So would I rather not have my two almae matres at the top of the national party school rankings?   Maybe.   But does their achieving such notoriety, in many people’s eyes, make me think any less of either of these two academic giants and all-around great places to spend one’s college and/or grad school years?   Absolutely not.   I love both my schools, would gladly and gratefully go to either again if I had to do it all over again, am delighted that my daughter goes to one of them, and would strongly recommend them to anyone seeking a place to matriculate.   And, yes, they are both a very good time; is that something of which to be ashamed?

THE NATION’S GREATEST PARTY SCHOOLS: THE I’S HAVE IT!

8/7/13

The Princeton Review has come out with the results of its 2013 nationwide poll of 126,000 students regarding the quality of, er, recreational activities, in our nation’s institutions of higher learning.   According to these observers, who apparently know of what they speak, the nation’s top five party schools are…

1. The University of Iowa
2. The University of California at Santa Barbara
3. The University of Illinois
4. West Virginia University
5. Syracuse University

As loyal readers know, two of these schools are very close to yours truly’s heart.   I got my MBA at Iowa.  My oldest daughter attends the University of Iowa.   And my wife and I aspire, at some point in the future, to live in or around Iowa City, which has to be, in our and many’s opinion, the best place in the world to live, but that is grist for another mill.  I got my undergraduate degree (BS, Accountancy, as they call it, which makes it sound not like a subject but rather a disease, but I digress).  Until I met my wife, those four years in Champaign-Urbana were the best four years of my life.

One supposes that, as an alum of Illinois and Iowa and the father of a student at the latter, I should be perplexed at the notion of these institutions’ being widely regarded as great party schools.  But I’m not.

While no one, and least of all yours truly, condones excessive drinking (or any underage drinking) or some of the other activities that fall under the general heading of “partying,” what is wrong with having a good time?   If my two almae matres were pure party schools, offering little academic challenge or opportunity for intellectual or career enhancement, I would indeed be sullen and down-in-the-mouth about this latest development.  But neither school is a non-stop party; far from it.

Regarding the Big U downstate…

Illinois and its students consistently rank in the top five universities in the country by employers.  Its business, and especially its engineering, math, and science programs, are among the best, if not the best, in the nations.  22 Nobel Prize winners are, or were, associated with the Big U as either alumni or faculty members.  If you are an Illinois resident, Champaign is perhaps the best bargain out there in higher education.  And if you a resident of South Korea or China, you know the U of I; much of the technological infrastructure of both countries, and of others, has been built by U of I alums.

Regarding the University of Iowa…

Iowa has long been widely recognized as both the easiest Big 10 University to get into (though with the entry of Nebraska (another great place to go to college), Maryland, and Rutgers (no opinion yet on these interlopers) into the family, Iowa may have lost that distinction) BUT the most difficult Big 10 University to stay in.   (This juxtaposition of the difficulty of gaining entry and maintaining student status makes Iowa something of the opposite of Harvard (i.e., the U of I (either U of I) of the East) and its Ivy League colleagues, where the only difficult endeavor is getting in, but I digress.  At least I do so parenthetically in this case.) Perhaps the attractions of downtown Iowa City have something to do with the latter, but mostly the difficulty of remaining enrolled at Iowa has to do with its very challenging general ed requirements.   Freshmen and sophomores at Iowa are frequently heard to complain that none of their friends at (name just about any other Big 10, or any, for that matter, university) don’t have to work as hard as they do.   I know from personal experience; thank God my daughter is starting her junior year.

The health related fields at Iowa are always among the best in the country.  (Again, personal experience; my daughter is in the 6^th rated nationally Nursing program.)  The Tippie School of Business is perhaps the most underrated business school in the country, and I say that fully aware that it is always in the nation’s top 50 business programs.  The Iowa Writer’s Workshop is the best in the country.   And Hawkeye sports?   You have to experience the enthusiasm, near pandemonium, of an Iowa football game to believe it’s real.   And watch Hawkeye basketball this year; Fran McCaffrey and the guys are going to surprise a lot of people this season. 

And then…

there is just being in Iowa City.   What a beautiful campus and town, what great people, what a place…and this from a non-drinker, non-partier buy who has seen something of the world.  (Don’t misunderstand me; I was not a non-drinker, non partier when I attended either of these institutions.  I am speaking of my current status in my advanced age.)

So would I rather not have my two almae matres at the top of the national party school rankings?   Maybe.   But does their achieving such notoriety, in many people’s eyes, make me think any less of either of these two academic giants and all-around great places to spend one’s college and/or grad school years?   Absolutely not.   I love both my schools, would gladly and gratefully go to either again if I had to do it all over again, am delighted that my daughter goes to one of them, and would strongly recommend them to anyone seeking a place to matriculate.   And, yes, they are both a very good time; is that something of which to be ashamed?