.
Will the Yale and Harvard Streak End?
Now average Americans are going to have a hard time accepting this because
average Americans consider the Ivy League to be something found in the history
books, movies, or maybe in prose or fiction books. The Great Gatsby
comes to mind.
When
it comes to power, the Ivy League is IT but normally in terms of the dominant
Ivy influence over Wall Street, the international banking community, and the
engines of commerce.
Where did the following Latin phrases come from?
In Deo Speramus - (In God We Hope)
In lumine Tuo videbimus lumen -
(In Thy light shall we see the light)
Quisquam qui ars - (Any
person -Any study)
Vox clamantis in deserto -
(The voice of one crying in the wilderness)
Veritas -(Truth)
Dei sub numine viget - (Under
God's power she flourishes)
Leges sine moribus vanae -
(Laws without morals are useless)
Lux et veritas - (Light and
truth)
Those are the mottos of the eight venerated Ivy League schools.
Brown
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Harvard
Princeton
Pennsylvania
Yale
It seems we understand the power and
influence of the Ivy League in terms of commerce but we really do not when it
comes to national politics. In fact, the attitude of the general
public, in terms of the Ivy League in politics, is rather bleak.
According to recent Rasmussen polls, only
five percent (5%) of American Adults think it is better for America to
have presidents only from Ivy League schools. A recent Rasmussen
Reports national telephone survey finds that 85% believe it is better for the
country to have presidents who come from a variety of schools.
Try this!
There have been 43 men who served as US
President including President Obama, It
is often said that President Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States of America.
However, President Obama is only the 43rd different person to serve as
President of the United
States. This is due to the fact, that
President Grover Cleveland served non-consecutive terms and so is often counted
as both the 22nd and the 24th President.
- Fourteen out of forty-three presidents have
attended one or more Ivy League schools.
- Twenty-five out of one hundred U.S.
Senators have attended one or more Ivy League schools.
- Fifty-seven out of one hundred and nine
Supreme Court justices have attended one or more Ivy League schools.
All considered, more than
a third of all U.S. presidents,
Supreme Court justices, and currently serving U.S. senators have attended an
Ivy League school for undergraduate or graduate study.
It gets better.
When
Obama completes his 2nd term next January we will have had 28 straight years of
presidents from Yale and Harvard alone, consisting of Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2
and Obama. In fact, in the 227 years we have elected presidents,
remember George Washington first took office in 1789, the Ivy League has held
the presidency 85 of those years, or 37% of our history.
Hillary
Clinton or Donald Trump will be the 15th president from the Ivy League and that
may be a bit much for a nation in which the Ivy League represents just 8 out of
4,140 institutions of higher education.
For
those of you into decimals the Ivy League makes up under two tenths of one
percent (.001932) of our institutions yet controlled the presidency 37% of the
time.
Public 4-year institutions
629
Private 4-year institutions 1,845
Total 4 year 2,474
Public 2-year institutions
1,070
Private 2-year institutions
596
Total 2 year 1,666
Total 4 and 2 year 4,140
Money talks and legacy institutions prosper
but you may be surprised when it comes to the costliest universities in America,
long thought to be dominated by the Ivy League.
A recently compiled list of the 20 Most
Expensive Colleges in the country shows prices, which include Tuition, Fees,
Room and Board, range from $63,750 to just under $67,225 per year.
#1 Harvey Mudd College $67,255
#2 Columbia
University $66,383
#3 New
York University $65,860
#4
Sarah Lawrence College $65,630
#5 University of Chicago $64,965
#6 Bard College at Simon's Rock $64,519
#7 University of Southern
California $64,482
#8 Claremont McKenna
College $64,325
#9 Oberlin College $64,266
#10 Scripps College $64,260
#11 Bard College $64,254
#12 Haverford College $64,216
#13 Duke University $64,188
#14 Dartmouth College
$64,134
#15 Northwestern University
$63,983
#16 Trinity College $63,970
#17 Pitzer College $63,880
#18 Southern Methodist University
$63,840
#19 Amherst College $63,772
#20 John Hopkins University $63,750
Source: Business Insider
and U.S. Department of Education
To
my amazement only two Ivy League schools, Columbia
and Dartmouth,
made the list.
Compare that to a list of the best colleges and universities in the world for
2016.
- California
Institute of Technology - United States of America
- University
of Oxford - United
Kingdom
- Stanford
University - United
States of America
- University
of Cambridge - United
Kingdom
- Massachusetts
Institute of Technology - United States of America
- Harvard
University - United
States of America
- Princeton
University - United
States of America
- Imperial
College London - United
Kingdom
- ETH
Zurich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich - Switzerland
- University
of Chicago - United
States of America
- Johns
Hopkins University - United
States of America
- Yale
University - United
States of America
- University
of California, Berkeley - United States of America
- University
College London - United
Kingdom
- Columbia
University - United
States of America
- University
of California, Los Angeles - United States of America
- University
of Pennsylvania - United
States of America
- Cornell
University - United
States of America
- University
of Toronto - Canada
- Duke
University - United
States of America
Source: The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2015-2016
Sorry rest of the world, but fourteen of the
top twenty are from the United States, including six of the top ten.
Harvard is the top ranked Ivy League school but six of the eight Ivy
League schools are in the top twenty in the world.
What does this all mean? Here in the colonies it seems the more other
schools catch up with the Ivy League in terms of the number of schools and the
cost of education, the stronger those dastardly Ivy League schools get control
of our presidency and political processes.
Harvard was the first university in America founded
in 1636. By 1800, six of the first 16 universities in America were
Ivy League, 37%. Now the Ivy League represents less than one percent
of institutions of higher education. In spite of that we are
completing 28 straight years of presidents from just two Ivy League schools,
Harvard and Yale, and now Hillary or Donald assure an extension of that Ivy
stranglehold on the presidency up to 36 straight years.
Isn't
it about time we give someone else a chance like The California Institute of
Technology, Stanford, MIT, Slippery Rock, or even The Pennsylvania State
University New Kensington Campus of the Commonwealth College, (the longest
college name in the USA)?
My
goal was to attend Yale for undergraduate and Harvard Law for graduate school
and I went through the multi-year application process, but fate had other plans
for me and I wound up at the University
of Arizona in Tucson.
Though I retain my Ivy League loyalty, even I think enough is enough,
give someone else a chance.
