yeah. i had similarly supportive parents, and like...
actually, sidebar!
so i didn't grow up in The Biggest Of Cities (our high school academic team regularly got trounced by the magnet school in The Big City, lol), but i did grow up in a university town, and i think a lot about how the fact that the US basically has multiple goddamn world-class research institutions per state is such a massive boon that cannot be overstated. having even an okay state university nearby means there's still some music major you can pay to take oboe/trumpet/whatever lessons. having even an okay state university nearby means there's multiple free or low-cost dance/theatre/orchestra performances every year, and also a pretty diverse set of associated job opportunities, and so on.
my rough understanding is that a lot of other countries take the more concentrated approach—there's like, 1-3 Big Goddamn Name Schools that suck up most of the resources; you should probably just go there.
but in the US we've got so many state land grant universities and they're all kinda great? and like, for as much of a fuss is made over the Ivy League, most of the US's science R&D comes out of places like Michigan and Purdue and Georgia Tech and whatever. (even very small universities can be a huge help for rural economies.)
so uh tl;dr I THINK OUR UNIVERSITY SYSTEM IS GREAT AND WE SHOULD HAVE MORE OF THEM NOT LESS, etc, and i haaaate how their funding structure is increasingly turning into like, a "big university + satellite campuses" model (instead of like, just, each corner of a state has its own good university), and also just sky-high tuitions that make stuff inaccessible to locals, since... i honestly kinda think if you have enough of 'em, it's a really impressive means for distributing some vital resources at least a little more broadly than you'd get otherwise
(sorry this got long, i forgot this is my hobbyhorse lol)
no subject
actually, sidebar!
so i didn't grow up in The Biggest Of Cities (our high school academic team regularly got trounced by the magnet school in The Big City, lol), but i did grow up in a university town, and i think a lot about how the fact that the US basically has multiple goddamn world-class research institutions per state is such a massive boon that cannot be overstated. having even an okay state university nearby means there's still some music major you can pay to take oboe/trumpet/whatever lessons. having even an okay state university nearby means there's multiple free or low-cost dance/theatre/orchestra performances every year, and also a pretty diverse set of associated job opportunities, and so on.
my rough understanding is that a lot of other countries take the more concentrated approach—there's like, 1-3 Big Goddamn Name Schools that suck up most of the resources; you should probably just go there.
but in the US we've got so many state land grant universities and they're all kinda great? and like, for as much of a fuss is made over the Ivy League, most of the US's science R&D comes out of places like Michigan and Purdue and Georgia Tech and whatever. (even very small universities can be a huge help for rural economies.)
so uh tl;dr I THINK OUR UNIVERSITY SYSTEM IS GREAT AND WE SHOULD HAVE MORE OF THEM NOT LESS, etc, and i haaaate how their funding structure is increasingly turning into like, a "big university + satellite campuses" model (instead of like, just, each corner of a state has its own good university), and also just sky-high tuitions that make stuff inaccessible to locals, since... i honestly kinda think if you have enough of 'em, it's a really impressive means for distributing some vital resources at least a little more broadly than you'd get otherwise
(sorry this got long, i forgot this is my hobbyhorse lol)