From the movies, I noticed graduates from some universities often get teased, like NYU. And from Ted when Sam was teased for graduating from Arizona State. Are state universities considered subpar compared to federal ones?

43 comments

  1. The Ivy League schools mock one another for not being as good as they are.

    Big football schools mock their rivals.

    No one else cares otherwise, honestly. It’s not that serious.

  2. There aren’t federal universities besides the military academies.

    Honestly, I’ve never seen anyone teased about the university they attended. It’s not a common thing to broadcast their school’s name at work. The only time it ever comes up is if it’s some sort of sports rivalry.

  3. Answer: as an adult, where we graduate from becomes irrelevant to be honest. It becomes like a cool trivia you don’t share unless it’s a situation that people start bragging while out for drinks or whatever, but to reminisce. Only stuck up people judge and stuck up people don’t deserve your energy. The only places where graduating from prestigious universities comes in handy is when you’re applying for work. Get your degree, network, do your best, and have fun at your university/college. Once you graduate, college/university life isn’t something that you’ll get to experience again. Not in the same capacity.

  6. >I noticed graduates from some universities often get teased, like NYU

    Most of the time, people only tease someone for their school if they are close friends. NYU is a prestigious school. But someone who attends Columbia University (also in new york city) may poke fun at someone at NYU for rivalry’s sake. Not because they think it is a bad school.

    >Sam was teased for graduating from Arizona State

    Arizona State is a famous party school. This type of school gets genuinely teased, because the stereotype is that it is full of attractive but dumb students that only party.

    >Are state universities considered subpar compared to federal ones?

    This may not mean what you think. In US English, “federal” means it is owned and run by the US federal government. Only military universities are run this way.

    You probably mean “private” schools. I would say that most prestigious schools are private (like the Ivy League, Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Duke, etc).

    There are also many prestigious state schools (University of California Berkeley, University of Virginia, Georgia Institute of Technology, etc).

    But just because a school is private or public does not mean it is automatically better. The only constant is that private schools are almost always more expensive than state schools.

  7. Some of the obviously scammy for-profit schools are the only ones I can think of, which is kinda unfortunate because they really fucked over a lot of people and I think every single person behind them should be in prison.

  8. There is such a thing as “for-profit” universities in the US. These organizations use a separate accreditation system and their graduates usually have much lower job prospects when entering the workforce. Teasing someone for graduating from one of these places (or any other university) isn’t very commonplace after you finish school, though.

  9. We do not have Federal Colleges save for the Military academies. Which do somewhat tease each other.

    Otherwise you may mock your rival school in sports but not much more than that.

  10. Anyone that seriously mocks someone for attending a particular university is an A-hole (though it does happen).

    Joking/teasing does happen at every school and it’s based on a wide variety of criteria (sports, status in the state school system, stereotypes, etc).

    Example: The University I attended (Rutgers) is the State University of New Jersey and the “joke” is that it’s everyone in the State’s Safety School. Lots of teasing also happens in the world of Sports because the football team has been historically bad.

    Likewise I have friends that attended Cornell and they’ve told me that they get mocked for being a “Fake Ivy League school”.

    So like I said, every school gets mocked. Even the top ones like Harvard.

    My “tease” about Harvard grads is that they always mention they attended Harvard for no reason.

    A while back I met someone at a pub and we exchanged numbers (I usually let the person input their details to avoid mistakes). Later, I realized that not only did they input their name and number but their @alumni.harvard.edu email address…

    Who TF does that?!

    Harvard grads…

  11. Other than a handful of technical institutes nobody has ever heard of, the only federally run universities are the military academies: West Point (Army), Annapolis (Navy), the Air Force Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, and the Merchant Marine Academy. The US government also runs nine graduate school-level military academies.

    State schools are not inherently inferior, in fact some are among the most prestigious universities in the world. The University of California, Berkeley (“Cal” or often just “Berkeley”); its system-sister school The University of California, Los Angeles (“UCLA”); The University of Texas, Austin (“Texas”); The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (“Michigan”); The University of Virginia (“Virginia”); The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (“North Carolina” or “UNC”); Ohio State University (“Ohio State” or “OSU”); among many others.

    Some schools are easier to get accepted into and are less known for their quality compared to their in-state counterparts. Arizona State is not a bad school, but it doesn’t have the same reputation as Arizona does, and has also been a common punchline in pop culture for a while.

    As for why the discrepancy exists when there are two state school systems in a single state, you can look at California as an example. California has two state school systems: UC (University of California) and CSU (California State University). The UC system includes Berkeley, regarded as the best public state school in the United States, as well as highly ranked system schools UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, and others. The UC system was founded in 1868; CSU technically predates Berkeley by 11 years, but didn’t evolve into the sprawling multi-campus system it is now until the 1950s.

    The main differences between the two are in affordability and primary focus. UC schools emphasize cutting edge research and academic publishing. They are highly competitive in terms of admission requirements and are much more expensive; the trade off is they enroll among the brightest and most accomplished students and have faculty and facilities to advance study in a variety of fields. CSU schools are much more affordable and cater to a broader swath of undergraduate students with an emphasis on practical studies and real-world career preparation.

    Most multi-system states have a similar divide between them. Those “lesser” schools that get joked about are still quality institutions; they just don’t have the same prestige as the more competitive state schools. Lower admission requirements and higher acceptance rates lead to the joke being that “anyone” can get in.

  13. This seldom happens in the real world. No one cares where you went to school unless they’re really into college sports.

    Only mediocre idiots and failkids whose entire personality revolves around having graduated from an ivy league on daddy’s dollar care about where you went to school.

  15. I can’t really think of any universities that have a bad reputation in the sense you seem to mean. There are for-profit schools out there that may be subpar if not outright scams, but those aren’t considered universities at all, really. Among true educational *institutions* (vs. corporations), even those with a party-school reputations like, say, Arizona State, provide perfectly legitimate undergraduate educations and have extensive research programs at the graduate level.

  16. There’s few colleges that that notoriously bad. Even if you’ve only heard of it by the football team, usually that indicates the college is in healthy enough shape to support a financial endeavor that large. That said, usually schools have stand out programs, so there might be room for ribbing if someone attended a college and *didn’t* go for its stronger programs. I might tease someone who went to Georgia Tech for a creative writing degree over someone who went to Auburn for a veterinary science degree even though GT is generally seen as a better school than AU. However, AU’s strengths are in anything related to ecology/engineering, while GT’s strengths are decidedly not in its fine arts programs.

    Other than that, people do tend to poke fun at smaller schools that lean heavily to one side of the political spectrum, like Bob Jones, Liberty or Evergreen.

  18. I can’t remember the name , but they lost a a few hundred million in lawsuits then had to close doors for good . I remember now , Trump University of Wealth Creation .

  20. > From the movies

    I’ve never heard anyone in real life give the tiniest shit about what university someone went to.

    That’s purely a Hollywood invention.

  21. So, on average, less than 1 in 3 people in the US has a degree.

    The only example I can think of is Berkeley, which is often stereotyped as a hippie commune that also happens to have students and professors. Arizona State University has a status as a party school, but it also has a lot of amazing programs too.

    Usually, I see more teasing related to one’s major/degree than related to what college they went to, except for when a certain school has a good program. For example, a lot of degrees in English, philosophy, or writing, are often looked down on by right leaning folks, unless you go to a really prestigious school for them.

    A lot of left leaning folks will look down on business majors, thinking they’re all heartless capitalists.

    Many people who haven’t been able to go to college, or chose not to, will look down on people who have gone to college. And some college grads will look down on people who don’t have a degree.

    Generally, it’s seen as very immature to do so. Especially if you don’t have a degree in the first place.

  22. Wait – I went to NYU. Are people laughing at me behind my back? There’s the ole “couldn’t get into Columbia” joke, but I think that’s a local thing.

  24. These days, getting through college is enough of an accomplishment. No one needs to be chastised about their school. I remember us making fun of it when we were young but that’s only because we still had faith in the world, aaaaand we were little jerks.

    The real accomplishment is having parents wealthy enough to foot the bill.

  26. There are too many universities in the US for everyone to know which ones are “subpar.” Now, there are some schools with a reputation as a party school, or might be locally considered to be the “easy” school for the state, but the only truly subpar schools are the ones that only offer online courses and are exceptionally easy to get a degree from, often called a degree mill. Not all online only schools are like that, but I’d argue most of them are.

    I think most of us are impressed if someone went to an ivy league school, or a well known good school, like a Cal Tech or a UT Austin, but consider pretty much every other school to be at about the same level. When you are closer to going to college, both before, during and right after, you might have stronger opinions, but those usually go away after you realize that most aren’t that different.

  27. I think you mean private nationally-renown universities versus state universities. Teasing is more friendly rivalry than genuine scorn. I have a friend that likes to say that the prestige of a school dropped if it had a state in the name — and dropped further if it had the word “State” or a direction like “North” in it. He was making fun of his own alma mater.

  28. It isn’t that. First of all, there are no federal universities. But the conflict/teasing has nothing to do with the university being subpar and has everything to do with their rival school.

    Often, out of two rival schools (usually schools that have very similar names, as I’ll show below), one will be considered more prestigious than the other. They might both be public schools and might both have great statistics and programs, but for whatever reason, one could just be more difficult to get into for a notoriously popular major or it could have more famous alumni or it has more funding or it’s older or whatever. What happens then is that the prestigious school is the one people apply for first. If they get rejected, they’ll then try the rival school, and they’ll probably get in as they were good enough to think they could get into the prestigious one in the first place. As a result, people who attend the rival school will be viewed as simply not being good enough to get into the more prestigious one. The rival school isn’t considered for its own merits, only for its status of “second best” (which is, by the way, *far* from the worst). It isn’t fair and is far from true (many people apply to a certain school because it’s closer to home or does have a specific program they want that isn’t offered at the other school or they just want to go there for any other number of reasons, full-stop) but that is the stereotype. There’s also the added element that, in comparison to the prestigious school, the rival school will often be considered the “party school”, giving its students the reputation of kids that go to college and spend four years fucking around. The party image isn’t always wrong, but in my opinion it’s mostly on account of prestigious public schools just being full of nerds. Not everyone that goes to a “party school” wants to party.

    For Arizona State University, the prestigious counterpart is University of Arizona. For Washington State University, the prestigious counterpart is University of Washington. And so-on so-forth.

  29. NYU is not a school that gets laughed at. It gets slammed for being inaccessible, elitist, performative, and ground zero for champagne socialists, but it’s not a bad school by any means. Its undergrad programs are highly ranked, but it’s grad schools are where they really excel. Law school, business school, and med school are all top programs.

    They have contempt for to both racists and poor people. Their undergrad program is the most expensive in the nation, and it’s pretty much designed to weed out anybody who isn’t within America’s wealthy elite.

  30. Meh, I got teased a bit bc I went to a commuter school and stayed home my four years. Happens a lot with kids who go to community college also bc it isn’t “prestigious”

  31. Everyone knows Brown is the “worst of the Ivy League” so they are made fun of by everyone.

  35. Online only for profit. I’ve been in the interview process several times when we met candidates from schools like university of phoenix and we were like uhhh. Sometimes good candidates because of personal drive, experience, etc and just generally being good at what they do, but looking at the curriculum it’s largely a joke. Super fucking predatory that people still get pulled into going to these degree mills.

  36. Teasing is pretty context specific. I’d tease someone who went to Harvard if I got the sense they were avoiding saying they went to Harvard…Them: “in Massachusetts. In Boston. Well not _in_ Boston…” Me: “Oh, Lesley? Cambridge College? WPI isn’t really Boston at all… couldn’t get into MIT?”

    If you grew up together in the city and someone decides to go to deeply rural school…

    If your family is all Alabama grads and you go to Auburn…

    And families will get teasing that’s more like quiet pity when their kid, like, gets into their state school’s honors program and they decide to go to some pricey school elsewhere.

    The other way to put it is there’s no good teasing based on school quality if you can come out with the degree you need. That said I can feel myself as a parent and university employee starting to look down on people who choose to go to schools that might not be solvent in twenty years. Some parents try to veto schools based on distance or cost, and I’ll probably end up vetoing schools based on a review of their financial statements.

  37. In general it doesn’t work that way. More or less people just care if you have a bachelor’s or advanced degree from an accredited school or not. The university itself is typically a footnote to hiring managers. Also, many state schools that developed party school reputations 50 or 60 years ago are completely different today, which would include for example Arizona State, Texas state, Florida State, etc. Many if these were historically the education major universities with female majorities that attracted in some cases less serious male students for this reason. In academic circles, prestige is certainly measured by membership in the top 50 research universities.or being a member of the Association of American Universities. Source: Dad has been a major university dean for decades. Arizona State, for example, is not a degree anymore would mock unless that person had went to a rival university.

  38. Mostly for-profit schools.

    Locally, you might get teased for going to Buffalo State University instead of the more prestigious University at Buffalo.

    But in the end nobody actually cares. After you graduate and get your first job, your work experience takes precedent.

  39. Certainly any For-Profit schools. In some states – you might get teased for going to a state school vs a private school.

  42. **Public colleges and universities with compass points in the name** are often the subject of ridicule. We’re talking places with names like North Maine State College, Western Arkansas A&M University, Northwestern Alaska Tech, and South Central Missouri School of Mines.

    Compass schools have a reputation as being C-list safety schools. You couldn’t get into the University of Michigan? You got a thin envelope from Michigan State, too? That’s okay. Northwestern Upper Peninsula State College has a 95% acceptance rate. Their Finnish language and Canadian history departments were rated as the third and fourth best in America, respectively, by US News and World Report. Go Slednecks!

    **Anything with “Bible College” in its name** is going to be sub-par. These schools usually collect near the bottom of various college/university ranking lists.

    **Small private colleges and universities with a reputation as being “progressive”** usually have excellent academics. If you tell someone you went to school there. though, a certain image will often come to their mind. Oberlin College, Bard College, Antioch College, and the like — many will assume your parents are upper middle class hippies, and that you aspire to change the world with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Demisexual Media Studies, with a minor in Catalan.

    **Well-known party schools**. Slippery Rock University, SUNY Cortland, UC Santa Barbara, Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, University of Arizona …

  43. Okay so I think I need to explain something. We don’t *have* federal universities, with the exception of military academies like West Point, the US Naval Academy, etc. which train military officers and offer them a chance to earn a bachelors degree in the process.

    National universities are not a thing that exists here the way they do in some countries.

    All government run non-military universities are run at the state level in this country.

    We do have some privately run universities that are quite prestigious like Harvard, Yale, and whatnot but these are *privately* (read: not government) run, and not federally run.

    As far as the examples you gave, the NYU one is less about it being subpar quality and more about rivalry. Many universities in the US have institutions that they are longstanding rivals with for one reason or another (NYU and Columbia are rivals because they’re the two most prestigious and dominant universities in New York City, and Harvard and Yale are rivals because they’re the two oldest and most prestigious universities in the US (and also have a longstanding sports rivalry with their football teams).

    As for Arizona state, that particular university has a reputation for being a school with a lot of people who are interested in partying more than academics, but it has nothing to do with being a state university. Some of the most prestigious universities in the country are state universities including UCLA, UC Berkeley, UT Austin, the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, the University of Virginia, and UNC Chapel Hill

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