College then and now

How does Princeton of the 19-teens compare to college today?
Better or worse?  Why?
Princeton of the 1910s, judging by the novel This Side of Paradise, was very different from the college of today in many senses.  First of these is a reason we have discussed in class, the song and dance of the place.  Early in the first book, Fitzgerald describes the seniors passing by as singing about "going back--going back, going back to Nassau Hill."  The upperclassmen, who sang as they walked along to provide a background tune, are reminiscent only of a small category of Carnegie Mellon students today: the drama students.  Often have I passed a pair of drama students standing awkwardly across from one another and talking for a while before bursting into a song from Annie or The Lion King and being joined by any musical theater major they happen to pass along the way.  Music players, such as the iPod, as well as other concerns, seem to have driven most vocal music out of many students' lives.

I noticed another prime difference between Princeton then and CMU now, in the scene early on when Amory met the "highbrow" D'Invilliers.  He was going to a cafe that was neither particularly clean nor particularly good (we have plenty here that aren't particularly good, but they are all too new not to be relatively clean) and noticed that all the tables were occupied, so he would have to sit with somebody.  He chose the person engaged in a book because he too planned to be engaged in a book.
Here at CMU, I usually see the reverse happen.  At mealtimes, people tend to look for people they know to sit with, then complete strangers with open seats at their tables, and then empty tables if none of the above two categories contain any members.  The social system, or at least a certain social ease, depends on never having to eat alone.  Thus, friends coordinate dinner times, even if inconvenient, and clubs or teams often eat together in sports.

Despite the previous paragraph, college today seems much more academically oriented than the social lounge of Princeton circa 1915.  Students are often preparing hard for essays, exams, necessary blog posts, etc, and socialization tends to come second (school coming first, of course).  In college of the Fitzgerald era, status was purely social, and though grades mattered (Amory's flunking the math retake being a prime example of grades preventing stature), the students had a much more laissez faire attitude about coursework and grades than do students today.  Success in college depended on social stature when exiting.

A large part of the emphasis on modern scholastic pursuits seems to be because college is now not reserved for the elite, upper-class white child, often used to an artificially imposed caste system.  According to the US Census Bureau, 50.6% of 18-to-21-year-olds attend college, making collegians a majority among American youth.  College is often considered essential to obtaining a job or the skills necessary to complete one, and many of the factors Rebekah Nathan described of as pertaining to the New Outsider are in effect in schools today.

Princeton in the early 20th century seems to have been a four year networking party rather than an academically educational experience.

As to whether Princeton was better or worse, I cannot say.  It certainly had its share of influence on the world, and continues to, and such a college experience produced in Fitzgerald the desire to go to war, which prompted him to write his first novel in case he died.  That alone gets Princeton of yesteryear many points.  Also, college will always be an invaluable experience, provided a sufficiently curious student experiences it.  What is taken away from college only depends on what is given and the small nudges students get along the way.  I think the integration of the various economic classes into a student body is certainly in the right direction, and the centralized de-casting of the students leaves everyone on level ground in a place where the rules and responsibilities of the real world do not yet apply, an incubator for still-developing neurons.