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British Magazine: NKU "More Inspirational Than Ivy Leaguers"

"Eat your heart out, Harvard. You’re not as good as Northern Kentucky University."

That's the opening of an article in Times Higher Education, a British publication that is singing the praises of NKU. The article was originally published in September but started to makes it way around the local internet last week.

Its author, Filepe Fernandez-Armesto, visited the Highland Heights campus during a speaking tour in the United States.

It's a bold statement to imply that NKU, a poorly-funded regional public university, can compete with the grand-daddy of American academia. Fernandez-Armesto writes:

The young men and women who survive the gruelling admissions procedures (to Ivy League-esque schools) are all tediously encumbered with over-education when they arrive. To increase their self-confidence would be to encourage vicious vanity. To augment their intelligence would be to nurture a dangerous race of super-guardians. To boost their existing social advantages would be to perpetuate wicked inequalities.

Luckily, the universities they attend do very little in any of these respects, adding sparkle to stars, perhaps, and momentum to meteors. To find places that make an alchemical difference – that ignite unsuspected genius, enchant Cinderellas into princesses and magic modest ducklings into very fine swans – you have to look at the truly heroic local and regional universities. These institutions have shoestring budgets and few or no historic advantages, but make up for their deficiencies by the commitment of the teachers, the ambition of the students and the zeal of the communities that surround them.

Read the whole thing: Times Higher Education

Photo: NKU Student Union