<p>Please tell me my understanding is right or wrong.</p>
<p>Even though student/faculty ratio in University and LAC may be the same, let's say both are 9:1, it doesn't mean students get same attention from teachers or they have same % of small classes. </p>
<h2>University students get less attention, not only because professors spend more time on research, less time for classroom, but also some TAs teach classes too. LAC's professors only concentrate on teaching, no research, its good for students, but where do students find research opportunities?</h2>
<p>Student/faculty ratio in Public Universities are as twice as Private Universities, let's say 18:1/9:1. So tuition for OSS of public univ. is half of private univ. ($20K~ /$40k~)</p>
<p>“So tuition for OSS of public univ. is half of private univ. ($20K~ /$40k~)”
Uh no. OOS tuition for many, if not most public U’s is almost the same as for private U’s or colleges.</p>
<p>Defintely not true from our experience…both LACs and publics can have very large lecture classes, particularly the 100 level science and history. Both tend to trim down to much smaller class sizes for more specialized classes and particularly in the 300-400 levels.</p>
<p>TAs do not teach classes at my D’s large public U, so that is not universally true either. At her school the profs do all the lectures and the TAs hold “recitation” sections where the class size is small and the students can ask questions or focus on particular areas of the material presented. As far as getting less attention from the prof, I think that would depend on the prof and the student. Even at large research schools, all profs have posted office hours and are available to students who seek them out. The TAs also have office hours and will frequently conduct review classes, etc, in addition to those that the prof schedules. YMMV</p>
<p>Some are still $20K~ …UMD, UNC. Some are not…UC, UMichigan</p>
<p>OOS is not a good deal at all. you pay tuition as private U , but get a high S/F ratio. $20K~ is a reasonable price for OOS, but I know those $20K~ will become $40K at any time.</p>
Well, the benefit of that depends on the TAs actually knowing what they’re doing, which is an assumption I would not make.</p>
<p>Each large department contains a number of specialties, and there is no guarantee that the TA knows the material, even for an intro class. To use a few of my friends here and elsewhere as examples, I know of:
[ul][<em>]a grad student who majored in classics as an undergrad and is focusing on ancient philosophy in a philosophy PhD program; they have her TAing for philosophy of language this year
[</em>]a grad student who majored in East Asian studies as an undergrad and is in an archaeology PhD program for East Asian archaeology; they have him TAing for Greek art this semester
[<em>]a grad student who majored in chemistry and is in a physical oceanography PhD program; they have him TAing for field geology this quarter
[</em>]a grad student who majored in statistics as an undergrad and is in a sociology PhD program; they have her TAing for intro geography this year[/ul]</p>
<p>Some TAs are good; others are bad. Sometimes you luck out and get one who knows what (s)he is doing…sometimes you don’t.</p>
<p>
Research is arguably the most important factor in graduate admissions, and LACs perform quite well in getting students into and out of PhD programs. </p>
<p>Either LACs offer sufficient research opportunities or professors are being extremely stupid in admitting underprepared students. I think the former is more likely. ;)</p>
<p>As a purely anecdotal piece of information, my boyfriend had much easier access to biology research as an underclassman at a lesser known LAC than I did at a top 10(ish) university. That said, I got a fine education there and had great options for PhD study.</p>
<p>We don’t have evidence that LACS are good at getting students into and out of PhD programs per se. What we do know is that a proportionately larger number of students that attend LACs go on to get PhDs (compared to universities). It could be the school, or the nature of students that choose LACs over larger universities, as but one alternative explanation. </p>
<p>Generalities about LACs, private and public universities are just that. There is tremendous variation in each. As but one example, at the current large public I teach at, 90% of our classes are taught by professors, even our intro classes are less than 50 students, and our PhD students are only found in intro level classes in their area of expertise (and they make up a small fraction of the classes…yet they routinely win teaching awards with higher ratings than faculty!). This example is not generalizable either, but it speaks to the difficulty of painting all categories of colleges with the same brush.</p>
<p>At one LAC we visited, I asked the rising-senior tour guide what was the largest class she’d been in. The answer: 28.</p>
<p>At another LAC, in a presentation by a biology prof, she said apologetically that the previous year they’d had to put 45 kids in each freshman bio section, which were the largest sections they’d had in her 8 years at the school.</p>
<p>At a mid-sized research university, the tour guide seemed rather proud of the fact that her freshman calc class had only had 150 students.</p>
<p>^ And to add to Annasdad and I’s posts: Annasdad has data from one individual at each place and I have data from one school within a larger university.</p>
<p>Ask a different person at the same school and you are likely to get different answers. </p>
<p>This is especially an issue at larger universities where the actual experience, class size, interaction with faculty will depend very much on the specific school or major.</p>
<p>“LAC’s professors only concentrate on teaching, no research, it’s good for students, but where do students find research opportunities?”</p>
<p>Where I was a grad student, and where my D. is now a TA, both prestige top-5 private universities, there were NO - repeat, NO - in-term research opportunities with professors in the humanities for undergrads. NONE. We were (and are) both paid good money as high ranking graduate students to perform that work, which helped aggrandize professors’ reputations. </p>
<p>In contrast, my d. had a two-year paid research assistantship with a faculty member her first two years at her LAC. The research she did was parlayed into her 5-6 year graduate fellowship. None of the undergrads she now teaches have anything like the opportunities she had. One of the results of that is not a single applicant to the graduate program from the top-5 school she is now at has been accepted in her department for at least five years.</p>
<p>Some students go to public schools without seeing many large courses. They go to community college the first two years, then transfer to some state university and take smaller junior and senior level courses there, skipping the giant freshman courses at the state university.</p>
<p>“Some are still $20K~ UMD, UNC. Some are not UC, U-Mich”</p>
<p>Out of State tuition, room and board this year at UNC-CH is ~$35K. OOS tuition, room and board this year at UMD is ~$35K. OOS tuition room and board at U-Mich is ~$46K.</p>
<p>That’s exactly what my siblings and I (as well as many of our friends) did.</p>
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<p>Not in my experience. I will admit that the cc we attended was a very good one and that a good number of students were “weeded out” there, as one might expect from an open enrollment school. However those who made it through and transferred did very well.</p>
<p>On another note, D attends a very large private U. While she has had some larger lectures, she has also had classes (even as a freshman) with fewer that 25 students.</p>
<p>That is very true. At D’s Uni, the TAs are hired within the individual departments/schools and are professional (DPT, PharmD, etc.), master’s, or PhD students. They have many grad students there which gives them a large pool of candidates to select from. Some schools allow undergrads to TA. </p>
<p>As others have said, you can’t really categorize schools on these lines as they all have different policies and practices.</p>
<p>I think one fact that’s missed in the various student to professor debates is this: how outgoing and engaging is your student? If your son/daughter was a wall flower in HS, that experience will likely be replayed at whatever size school they attend. If he/she routinely would introduce himself/herself – engage the instructors – I can guarantee you that face time would be easy to come by.</p>
<p>While the ratio does have real world effects – speak to your student first and foremost, i would recommend.</p>
<p>You are more likely to get higher quality TAs if you attend a university with very high quality and selective graduate programs.</p>
<p>My son’s university uses PhD students to teach intro math, intro writing and intro language classes, as well as discussion sections connected to larger lectures. This system allows small class sizes for these intro classes. With the competitiveness to find teaching positions, many of the PhDs really want to prove that they have teaching ability. Meanwhile, the most popular professors are often given the large lectures. If these popular profs had smaller lecture rooms, many students would have to be turned away.</p>
<p>And is the norm at LACs, not just at so-called “top 25” schools. Although it must be noted that at many schools, the department chairmanship rotates, so the department chair is not necessarily the most gifted or most experienced teacher.</p>
<p>I was a TA at Chicago, and later a faculty member at the Community College of Philadelphia. The quality of my teaching was MUCH higher at the Community College. It wasn’t even close. It was absurd that Chicago students were paying as much as they did to listen to (and have their papers and exams graded by) me.</p>
<p>I had department chairs teaching me, at a top research university. </p>
<p>My H was always one who asked about and was impressed by the average # of students in a class metric; however, I’d also say I learned tons about economics from my freshman economics professor, who had been a member of the Council of Economic Advisers and for whom several presidents turned for inspiration, and just because there were 100 other people in the class didn’t really impede my learning. As with anything, it all depends. Small classes aren’t uniformly good and large classes aren’t uniformly bad.</p>