<p>Alexandre–I don’t think y’all are quite getting what the other side is saying. Yeah, those luminaries are at the top schools – but how much interaction with them do undergraduates get? The schools at the very top tend to be more research-focused than teaching-focused. </p>
<p>Back in the day, there was a professor at Harvard who had a sign on his office door: “Office Hour.” I don’t know which hour the Office Hour was, but it was singular. Office Hour. One hour per week, if you were lucky. Doesn’t this tell you something?</p>
<p>While he was preparing for his Generals, my husband worked very closely with a rather curmudgeonly but absolutely brilliant classicist named Ernst Badian. (Feel free to Google him–the Wikipedia article will pop right up.) Professor Badian had a repuation as a real jerk, but DH found him surprisingly good to work with – attentive, willing to give tons of time, actually willing to discuss the material DH was reading in his readings course. But, then, DH was a graduate student, fairly far along in his graduate career. For undergraduates, Badian was virtually inaccessible.</p>
<p>What’s the point, what’s the use, of having the most amazingly outstanding faculty in the world if undergraduates rarely get to interact with them?</p>