Are there differences in faculty quality & access to them among the USNWR Top 30?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Oftentimes posters will comment that a student can get a great education at any Top 30 school and that faculty differences are not nearly as extreme as the PA scores would have you believe. We also read a lot about class sizes and the access of students to top professors. In combining these two thoughts, and applying them to the current Peer Assessment scores, there seems to be a real disconnect. </p>

<p>There are great variations in the absolute PA scores of the Top 30 from 3.5 to 4.9. Probably there are some modest differences and some of the professors at the higher rated schools may have published or performed some critical research that resulted in knowledge that he/she can pass on first-hand to students. But is the quality of the instruction at these Top 30 colleges really that different? </p>

<p>For class sizes, there is also a potentially huge difference in the experience. Taking a class with 50-100-200 students is commonplace at some schools, including some very elite institutions, eg, Cornell has 118 classes offered with 100+ students. By contrast, there are only 8 classes in the entire school at Dartmouth with 100+ students and only 13 classes of that size at Rice. Yet Cornell has a 4.6 PA, Dartmouth has a 4.5 PA and Rice has a 4.1 PA. Do you think that the teaching difference is that great at these schools? </p>

<p>Also, some of the schools with the highest PA scores have very high numbers of classes taught in a Sub-sections setting, which means usually by a Teaching Assistant. For example, 35% of the classes taught at Stanford and Cornell are in these breakout sessions with secondary instructors. Is PA reflecting what a student will experience as an undergraduate student and the quality of the actual teaching that is going on? </p>

<p>What is the real quality of the classroom teaching going on at the top universities and is there really such a huge difference in faculty quality as the Peer Assessment scores would imply? Review the Peer Assessment scores below of the Top 30 along with their Faculty Resources rank and the ratio of Class Sections to Sub-sections. PA may be measuring something but it's not teaching and the classroom experience that an undergraduate will have. </p>

<p>Princeton, 4.9, 2nd in Faculty Resources, Class Data na
Harvard, 4.9, 3rd in FR, Class Data na
Yale, 4.9, 6th in FR, 100% in Class Sections, 0% in Sub-sections
Stanford, 4.9, 13th in FR, 65% in Class Sections, 35% in Sub-sections
MIT, 4.9, 15th in FR, 79% in Class Sections, 21% in Sub-sections
Cal Tech, 4.7, 4th in FR, Class Data na
U Chicago, 4.7, 6th in FR, Class Data na
UC Berkeley, 4.7, 40th in FR, Class Data na
Columbia, 4.6, 13th in FR, Class Data na
Cornell, 4.6, 11th in FR, 65% in Class Sections, 35% in Sub-sections
J Hopkins ,4.6, 40th in FR, Class Data na
U Penn, 4.5, 1st in FR, Class Data na
Duke, 4.5, 4th in FR, Class Data na
U Michigan, 4.5, 69th in FR, 55% in Class Sections, 45% in Sub-sections
Dartmouth, 4.4, 17th in FR, 100% in Class Sections, 0% in Sub-sections
Northwestern, 4.4, 9th in FR, 75% in Class Sections
Brown, 4.4, 18th in FR, Class Data na
U Virginia, 4.3, 35th in FR, 62% in Class Sections, 38% in Sub-sections
UCLA, 4.3, 50th in FR, 46% in Class Sections, 54% in Sub-sections
Carnegie Mellon, 4.2, 18th in FR, 86% in Class Sections, 14% in Sub-sections
U North Carolina, 4.2, 40th in FR, 75% in Class Sections, 25% in Sub-sections
Wash U StL, 4.1, 6th in FR, Class Data na
Rice, 4.1, 15th in FR, 100% in Class Sections, 0% in Sub-sections
Vanderbilt, 4.1, 10th in FR, 90% in Class Sections
Georgetown, 4.1, 40th in FR, Class Data na
Emory, 4, 12th in FR, 99% in Class Sections, 1% in Sub-sections
Notre Dame, 3.9, 23rd in FR, Class Data na
USC, 3.9, 24th in FR, Class Data na
Tufts, 3.7, 22nd in FR, Class Data na
Wake Forest, 3.5, 38th in FR, Class Data na</p>

2

<p>The number of subsection classes does not really mean that you are taking many of your credits in subsections. Most subsections are only one credit vs 3-4 in the regular class. A weighted average would be more appropriate.</p>

3

<p>While I agree that PA might not be accurately reflecting teaching quality, I disagree with your assumption that large lecture courses are sometimes/always worse than small classes. Some of the most interesting professors I had taught large lecture courses--they were amazing showmen with great communication skills and fascinating insights. Sometimes small seminars can be incredibly tedious if the teacher is boring or full of himself or feels that he/she has the best ideas (and to be honest, sometimes as a student you don't want to participate that strenuously on a given day). I actually prefer a school where there is a decent mix of larger lectures and smaller seminars because I think that both are valuable.</p>

4

<p>I don't see how Peer Assessment can possibly have to do with undergraduate teaching.</p>

<p>How would an administrator at University #1 know anything meaningful about how undergraduates are taught at University #8? Unless he/she actually went there as an undergraduate and felt that nothing had changed; or taught there.</p>

<p>It's all got to reflect research, and/or hearsay, coupled with quite limited direct experience. Doesn't it?</p>

<p>I mean there's no uniform way that undergraduate teaching quality/ effectiveness is assessed between institutions, is there? But you can count research publications, and the # times they are cited.</p>

<p>I guess they could evaluate based on the performance of the students they admit to their graduate programs.</p>

<p>But who knows what they really do.</p>

5

<p>Why do you assume that subsections and teaching assistants negatively influence the teaching quality?</p>

6

<p>First of all, PA doesn't measure undergrad teaching quality. It is a measure of prestige which is one factor that might go into one's decision when choosing an undergrad. The teaching quality is another such factor. Quality of classmates is another factor. The various factors are not necessarily dependent on each other. </p>

<p>Secondly, the TA's do not teach new material. They review material already taught by professors. Sometimes the TA's can explain things much better than the professor because they were in your place not to long ago and can better relate to the undergrads. Third, student/faculty ratios are practically useless because they vary greatly between majors. Biology or premed courses will have a lot of people. Anthropology or Asian American studies majors may not have a lot of people. I was a premed at Cornell and only in 1 of my classes did I feel the professor was inaccessible. In all of the other courses, the professors were more than willing to schedule additional office hours if I could not make the scheduled ones.</p>

7

<p>It seems obvious to me that PA and faculty resources are two distinctly separate categories, intending to measure two separate indicators of academic quality. And although everything impacts everything (no one category can actually stand alone without being impacted by a whole host of characteristics) generally speaking, PA measurement has one goal in mind, while the FR measurement has another goal in mind. This is apparent to me.
This week USNWR came out with its list of top hospitals, across many specialties. Should one think it inappropriate, or fallacious to assume that the PA measurement is so flawed as to make those rankings worth little? Or when Castle Connelly ranks the best doctors across specialties, based largely on PA, should one also question the validity of that ranking?
We have to face that no matter how flawed one might believe any peer assessment measurement to be, it is of utmost importance in judging the quality of any given institution or profession. Everything we do has a peer assessment related to it...From the Nobel prizes, to the Pulitzer prizes...even, to bring it to a trite level, the Academy Award winners are judged by their peers. And don't forget that we use peer assessment to judge guilt or innocence, by a much less informed audience, in the court room.
PA is important, and it is inherent in every important decision we make, as it should be. This bias against peer assessment for students and parents to use when selecting a college or university, seems so odd to me. I do not understand the motivation behind the sometimes rabid disagreement with its use. I have yet to hear a compelling reason to minimze PA that comes from person with STATED credentials that would sufficiently impress me, or make me think differently about my position. Anyone with such credentials, and such a bias should lay them out clearly. Perhaps then, I might "see the light."</p>

8

<p>You can actually find all of the class size data pretty easily on a college's website, if that helps you.</p>

9

<p>gabriellah,
A couple of points:
1. Would you please explain what PA measures and how this applies to undergraduates?
2. Would you please tell me who responded to the latest USNWR survey and please reaffirm that you are sufficiently impressed with their credentials?
3. Can you please explain the motivation behind some of the glaring differences in PA as it applies to similarly ranked schools? Some examples include:</p>

<p>3.9 USC vs.
4.3 UCLA</p>

<p>3.8 W&M vs.
4.3 U Virginia</p>

<p>3.5 Wake Forest vs.
4.2 U North Carolina
4.5 Duke</p>

<p>3.9 Notre Dame or 3.6 Boston College vs.
4.5 U Michigan</p>

<p>3.7 Tufts vs.
4.4 Brown
4.5 U Penn
4.6 Cornell, Columbia</p>

<ol>
<li>As an employer, I think PA is bunk and especially so for anybody studying in a non-technical field. If I am hiring you for a job, I am hiring the individual, not the school and certainly not the school's Peer Assessment score (which most recruiters don't even know what it is). You may not currently think that an employer has credentials, but you will when you graduate from college and you are looking for a job. Frankly, at that point, their opinion of you will be the only one that counts.</li>
</ol>

10

<p>^ Tufts (#27) is not similarly ranked vis-a-vis Penn (#7), Columbia (#9), Cornell (#12), and Brown (#15).</p>

<p>Also, Duke (#8) is not similarly ranked vis-a-vis Wake Forest (#30).</p>

<p>There is some disparity, however, between the PA differences and the ranking differences of some of the other schools you mentioned.</p>

11

<p>I, too, am a professional, not a student. We will simply have to agree to disagree. I will continue to make my assessments based upon the opinion of those in the field, who should know lots more than I do about endeavors I know nothing about. In this case, however, aside from being a parent, I am a college professor.</p>

12

<p>I've always thought of PA as an effective counterpoint to the student body stats. Yes it's great to see the strength of the student going in, but what about finished product? A group of bright kids gathered together is only one part of the educational process, all schools(not just the top 30) have philosophies on how and what makes a student into a valuable thinking adult. The PA seems a pretty good way to cut through all the well balanced, great experience, great looking girls, team spirit arguments to the very bottom line of a university. What kind of thinker is the kid after 4 years....how has the school itself performed in the process. </p>

<p>And yes, there are differences.(Not sure why we would think that the educational experience would be the same across all top 30 schools...that seems rather insulting to the top 30 schools and academia in general) Some schools have their top profs teach undergrads, others do not. Some schools dangle research opportunities in front of their undergrads, others make it solely the domain of grad students. Some schools believe that the air gets intellectually charged and minds get stretched with the core and others believe kids become scholars by concentrating on their own thing. Others make their frosh and sophs slog through distribution classes. Some schools focus on school spirit and building a 'family', for other schools they're having a dialogue with the next generation of scholars.</p>

<p>Hawkette, I'm curious as to why you would start this thread, surely you don't really think that academics is such a small part of the school experience that it could be virtually the same across all 30 schools?(My guess is that this is one more attempt to prove the 'well balanced school' is better than the academic powerhouses) As for PA, I've seen the list you've posted of school rankings without the PA, IMO, it only proves that however intangible it might be...the PA does serve to help people determine which schools might deliver the biggest intellectual bang for their educational dollar. </p>

<p>Case in point, care to defend Notre Dame as being a better school than Chicago?</p>

13

<p>Penn is a great school. However, it is odd that their faculty resources are ranked #1 above schools like HYP that have total and per student endowments that are several times that of Penn.</p>

<p>Columbia is a school of similar size and prestige. It has a slightly higher total and per student endowment but is ranked 13th in faculty resources. Is this evidence of Penn gaming the system?</p>

14

<p>
[quote]
As an employer, I think PA is bunk and especially so for anybody studying in a non-technical field. If I am hiring you for a job, I am hiring the individual, not the school and certainly not the school's Peer Assessment score (which most recruiters don't even know what it is). You may not currently think that an employer has credentials, but you will when you graduate from college and you are looking for a job. Frankly, at that point, their opinion of you will be the only one that counts.

[/quote]

Do most recruiters know a school's faculty resources rank? Its student/faculty ratio? I very much doubt it. How then, is the PA different from any other component of the US News ranking? I can't see why any of it should matter to an employer, except perhaps selectivity, since "quality in" has a direct bearing on "quality out." You say that you are hiring the "individual, not the school," essentially meaning that US News is entirely irrelevant, since it attempts to measure schools, not individuals. So why do you care if a ranking that should be basically irrelevant to you includes a factor that is irrelevant?
As for the opinion of one's future employer being the only one that counts, consider the significant proportion of students (particularly at top universities) who are going to graduate or professional school. Perhaps for those students, the opinions of university faculty do matter. Finally, I really don't see any reason to believe that the PA rankings don't affect employer opinions. PA reflects (for the most part) the strength of research at a given institution. I find it hard to believe that you would claim that Cal or Michigan's strength at the graduate level and in faculty research does not significantly impact their reputations in the general public. And for the purposes of school rankings, employers fall within the general public. Looking at some of your comparisons, I would argue that UVa, deserved or not, does have a stronger reputation among the general public (particularly outside Virginia) than does W&M. The same applies for Duke>UNC>Wake Forest (as far as I can tell, Wake Forest has little reputation outside of its particular geographic area, unlike UNC). I'm not claiming that UVa is in fact better than W&M in undergraduate education, but I bet most employers outside of Virginia would have a better opinion of the former than they do of the latter.
Remember that your average employer (even your average employer of college grads) is not a Wall Street investment house full of elite-college grads with a strong sense of "prestige" as defined by the kind of elitist nonsense one finds at the "what are my chances" forum on CC. Hiring for a job is enough of a local phenomenon, that if you are not going to HYPSM (i.e. colleges with a great deal of prestige in the eyes of laymen in all areas of the country) you should probably go to college in the geographic area in which you later hope to work. US News does not reflect this fact, nor is there any reason it should (it couldn't unless it produced separate rankings for every state).
Basically, hawkette, your quest to have US News reflect the opinions of employers is pointless. If you want to live and work in Michigan, UM is a top-10 (if not top-5) school, while if you want to live and work in California, Berkeley, UCLA, and USC are. There is no unified, objective weighting of employer's opinions possible, and an attempt to produce such a thing wouldn't provide much useful information to a prospective college student.</p>

15

<p>ramses 2,
Thanks for your many good points, but I think you overstate the points that I have made here and elsewhere about PA. </p>

<p>Please don’t interpret my posts to mean that I don’t consider academics as important or that the schools that I listed above as equals. Academics and the pursuit of knowledge are why we go to college and are undeniably the most important part of any equation when measuring colleges. My point with the PA comparisons above was to provide examples of great disparity in scoring that is IMO, not reflective of the quality of education available at that school. For the record, there is nothing magical about the top 30, it was just a place to begin and there were several good examples of the great disparities in PA scores, but IMO probably not in faculty or educational quality.<br>
For example, I consider Duke a peer to HYPSM and not Wake Forest. But I really struggle with a grading system that shows their difference to be, well, enormous. </p>

<p>You are correct that I like the well balanced schools over the traditional academic powers but that is not meant as a slam to the great historical academic powers, but rather a positive statement about the way that some schools offer great academics + great social life + great athletic life which combined make for a better overall undergraduate experience. My personal view is that the academic differences between schools not names HYPSM and those ranked #5-20 by USNWR are pretty small and only marginally bigger when you extend up to #30. </p>

<p>I am curious if you have a different opinion about this difference in educational quality. Do you really think that the education offered at UCLA is 10% better than USC? Or that offered at U Virginia is 13% better than W&M? Or that Wake’s faculty is 20% worse than U North Carolina or 30% worse than Duke? And so on…..I do not and not because I don’t have a high regard for UCLA, U Virginia, U North Carolina, Duke, or the others. It is because the other schools do a pretty fine job as well and yet the great discrepancies in PA scores could lead one to inaccurately reach a different conclusion.</p>

16

<p>
[quote]
Case in point, care to defend Notre Dame as being a better school than Chicago?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>in the real world, well-balanced students and the subsequent effect on outlook on life is taken into account, for example, top consulting firms, who aim to hire the best of the best, the smartest, most dynamic, adaptable, ingenious, original, and analytically-capable students in the country, consider notre dame just as strong as chicago when it comes to producing capable graduates:</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=235587&highlight=consulting+core%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=235587&highlight=consulting+core&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>surprised at some of the schools on there? if you notice, schools known for having a balance of social life and academics come out ahead of schools know for having rigorous academics but little to offer in other areas.</p>

17

<p>As I said before, I find your bias curious. It appears as though something has made you very upset, vis-a-vis PA. Why you have an agenda to try and influence potential college students and their parents that PA is "bunk" is indeed mysterious, but it seems that something relating to that score strikes you as personally offensive. Otherwise, it is difficult to understand why you would not want future "consumers" to know how educational professionals rank a particular school.
I am compelled to respond to the contentiousness regarding this issue because I feel that parents and students have a right to know how the educational community regards a particular college and university.
One can find flaws with everything, if he/she desires. In fact,the first thing I want to know when it comes to educating my children, is what professionals in this field think about the overall quality of the education that I will be paying for.
Also, I have children who have been, or who are being educated at some of the finest schools in the country. I understand that you are an employer, but from my vantage point, most employers greatly value and generally agree with the opinions of, for lack of a better term, "peer assessers." The name of the school on a resume is of utmost importance to highly powered-employers. And this is what lots of kids today are looking for...access to top medical/ law schools, and the like; or entree into prestigious investment banks, etc. These young people have lofty goals and dreams they want to attain.
A highly thought of school makes it possible for young people to get their feet in the proverbial doors of these employers and grad schools. And who determines what educators and administrators think of a school's overall quality? The peers, as in every other important decision we make with our lives, we need to rely unpon those who should know.
The opinions of educators count A LOT with these types of employers, and graduate schools administrators, who are most definitely in the know. They are certainly not as ill-informed as you seem to think. Quite to the contrary.</p>

18

<p>

Although HYP have larger endowments than Penn, Penn actually has the largest operating budget--and the largest faculty--in the Ivy League (e.g., Wharton has the largest and most cited faculty of any business school in the world).</p>

<p>Additionally, this is how US News measures "Faculty Resources":</p>

<p>
[quote]
Faculty resources (20 percent). Research shows that the more satisfied students are about their contact with professors, the more they will learn and the more likely it is they will graduate. We use six factors from the 2005-06 academic year to assess a school's commitment to instruction. Class size has two components: the proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students (30 percent of the faculty resources score) and the proportion with 50 or more students (10 percent of the score). </p>

<p>In our model, a school benefits more for having a large proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students and a small proportion of large classes. Faculty salary (35 percent) is the average faculty pay, plus benefits, during the 2004-05 and 2005-06 academic years, adjusted for regional differences in the cost of living (using indexes from the consulting firm Runzheimer International). We also weigh the proportion of professors with the highest degree in their fields (15 percent), the student-faculty ratio (5 percent), and the proportion of faculty who are full time (5 percent).

[/quote]
</p>

<p><a href="http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/about/07rank_brief.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/about/07rank_brief.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Does this mean that Penn is "gaming" the system? Well, if the numbers Penn reports are fabrications, or otherwise are not based in reality, then yes. Given that Penn has been ranked consistently from 4-7 each year for the past 10 years, however, it's highly unlikely that such a scam has been perpetrated--and continues to be perpetrated--for that length of time. Does Penn ensure that it has a sufficient number of smaller classes, full-time faculty with Ph.D.s, highly paid faculty, etc. to obtain a high score in the "faculty resources" section of the US News ranking? Who knows? But even if it does so only for that sole purpose (which is highly unlikely), the results are still real and material, enhance the overall educational experience, and justify Penn's higher ranking.</p>

19

<p>
[quote]
rate peer schools' academic programs

[/quote]

This does not say anything about the size of classes, so there is no reason to expect the results of PA to parallel the class size metrics USNEWS chooses.</p>

<p>It also does not say that the differences between schools should be linear, such that the PA score could be interpreted as "School A is 10% better than School B"</p>

<p>Hawkette, if you think some of your illustrated results are discrepant, please say why. "USC and UCLA should have similar scores because..." This might include some analysis of the content of academic programs, proportions of students who receive advanced degrees, proportions of students who win national fellowships or awards, LSAT scores, MCAT scores, etc. Something would be better than nothing, and objective data on the quality of the programs would be better than a purely subjective opinion.</p>

<p>I see no point in quibbling over the PA scores. They are what they are. If you ask "presidents, provosts and admissions deans" apparently this is what you get. </p>

<p>You can say you don't care about their opinion, it's a free country. </p>

<p>It is a lot harder to support the contention that they are wrong and you are right. For that you would need something sorely lacking in this discussion- evidence. </p>

<p>I suspect most respondents would feel more comfortable answering a more intelligent question than "condense everything you think you know about all the academic programs at a peer college to a single number"</p>

20

<p>svalbardlutefisk,
Your comment about selectivity was right on target and this has enormous consequences for the quality of the graduates of a university, far more IMO than the quality of a faculty. Quality in and quality out, as you say. The faculty might nurture this and assist in the development, but I doubt that the actual teaching that goes on at the schools rated highly by PA is markedly superior to that going on at schools rated lower. That was my point all along and continues the line of thinking that a student can receive an excellent education at many top schools. </p>

<p>Re the thought about grad school and that they value the PA of a school, I think that this is very overrated. The large majority of college students, even at top undergraduate universities, never attend graduate school and certainly not directly from undergraduate.<br>
Graduate business school students go back for their MBAs 4-7 years on average after undergrad and the most important factors by far are work experience and GMAT. Law school applicants increasingly are being required to work for at least a year or more and a huge factor in their admission process to law school is performance on the LSAT. The same is true with med school and MCATs although I will accept that undergraduate professors for whom a student has performed research can provide consequential recommendations. For selected departments and for selected universities, PA can have heft in the admissions process (particularly if this is for the preparation of a student for a career in academia), but generally speaking, I would contest the view that undergraduate PA is a critical factor in graduate school admissions.</p>

<p>On the issue of job placement, you and I espouse the same view. I contend that only a handful of schools (HYPSM) have true national recruiting appeal and that the local colleges in a region have a significant advantage in corporate recruitment. I have consistently made this point and I would agree that U Virginia is a Top 10 school in the Southeast (but no where else), U Michigan is a Top 10 school in the Midwest (but no where else), UC Berkeley is a Top 10 school in the West (but no where else), etc. </p>

<p>And I would make the same point about all of the Ivies not named HYP as they would be at a recruiting disadvantage in the South (to places like Duke/Rice/Vanderbilt/Emory/U Virginia/U North Carolina/Wake Forest/W&M/Georgia Tech), in the Midwest (to places like Northwestern/U Chicago/Wash U/Notre Dame/U Michigan/U Wisconsin/U Illinois), in the West (to places like Stanford/Caltech/UC Berkeley/UCLA/USC/UCSD/U Washington). I’ve listed only the most prominent National Universities in these areas, but these local recruiting advantages extend past them to include lower ranked schools and, of course, the many high quality LACs located in these regions. Employers in these areas don’t care about PA scores (or Faculty Resource ranks). They just want good, smart students and these can be found in abundance at a great many schools.</p>