Best Professors

<p>According to new Princeton Review survey, the best professors are at the following schools:</p>

<p>Davidson
Wellesley
Sweet Briar
Middlebury
Reed
Kenyon
Olin
William & Mary
Whitman
New College FLA
Hampden Sydney
Sarah Lawrence
Claremont Mckenna
Carleton
Harvey Mudd
Wabash
Marlboro
Swarthmore
Wittenburg
Oglethorpe</p>

<p>LAC's rule on this survey. Amazing how satisfied students are when a school actually focuses on Undergrads. Any defenders of the hallowed USNWR research schools care to comment?</p>

<p>hmm. You act like people who prefer Research universities HATE LAC’s or something…<em>confused</em>
First of all, the list is best professors. Of course I would expect it to be populated with LAC’s because their teachers only have ONE major priority: teaching. If they can’t even get THAT part right, what’s the point of even existing as an LAC?</p>

<p>Second of all, LAC’s and research universities exist for DIFFERENT purposes. LAC’s exist to educate students. Research Universities exist to further knowledge through educating AND research.</p>

<p>Thus, if the Princeton Review ranked best FACULTY, there will, no-doubt, be some top research universities up there who have the nobel prize winners, etc.</p>

<p>It’s not saying one is superior to the other. If YOU (as you seem to be) are a student who only wants to learn and attain knowledge, then an LAC will sound great to you and maybe even an LAC-like Research University like Dartmouth or Brown (to a lesser degree).</p>

<p>If YOU want to receive an education AND be able to make your own discoveries/interact with the people who are making those discoveries, then…a research university like Harvard, Stanford, Hopkins, UChicago, etc would be your best option.</p>

<p>I don’t see why there is a constant need to prove one is better than the other. Unless you are talking about comparing Dartmouth, and, say, Amherst, it’s really like comparing eggs and oranges.</p>

<p>edit: Yes, research university professor probably can’t teach as well as LAC professors, but I’d also like to see LAC professors attempt some of the groundbreaking, history-making research that takes place regularly at the high-quality research universities and STILL teach (somehow) at the same time.</p>

<p>Wow, apparently the Princeton Review is so much of a reputable source than USNWR.</p>

<p>And lol, research uni/LAC wank much?</p>

<p>If you’re interested in what schools have students who are most satisfied with their faculty, you might look at the USA Today’s database of National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) results. One of the benchmarks on NSSE is the strength of student faculty interaction. </p>

<p>Unlike PR or USNWR, NSSE is an actual research project conducted by Indiana University.</p>

<p>[How</a> to make NSSE scores work for you - USATODAY.com](<a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-11-04-nsse-how-to_N.htm?csp=34]How”>http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-11-04-nsse-how-to_N.htm?csp=34)</p>

<p>Its good to know which schools focus on teaching students and which are leaders in research. This is great info for high schoolers making the big decision.</p>

<p>res ipsa loquitor</p>

<p>The professors at those schools may indeed be good, but any rankings based on survey data are of questionable value. For starters, there are technical issues such as not correcting for biases in the sample. (Response rates are low and respondents are not a random sample of students.) Another issue is that the respondents almost all have experience with just a single college, so they do not know whether they are getting quality teaching. You may adore your teachers until you get to grad school and find out that you are woefully unprepared. </p>

<p>There are other reasons why such rankings are suspect. A study was done of the student evaluation scheme at my college. It was found that higher evaluations were strongly correlated with higher grades. In other words, giving higher grades tended to result in higher evaluations. So, are we measuring how good the teaching is, or are we simply measuring how happy the student is? To the extent that students are happy with their professors, that is a good thing, ceteris paribus. But these rankings should not be taken too seriously as an indicator of quality of teaching.</p>

<p>

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<p>That is probably a survey of best “teachers”, as opposed to best “professors”. To understand the difference between a “teacher” and a “professor”, or, incidentally, between a “researcher” and a “professor”, I suggest the following [essay](<a href=“http://www.math.cmu.edu/~wn0g/noll/RP.pdf”>http://www.math.cmu.edu/~wn0g/noll/RP.pdf&lt;/a&gt;), written by the prominent and now retired applied mathematician [Walter Noll]( <a href=“Walter Noll - Wikipedia”>http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Noll&lt;/a&gt;) more than 10 years ago.</p>

<p>According to the much more scientific NSSE surveys an average of over 90% or grads from major research U’s would go there again. Data for LACs are similar.</p>

<p>barrons, do you have a link the the NSSE report?</p>

<p>Yes</p>

<p>[NSSE</a> 2008 Results](<a href=“http://nsse.iub.edu/NSSE_2008_Results/]NSSE”>http://nsse.iub.edu/NSSE_2008_Results/)</p>