In my post, I responded to the data which pointed to a higher proportion of students of selective LACs continuing to PhD studies than students from selective research universities. I responded with a comparison of the experience of the majority of students who go to either of these types of schools.
So people responded with “but the minority of students who go to honors colleges have a different experience”, or “but my child/I/my brother had a different experience”.
Why do people not understand that “but a few don’t” is NOT a contradiction of “most do”? People also seem to think that “my experience” = “the general rule”. Also, I referred specifically to the most selective of each of these two categories. Since there is no data as to the proportion of students from less selective LACs or research universities, I did not, and cannot, speak to either the experience in those, or to the effects it may have on life choices of the people who graduated from those.
I guess you may consider a PhD at one major national university, a postdoc and teaching at another, an adjunct researcher position at yet another, and 7 years teaching at a fourth one, as well as extensive activity and connections across the academic world in over 20 years in academia, not to mention a wife who is still in academia as a full professor at a national university, to be considered “not to much contact”.
Must.Not.Be.Snarky.
At national universities, the majority of students are NOT in Honors Colleges, and, even in honors colleges, they’re still likely taking the same massive Freshman and Sophomore courses in intro Bio or math, and/or taking the intro Comp courses being taught by lecturers or adjuncts. The actual interactions that they have in their first years are still mostly with the TAs or with adjuncts. Not that it really matters. I wrote abut the majority of students, which affects the proportion of students, university-wide. So, even if the experience of kids in the honors colleges is exactly like that of kids at LACs, it STILL does not contradict what I said about the average student’s experience at large universities.
Moreover, I was making no value judgement. Many students prefer big university atmosphere and thrive in it. If you are at a top research university, you will still be surrounded by other smart students, which the major benefit of going to any good school of any type. You are also more likely to find a relatively large group of people with your interests, which may be more difficult in the smaller community of a liberal arts college. Selective LACs also tend to be geographically isolated, so not only is the student body small, but so is the community outside the school. This can be claustrophobic for many people, especially for the majority of the population of the USA who come from urban areas. You can still interact with faculty - you just need to be more proactive about it, and be ready for rejection, because faculty have less time for undergraduates.
In research universities, there is the added benefit, and negative aspect, of graduate students. So, on one hand, you can interact with younger people who are passionate about the field, while on the other hand, you will be at the bottom of the pecking order, and your research experiences may be limited to grunt work.
BTW, of the 2,000 or so non-profit universities and colleges, only about 200 are research universities and about 200 are liberal arts colleges. The rest are four year universities (both private a public) with either no graduate schools, or limited graduate programs, mostly for Master’s degrees, or community colleges. There are also a number of schools which train graduate students, including PhDs, but have a more limited research program.
Most PhDs don’t work in academia, and in academia, most PhDs do not have, nor will they ever get, a tenure-track job. The majority of people in STEM with PhDs work in industry (fewer than 45% work in higher education). Of those who work in higher education, less than 50% are being hired as TT.
In humanities, about 56% are teaching in higher education, but only about 1/3 of these are actually in TT or tenured positions. The rest are either FT non-TT or part of the growing contingent labor force.
There are SO many flavors of PhD that I cannot count them here.
As for the faculty themselves: without proving that you have a passion for teaching you’ll rarely get a TT job at a good LAC. You also won’t get tenure at a LAC unless you are an excellent teacher. You can be hired at a research university without proof of teaching passion or even experience in many fields, as long as you show promise or success as a researcher. You will get tenure only if you are an excellent researcher, even though your teaching is mediocre. So there are excellent teachers and mentors at every university. However, in research universities they are generally less common than at any other type of college or university.
PS. When I write “selective” I do not mean “better” in any absolute sense. They just require better academics to be accepted, and not only are academics often just as much functions of availability of resources as they are functions of intellectual abilities, but also there is no more intrinsic value to academic abilities than to any other of the multiple skills and abilities required for human life and interaction. I also have issues with the fact that the attitude of this country towards education has resulted in the situation that the only way that these schools can exist is by these schools being too expensive for most of the kids who could get into them.