Schools that really aren't "all that"

College Search & Selection
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To my mind, what makes a school “all that” are such things as: 1) an engaged faculty comprised of intellectual powerhouses and leaders in their field; 2) myriad opportunities available to students for intellectual and personal growth and well-being; 3) a high-achieving and collaborative group of bright and capable students; 4) a supportive and competent administration interested in maintaining the highest standards and the best conditions for learning and growth.

While no school is perfect, some schools are all that – and more.

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@MWolf said it very well. Another way to look at it - the median academic qualifications of athletes at the elite schools are in line with the general population of schools ranked in the triple digits, but the athletes do just fine in school and graduate like everybody else. I know my Ivy was much more difficult to get into than to graduate from, without a doubt. Mostly a sorting mechanism, it seems, and not a particularly good one.

A related question is not how hard these schools are (difficult is not always better), but have they figured out a way to educate that maximizes the potential of any given student? The LAC’s sort of claim this with their small class, work directly with professors chosen for teaching ability approach, but YMMV.

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@LoveTheBard As somebody who has been in academia for decades, I can tell you that “1) an engaged faculty comprised of intellectual powerhouses and leaders in their field;” is extremely rare, because one does not become an intellectual powerhouses and leader in their field" by spending hours on hours explaining things to undergraduates.

Here is the basic facts of academia - the coin of the realm is research and connections, not education. That means number of publications, and amounts of grant money. Publications are achieved by personal time on papers, and having a team of graduate students and postdocs working full time. Grant proposals also take an enormous amount of time to produce. There is also shmoozing and presence, so that means attending half a dozen conferences every year, as well as professional panels, workshops by invitation only, etc.

At research universities that can actually afford to hire and keep these people, tenure is granted based on productivity, while teaching is secondary. In many of these universities, Big Names are hired with tenure, based solely on their research.

The end result is that the “intellectual powerhouses and leaders” are rarely available for interactions with undergraduates. Most of the faculty who teach at universities that have many of those big names are junior faculty, teaching faculty, or graduate TAs. You may get a course or two over your undergraduate years with one or two, and be able to interact personally for a couple of hours. However, the idea that you will be sitting for most of your courses, or even a substantial number of them, in small classes with the luminaries in your field, is a pipe dream.

For most Big name universities, Big Name faculty are there to enhance the prestige of the college, not to enhance education.

PS. The majority of Big Names are actually really crappy teachers and terrible mentors.

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@MWolf While what you described is undoubtedly true in general, there’re many, many exceptions, however. There’re universities which are exceptions, and there’re individual world-renowned professors who love to teach, even in places where what your described is generally true. Some Nobel Laureates, Fields Metalists, Turing Award Winners still teach in some universities. Also, interactions with these professors are not limited to classrooms. If you make an effort, you will find many of them are happy to have intellectual conversations with you, in their offices or their labs.

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@MWolf -

While I agree that “an engaged faculty comprised of intellectual powerhouses and leaders in their field” is indeed “extremely rare,” so are schools that I would consider “all that.” To my mind, there are perhaps fewer than a dozen schools that fit that description. Happily, my daughter attends one of them.

That said, it is possible to find stellar professors at less-than-stellar schools and less-than-stellar faculty at stellar schools.

Moreover, you needn’t lecture me on the “basic facts of academia” in general or of advancement (tenure, rank) in academia in particular –– I, too, have been in and around academia for the better part of three decades. I probably know more than the average bear about how academia works; I taught as a TA in grad school, my husband is a Distinguished Professor at one of the top-ranked UCs, he has won national and international awards and fellowships, is a leader in his field, and has both sat on and chaired a university-wide academic personnel committee that makes recommendations for any and all faculty hires, tenure decisions, advancement, and retentions. Let’s just saw that I know whereof I speak.

While I agree that one may not become an intellectual powerhouse by “explaining things to undergraduates,” once you are a leader in your field, you do have the time –– and one would hope the inclination –– to spend teaching bright, motivated students who want to learn. A case in point: the head of the department of my D’s undergraduate major is a big name in his field that has won awards for undergraduate teaching both at Yale and Stanford. He is, by any measure, an intellectual powerhouse, has written several books, and has been interviewed in documentaries. Definitely a “Big Name.” During her freshman year, this “Big Name” professor offered for my then-freshman daughter to do a two-quarter long independent study/directed reading class with him (it was his idea; she met one-on-one with him every week and wrote a paper at the end of it all).

I can assure you that most faculty are delighted when students are engaged and will go out of their way to support them.

As for tenure/rank: while it is indeed the case that publication record is perhaps the most important criterion when it comes to tenure and rank, the quality of teaching matters –– a lot. I’ve seen lots of cases where faculty personnel decisions were affected by that faculty’s teaching record. And you should note that grants are probably more important in STEM fields than they are in the humanities or in the social sciences.

My D is not living “a pipe dream” at her school. She has had incredible opportunities, been granted funding for both internships and for research projects, and has, at every turn, been supported by superb faculty.

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@LoveTheBard I’m happy that your D found her school, and I am also heartened by the fact that there are such colleges out there.

I agree that most faculty love engaged students, but most faculty are not "Big Name"s in their fields, specifically because most want to be teachers as well as researchers, since that is why they became professors in the first places. However, the research productivity which results in world famous reputations is time consuming, and rarely conducive to high investment in teaching.

At Research Universities, for most tenure cases, the teaching record has to be “OK”, while publication and funding have to be “stellar”. Professors who put as much effort into undergraduate teaching as they do into research productivity, generally do not get tenure at research universities. I have known many who ended up in non-TT teaching positions because of this. On the other hand, mentoring graduate students is important, and can determine promotion to Full Professor. However, grad student mentoring is directly related to research, and to the research profile of a department, and so, this is not really a purely educational issue

You are, however, correct, and I will add the caveat, that for some of the humanities an social science, particularly “Book Fields” (in which books are produced as the result of research or creativity), in which less time is spent on grant writing and running large research groups or labs, Big Names can have the time to focus more on education. Since they are not dependent on graduate students for their productivity, they will often be found in good Liberal Arts Colleges as well. However, this does not work for STEM, most Social Sciences and Ag, as well as some of the journal fields of the humanities, and this covers a much much wider swath of academia.

Professional fields (like law, planning, architecture, etc), in which fame is brought by non-academic achievements, are a different world entirely, since most Big Names are not academics. Those who are academics or teach at colleges usually love teaching, and are therefore a non-representative sample of Big Names in those field.

Most graduates schools are really bad at teaching PhD students how to teach, In fact, many STEM programs do not even require work as a TA, so that many academics’ first experience with teaching is the first day they walk in front of a class as a newly hired assistant professor. In some cases, when a faculty member is hired with tenure from industry, their first teaching experience is 8 years post graduation, as an associate professor.

If teaching were valued, there wouldn’t be so many non-TT faculty at research universities, including the UCs, and there wouldn’t be a decline in the number of TT positions and in increase in the number of adjuncts. A university which cares about the quality of teaching doesn’t hire contingent labor to teach, and doesn’t increase the numbers and proportion of adjuncts every year. At every research university and in every professional society, research awards come with a lot of recognition, and usually a nice chunk of money. Teaching awards come with a cheap plastic plaque, and a drop in job offers. No academic has ever been nominated to be a Fellow of the professional society because of their stellar teaching.

PS. Being married into academia gives you a better view than most. However, as a second generation academic myself, who has been in academia for decades and is marries to an academic, I think that there may still be a thing or two I can tell you with which you are not familiar, especially considering how many universities and departments I have gone through.

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@LoveTheBard It sounds like your family is quite accomplished, and that your daughter is a very bright and talented young woman, making the most of her opportunity. I don’t know what university she goes to, it sounds wonderful. However, I don’t know if I would take the experience of your daughter-- a child of academics, where one of those academics is an esteemed top professor at a UC, as typical of the academic experience of students at your daughter’s university.

Even if the professors she works with are completely unaware of your husband’s distinguished career, your daughter has spent her life being so fortunate as to learn to fluently speak the language of academia, and to have the confidence and comfort/cultural capital to know just how to approach senior faculty with hopes for the best possible result. I hope her experience is reasonably typical for a great many students at her university, in terms of faculty support, and perhaps it is. However, I’m not sure if that would be the case, based on your example, for I feel your daughter has particular skills and cultural framework that she is able to bring.

I guess I’m saying MWolf’s points seem valid to me, and your daughter seems (from my perspective) to be much better positioned then most (even amongst other bright and savvy peers) to access those professorial relationships.

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UCs do have a classification of faculty with a title of “Teaching Professor” or “Lecturer with Security of Employment” or “Lecturer SOE”, who appear to be mainly used for large lower level courses. For example: https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Faculty/Lists/list.html

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“Schools that really aren’t “all that”” are the ones I didn’t get into…

I agree with not reading too much into one day of sitting in a class, regarding rigor. It reminds me of a few years ago when my youngest D was in 7th grade and sat in an intro CS class at Lehigh with her older sister. She got a kick out of answering a couple of the prof’s question that no one in class could. :). (Seeing The Imitation Game had piqued her interest in learning a bit about Alan Turing and his work)

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What makes a school (or almost anything else) “all that” or great are its people. For a school, that means its students and faculty. A great school has not only highly talented student body, but also some extraordinary professors who have truly unique insights and perspectives. Decades ago when I was an undergrad, one of the classes I took was taught by a most preeminent professor, a Nobel Laureate, in the field. It was relatively large class, compared to most of my other classes, but it didn’t really matter to any of us. Those who took the class weren’t all students. Sitting in the back row were some of his fellow professors. I still remember fondly about that class.

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@mwolf. So refreshing to see this spelled out on CC. When I was in grad school, the ‘weaker’ grad students got the teaching assistant jobs. The stronger ones, the research assistant jobs. None of who actually liked teaching (I was not one of them) dared let that be known. The respected faculty were the ones who published a ton and who pulled in large grants. Thus they had a ton of grad students working for them.

I do think that the composition of the faculty does influence the quality of the curriculum, though. The prolific faculty members remain aware of the cutting edge of the disciplines and, if they are paying any attention at all, fight to keep the curriculum up to date (matters most in higher level courses) and keep the faculty well rounded in terms of subspecialties. I can only speak for STEM disciplines, but their labs tend to be modern and well-equipped. While they have nothing to do with undergrads (which is usually best!) their presence has a big impact on the whole department, academically. They attract good grad students and good junior faculty. The PI in my lab had to teach (medical students) for three weeks a year and he acted like he was getting a root canal the whole time. But his presence put that department on the map and because of him, many other not-so-prickly but very solid scientists chose to join that department. And the book that Dr. Prickly wrote was eventually used in every med school in the country. So while no parent would view him as a solid teacher, he was a tremendous educator in his own way. In a classroom, he was gawd-awful. One on one, in a lab? Very different.

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I had a Dr. Prickly once as a professor. 17 drug patents, big research guy. Horrible classroom experience. He was interesting at times but not a teacher.

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Schools that are deemed “all that” are ones we have as a society have collectively agreed upon - largely due to the influence of their longevity, accumulated wealth, clever marketing and the natural selection bias of its alumni that keeps the prestige-o-meter rolling along.

The actual in person experience “may be all that” or “all that it’s not”. It’s going to vary person to person.

If you engage and work hard. If you have happiness and fun along the way. The facilities and resources of any American college or university on your top 100 to 200 lists of r1 schools or top 50 type liberal arts colleges will offer a meaningful and challenging four years for any student.

Many outside of the subjective level of overall quality that I manufactured above, can be just as rewarding as well. They will just have different types of students and focus of outcomes.

@MWolf is a brilliant and down to earth guy. He knows what he is talking about in this area of discussion.

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" I’ve seen lots of cases where faculty personnel decisions were affected by that faculty’s teaching record."

That seems a little surprising, are you saying that super star research professors did not get tenure because of teaching evaluations? I’d have to agree with mwolf’s assertion that research is king for tenure. Once you get tenure, then yes a professor can devote more time to teaching.