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There's a theory that the best single indicator of undergraduate teaching quality in the US News rankings is: alumni giving rate.
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<p>There is also a "theory" that alumni giving rate reflects the wealth of the matriculating Frosh (as does SAT scores, etc.). </p>
<p>Corbett posts:
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The survey basically asks the following question: "Do you care enough about the college's mission to support it financially?"
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<p>Better check back with AP Stats. The second question you need to ask if 'Do the students even have the green to send back to their colleges or are they to busy working to pay off school loans?' </p>
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If college applicants are really looking for schools that value and emphasize undergraduate teaching, then why are LACs -- which provide, as you note, precisely that -- such a small niche?
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Perhaps because the biggest factor for most students is cost (through necessity rather than choice), and public universities (which have most of the research university enrollment) are cheaper than LACs.</p>
<p>I'm gonna wait for bruno123 to step in and present his case that research works together with, and not against, undergraduate teaching and that colleges without research are doomed to obsolesence and declining standards (seriously, whatever, because top LACs give their professors sabbaticals to do research and they present opportunities for research for a higher proportion of undergrads, but never mind...) His argument will be since the traditional metric of college faculty valuation rests on research abilities - this trickles or floods down to the undergrads and gives better quality undergrad education. His argument is in this thread: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=381215&page=9%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=381215&page=9</a></p>
<p>Why am I doing this? Well, I saw this thread, so to some extent, this is relevant, coz' if bruno is right then classroom teaching IS ALREADY factored in US News (implied through faculty research quality).</p>
<p>D.T: I don't know that even bruno would claim that better research is always correlated with better teaching. His argument seemed to me to be that scholars who are not active researchers cannot be good teachers. That's very different from claiming that research quality is equivalent to quality of instruction. And even if he were to argue that better research is directly linked to better teaching (ie, Noble Prize winners are always the best teachers), since top researchers at many universities don't teach undergrads at all, it's very hard to argue a direct correlation at the university level, even if it exists at the individual level.</p>
<p>When asked to complete the Peer Assessment rating for US News, I believe respondants are told to focus on Undergraduate. Their assessment reflects opinions undergraduate to the extent they are able to separate grad and undergrad. If it also reflects graduate quality, it is coincidence. Great undergraduate quality and great graduate quality go hand-in-hand.</p>
<p>Well, if you're looking for someone to defend the idea that research can be a fabulous complement to undergrad teaching, I can trot those arguments out. But I couldn't agree with someone who took the stance that faculty and institutions which do less research (because of a different mission/focus) are somehow inferior or can't teach well. That's a non-starter with me.</p>
<p>This is one of those issues where one is tempted to speak in absolutes, but the discussion is way more interesting, informative, and meaty when we acknowledge that things aren't black and white. Kudos to those of you who are bringing nuance to this argument.</p>
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As I indicated before, the proof is simple. If undergraduate instruction was the #1 applicant priority, then everyone would want to go to LACs, where undergraduate instruction is the #1 institutional priority.
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<p>Corbett, you're assuming good consumer knowledge of the differences in large universities and LACs. I'd say your argument would be very convincing if that knowledge were widespread, but I don't believe it is. In addition, affordability becomes a factor. Large, public universities are far less expensive for upper-middle-income families than most LACs.</p>
<p>So, I'd have to see some data on actual buying decisions before I can buy this wholesale.</p>
<p>You have to remember that this is college, not high school. Students are making the transition from a model where the teacher provides most of the education (high school and earlier) to a model where the students educate themselves with the professors function as guides to the literature and help explain the more difficult concepts. So the "classroom" itself becomes progressively less important, and the labs, libraries, problem sets, papers, and classmates become more important. </p>
<p>For the introductory courses that first year students take, particularly outside their majors, then high school type teaching and basic approach may work well, and this may be what new students miss. For more advanced undergrads who function more like grad students, they need professors who are deeply knowledgeable in their fields, and interested in pushing the envelope.</p>
<p>A good measure of educational quality would be outcomes. How much did students learn while in college? This could be done by adjusting for what they knew when they entered (i.e. how many had AP, IB, etc scores to skip intro courses, how many had high SAT 1 and SAT 2), then look at standard assessments like LSAT and MCAT. Colleges that produce high scores on these tests (or GRE's) corrected for entering SAT scores, are doing a good educational job.</p>
<p>This would not capture those students who do not take these tests, but at the elite colleges most students take at least one of them.</p>
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A good measure of educational quality would be outcomes. How much did students learn while in college? This could be done by adjusting for what they knew when they entered (i.e. how many had AP, IB, etc scores to skip intro courses, how many had high SAT 1 and SAT 2), then look at standard assessments like LSAT and MCAT.
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<p>We've been discussing this a bit in my office. There are tests some colleges administer that assess learning. For example, there's the Collegiate Learning Assessment, which asks students to do real-world performance tasks, as well as the Measure of Academic Proficiency and Progress, which is the multiple choice format like the GRE.</p>
<p>I think your point about "this is college" is also important--college is not compulsory, and students play a role in how much they learn or try to learn. They decide how much they want to apply themselves in order to succeed, to produce good grades for grad school or employers, or to attain good scores for entrance exams or licensure. Not everyone has the same need or desire to wring every bit of learning out of their classes. Therefore, some differences in student learning have little to do with the pedagogical proficiency of the faculty, but rather stem from the students' decisions. </p>
<p>Some students are so driven they will learn a lot despite poor teaching, and some students aren't as motivated and will learn less despite great teaching. It doesn't make learning assessments invalid, but it does complicate their interpretation, especially in regard to how much they reflect faculty quality.</p>
<p>afan and hoedown,
You make excellent observations about the nature of college learning and what this means about the importance of faculty in undergraduate learning. But what role do you see faculty as playing and to what degree should they be accountable to the undergraduate student and his/her learning and postgraduate outcome? Part of your response almost seems to place all of the onus on the student. Am I misinterpreting your comments? </p>
<p>As has been pointed out here and elsewhere many times before, many faculty members at larger universities have research responsibilities that crowd out their efforts/interest in classroom instruction. For the larger public universities, this is especially true as compared to professors at a smaller university or LAC. The problem with this is that those professors with high reputation value will often have a much smaller, or even no, role in classroom instruction and thus there is a mismatch of faculty reputation and what the student experiences in the classroom.</p>
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many faculty members at larger universities have research responsibilities that crowd out their efforts/interest in classroom instruction....The problem with this is that those professors with high reputation value will often have a much smaller, or even no, role in classroom instruction
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<p>Besides anecdotes on cc, please provide source documents to support your assumption. Also, please provide support documents to support your insistence that small classes are better.</p>
<p>We can all assume or believe that small is better, but where are the social scientists' studies...it seems to me that the answer to this question should be extremely important to you Hawkette, since its your starting point in all of your discussions. If it just your assumption.....</p>
<p>bluebayou,
As a student, I would prefer a smaller class size rather than a larger class size. I do consider that as a guiding principle. If you want to take the position that class size is unimportant to a learning environment or that larger class sizes are superior to smaller class sizes, then be my guest.</p>
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Besides anecdotes on cc, please provide source documents to support your assumption. Also, please provide support documents to support your insistence that small classes are better.
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<p>I am amazed that anyone would think that a class of over 100 students in an auditorium would be better than a smaller more intimate class. Even if this is such a widespread assumption (common sense? )I am sure that it has been looked at before at every educational level, from elementary school to post graduate studies. It may not be a bad idea to do a library search to put the issue to rest.</p>
<p>I am just finding the speculation about this completely outrageous. Parents choose smaller, expensive private shools for their kids, we always try to sign up for the smaller classes whether in high school or college because it helps us get "noticed", graduate students in research work in small teams. </p>
<p>For centuries, professionals have been taught as "apprentices" in a very personal fashion.....but way.....maybe I am just getting anecdotal here for bluebayou.</p>
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Besides anecdotes on cc, please provide source documents to support your assumption. Also, please provide support documents to support your insistence that small classes are better.
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<p>bluebayou:</p>
<p>There is an entire body of literature and, in fact, an entire field of psychology devoted to this topic. It's not my specialty, but I've brushed up against it in the course of my work because learning is connected to behavior. </p>
<p>You might want to start with Malcolm Knowles and his work on andragogy. I would also recommend Gregory Bateson.</p>
<p>I have done some research on this topic and posted it here months ago. There is little if any evidence of any difference in learning at the college level. Some prefer small classes for other reasons but the end results are similar.</p>
<p>Help me out, here. I just read that whole thing, and here's what I took from it:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>If one manages a large classroom in such a way that it comes as close as possible to what goes on in a small classroom, one gets a better result. This has been known for decades. I led the charge at my U to get an interactive response system installed in two of our auditoriums, and my undergrad class designs make as much use as possible of any additional space (not always available) to form breakout groups. But that doesn't make it a small classroom.</p></li>
<li><p>If one lectures in a small classroom in the same way one lectures in a large one, one does not get a better result. Of COURSE this is the case. The issue with small classrooms is that they allow for better instructional design -- not that they automatically lead to better instructional design.</p></li>
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<p>Beyond that, all I saw were some nebulous conclusions, no methodological insights, no breakdown of how "higher order skills" are defined and how the study measured them, no confidence bar, etc. In fact, I didn't see anything that's of use, here.</p>
<p>If one is going to contradict a wealth of previous studies, it might behoove one to be very darn sure all your data, assumptions, techniques, etc. are in order.</p>
<p>it's not what I prefer, but my point is you seem to believe that your preference is THE way undergrad should be measured. </p>
<p>tarhunt: the reason I raise the issue is more from a practical level. Nearly every public policy maker (and every teacher's union) claims that K-12 education is better with smaller classes, yet there is only one SMALL study in Tennessee which supports that position. This has been a raging national issue for several years, but yet only the one study continues to be quoted by supporters of small classes. (Thus, I assumed that there are no others.)</p>
<p>I can't tell you about the literature on early childhood ed, because I just don't know the area very well. I can say that I happen to know (just accidentally) about some computer-based training programs that obtain stunning results and, in theory, would allow classrooms to be both larger AND better.</p>
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we always try to sign up for the smaller classes whether in high school or college....
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<p>IMO, personal preference. There are PLENTY of kids who would rather sleep in the back of a large lecture hall (or skip it altogether) then do the reading in advance. :)</p>
<p>""Mass Instruction or Higher Learning? The Impact of Class Size in Higher Education." (under revision) Co-authored with Eric Bettinger.
This paper attempts to measure the effects of collegiate class size on student outcomes such as persistence, subsequent course selection, and major choice. While class size is a perennial issue in literature focusing on primary and secondary schooling, it has been largely ignored in research on higher education. Nonetheless, the effect of class size in college is potentially very important as it impacts everything from competitive rankings (20 percent of the U.S. News and World Report formula focuses on class size) to university budgets. Moreover, the range of possible class sizes is substantial in higher education (as many as 700 per lecture in our data) suggesting large differences in students' classroom experiences and possibly large effects on students' outcomes as well. Few researchers have focused on collegiate class size because data are rarely available. In addition, there are inherent selection problems as higher ability students appear to systematically avoid large classes. To address this hole in the literature, we use a unique data set that includes detailed class size, faculty, and student characteristics and track two cohorts of nearly 41,000 students in four-year, public colleges in Ohio."</p>