<p>^^ One thing schools should learn from Stanford, in my opinion.</p>
<p>And RML – while I cannot speak for percentages, some of the top percentage, yes, sounds plausible.</p>
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<p>Phantasmagoric, I actually happen to believe this is probably unwise. I seriously doubt all those professors actually <em>want</em> to teach. Basically, I believe the choice of instructor should be based on something other than the credential of being a professor. Those who want to teach should, and those who don’t really care much for it shouldn’t.</p>
<p>I know there are professors who don’t want to lecture, but they don’t have a TA do it in their place. It’s part of the professors’ contracts with the university to teach courses, so this isn’t unsurprising. And of course, every university faces this same issue. I for one would probably prefer a TA who cares than a professor who doesn’t, though often it’s pretty neat to be learning under a world-renowned professor.</p>
<p>Sure, I think the best way is actually to have professors teach the more advanced courses of one’s major, i.e. prioritizing accomplishment, so that serious students can meet them and maybe even get letters of recommendations from them. I’m sure some serious professors would like to endorse talented undergraduates.</p>
<p>For intro courses, I think the basis should be how interested the professor is in teaching. I know for one thing that at my school, a stupid policy they have, coupled with forcing some of the most famous professors who may not want to do those to teach intro courses, is to also force them to grade midterms (in the math department, not all). So this poor professor has to grade 300+ midterms at times. Maybe at least Stanford avoids this by having smaller class sizes. </p>
<p>I’d probably hate my school if I had to take such huge classes where the prof didn’t care in the least.</p>