<p>Reading the USWNR college rankings made me thinking about the meaning of rankings. Certainly the rankings are more meaningful when we narrow it down to fields of study. After all junior is going to pick a major sooner or later. It is important that not only does our kid receives quality teachings, but also surrounds himself/herself with quality peers. There are many colleges that are not great or good generally, but have good reputation in specific fields of study. So, here is my question: which is more important in college selection - average student quality or teaching quality of a specific field of study? How would you weight these factors?</p>
<p>Most kids change their fields of study between the start of 12th grade and college graduation. So it may be a mistake to rely too heavily on faculty quality in a specific field, since that field may become irrelevant, unless the student is really, really, really, really sure of what he or she wants to do. (And wishful thinking on parents’ part that students really, really want to do exactly what the parents have been saying they should DOES NOT qualify.) On the other hand, if there is a clear cluster of interests (literature, science, math), across-the-board strength in those areas is pretty relevant.</p>
<p>In general, I think student quality follows faculty quality. It would be surprising to see them diverge much. There are probably some colleges where the faculty clearly ranks higher than the students (Chicago, Hopkins, Michigan), but it’s not like the divergence is that great, or even large enough to be important. There are also probably places where the students are a little better than the faculty (Georgetown?), but again the difference isn’t worth worrying about.</p>
<p>What do you mean by “teaching quality”?</p>
<p>Some of the best teachers, especially at the introductory level, are not well-known scholars. Some of the best-known scholars don’t teach well, and some don’t even care if they teach well.</p>
<p>Furthermore, most public flagship universities have more than a few well-known scholars on the faculty. They may or may not be good teachers, but many have a lot of research funds and quite often the best undergraduates find that standing out lands them a plum research job and top recommendations for jobs and graduate schools.</p>
<p>I do think average student quality matters, but for the opposite reason JHS gave in post #2: faculty who are interested in teaching, as well as professional research, often choose to go where they can find top students, all other things equal. As it happens, pay*, location, job opps for spouses, etc., are often not equal, and connected, talented faculty take the job where the average student quality is less than stellar. In that case, they find the top students and shower them with attention.</p>
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<li>Pay is often much better at public flagships than at smaller private universities, particularly if one lands a ‘named chair’.</li>
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<p>The undergraduate teaching quality in classes, labs, seminars, and research works. That’s why I did not use “faculty quality” in the thread title.</p>
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<p>Very intesting comment/observation. Do you know which colleges have this phenomenon as a reputation?</p>
<p>Re finding the best student and showering them with attention:
This is observable at every single college and university in the country. Good students who develop good relationships with their professors get the most attention. Period.</p>
<p>To date I have studied at:</p>
<p>One recognizable-on-CC-highly-selective-LAC
One no-name LAC
One big state public U
One recognizable-on-CC-highly-selective-U
One no-name private U
Two public community colleges (two different states)</p>
<p>I have encountered excellent teachers, and lousy teachers at every single one of these places. I have encountered excellent students and total dingbats at every single one of these places. I know people who have graduated from each of these places who have gone on to be financially successful/pillars of their communities/you-name-it after studying at each of these places. I also have met any number of financial/emotional/fill-in-blank-here failures from each of these places. And, at every single place, the students who worked hard in class, asked thoughtful questions, and made an effort to develop good communication with their faculty were rewarded.</p>
<p>Your mileage may vary.</p>
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<p>PaperChaserPop, this is a general observation that is relevant for many public flagship universities. (I realize not all states have an easily identifiable flagship campus, so in that case, I believe the observation holds true for the ‘major’ public campuses in many states.)</p>
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<p>This is so much easier to talk about than to actually assess. I also believe the quality of undergraduate instruction is uneven just about everywhere.</p>
<p>My personal opinion, and only that: if your kid is pretty sure what her/his interests are (long-standing interest, has chosen out-of-class activities related to those interests, has done research into the sort of jobs that are possible in the future, etc.) then go more with strength of faculty, research funds AND proven opportunity for undergraduate research, assuming that the rest of the student body is not far below your own student. After freshman year, kids sort pretty quickly, and the ‘academic peer’ issue is not as significant. (But not insignificant, either.)</p>
<p>I was being a little deliberately obtuse in my answer above, too, as I am not much of a believer in “teaching quality”, at least for good students at the university level. If a scholar has something valuable to say, I think that is worth more to good students than someone who does not have something valuable to say but is good at explaining basic topics. But that is not a widely held opinion. Lots of people believe in the Good Teacher, and there’s more to back that up than the idea of the Good Fairy.</p>
<p>One thing worth noting is that some institutions take teaching evaluations into account in making tenure and compensation decisions, and some don’t. I suspect the former institutions are going to have more uniformly good teachers. I was part of a discussion some months ago between a senior faculty member at a famous LAC and some alumni in their 40s. The former students were asking about a particular junior faculty member from their era whom they had liked. The professor said that this teacher – whom he had recruited – was probably the best scholar his department had seen in his time there, but that the junior faculty member’s teaching evaluations had been mixed, so that he had not been given tenure. That’s putting your money where your mouth is. I would leave it to others to decide whether you want your children at that college or not.</p>
<p>As for the phenomenon of good students getting lots of attention: yes, it happens everywhere, but especially at places with a wide range of student abilities, i.e., most large universities at every level.</p>
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<p>I believe there are a lot of students whose effort on academic work is directly proportional to the academic performance/competitiveness of their peers. I think “academic peer” issue is more on the significant side even after freshman year. How often have we heard of a smart but slacker kid who will get B+ no matter what school he/she is in. A B+ in MIT on a graded curve most likely reflect a higher level of understanding than a B+ from UMass.</p>
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<p>A great teacher makes a world of difference to students, not only to their understanding of the subject, but to their level of passion in the subject. How many times have we heard of a kid telling folks that he/she decided to major in something after taking a class with a teacher/professor?</p>
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<p>Sure, we are all familiar with that story. How many times have we actually seen it at the college level? What percentage of kids change their interests based on a teacher? And what percentage of that is based on teaching quality vs. scholarship quality?</p>
<p>I think those percentages are small and smaller.</p>
<p>Numerous studies have indicated that the preparation for faculty is the same at all levels of institutions.</p>
<p>We go through the same rigorous review: qualifying exams, orals, thesis.</p>
<p>One would think elite institutions have a more elite faculty, i.e. Ivies, but we have Yale, Brown and Columbia graduates on our faculty at community college, and they are not the brightest bulbs in our department by any means.</p>
<p>In addition, the research demands of an elite university may have faculty spending less time in the classroom so they may be less adept at actually teaching.</p>
<p>They may not be.</p>
<p>I do, however, think student quality varies greatly and that may determine how rigorous a course is.</p>
<p>However, my mythology course at CC was more rigorous than a comparable course S took at Williams in every way but grading. And he received an A+ at Stony Brook (summer course) doing work that he said would probably earn a B- at Williams. (Yes, I guess he was doing summer slacking.)</p>
<p>The students at Williams are definitely more knowledgeable and well read than those I have taught at Stony Brook or CC, but S says the discussions are not always as lively because kids play it safe.</p>
<p>However, the creativity and commitment of the Williams students vastly outstripped the CC or Stony Brook kids in most cases.</p>
<p>For instance, in studying a Greek play the kids got together to read all the parts. The was totally voluntary and not something I can imagine happening at either of the other institutions.</p>
<p>So learning at elite institutions is more student driven than at non-elite institutions IMO. Therefore, the quality of the faculty plays a smaller role than it does at a CC when the student will be learning almost entirely from the prof.</p>
<p>I hope this makes sense. I know it is highly anecdotal and somewhat convoluted.</p>
<p>Teaching quality … hmmm. Can a Professor be a fabulous teacher when teaching in one language, and terrible when teaching in another? Can a Professor be expected to connect equally with visual learners and aural learners? Poets and particle physicists? Freshmen and Ph.D students? The best mathematics teacher I had (IMHO obviously) was fabulous at abstracting sets of mathematical problems. Literalists in my class detested him for this. Some students value a teacher who can reach them … whatever level they’re at. Others value a teacher who sets a high bar and helps students reach that bar.</p>
<p>My H is a math professor at USC and we have a '10er so we’ve have this very discussion. Boiling it down to it’s essence, it’s this. Assuming a reasonable range for teaching quality across all full-time faculty members, the professors are going to teach to the average intellectual level of the class as they see it (maintaining a floor for quality control, of course.) So, if the intellectual level overall is higher, they will move along faster, introduce more concepts than are generally required for the class.</p>
<p>This seems common sense to me, but with the swirl of college rankings (and sometimes ranking of things that are quite hard to measure), this seems to get lost in the shuffle.</p>
<p>It’s why, financial considerations being equal, a student may choose Stanford over Berkeley (I picked the same region to control for locational considerations.) True, both schools get some top notched students. On average, Stanford gets more of them. The faculty will see more of them, and teach to that level. For colleges with honors programs, this effect can be controlled somewhat.</p>
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<p>My point was this: at schools with less than great retention rates, or a great diversity of majors available, students sort very quickly according to talent, drive and interests. Many “sort” by departing. Others choose majors that academically driven students tend to avoid.</p>
<p>So, I don’t disagree that peer effects are an important factor for many students, and for the level at which a professor teaches. However, the statistics for entering students is often not a reliable indicator of peer talent once one gets past freshman general education requirements. And as someone mentioned above, a decent honors program can alleviate negative freshman effects.</p>
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<p>It is very interesting and counter-intuitive (to me at least) that the more read, more creative and more committed kids actually made class discussion duller. I actually thought it should be just the opposite. Any rationale on the “play it safe” mindset? I really value lively discussions because I think lively discussions are important to a better education.</p>
<p>It shouldn’t be that surprising that Williams students tend to “play it safe”. Williams’ admissions standards favor those with high cumulative GPAs, high SAT scores, and participation in team sports. All of those essentially reflect “playing it safe” strategies. Williams students may feel that they have reaped rewards for playing it safe, and they are not about to abandon the secret to their success.</p>
<p>Regarding Williams & “play it safe” in classroom discussion. Rather than playing it safe, it could reflect being nice, which might tend to happen on small campuses. </p>
<p>My point is that rather than come across as challenging or argumentative, discussions might be more collegial. It’s a small community so I could see not wanting to alienate others.</p>
<p>I would think about the student peer group more than the reported teaching- every school has good and bad teaching. The students one attends classes with and lives with are much more influential than the teaching, which also reflects the students as others have noted. It would be a lonely experience to not have people to discuss your ideas with late at night. Some of the best learning comes from outside the classroom.</p>
<p>I would look at the 25-50 %ile numbers on the rankings, allowing for lower scores at public U’s as they need to reach all of their qualified residents and use this as one indicator of the student peer group. The HS gpa is so much harder to evaluate as it tells you nothing about the rigor of the HS or courses taken, something only the admissions people need to dwell on. Use the numbers as general parameters- the B student may not thrive where the gpa is nearly 4.0 and the high test scorer may be disappointed with the caliber of students where the 75th %ile is only average.</p>
<p>BTW- I noticed that textbooks used at elite colleges are often written by faculty at many other schools- should one try for the school where the textbook authors are?</p>
<p>At elite colleges, textbooks are rarely used. Except for math, one kid’s pre-med courses, and some introductory language courses, my kids haven’t had to buy any textbooks. Who wrote those isn’t very interesting.</p>
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<p>Make sense to me too. But, this still says very little about the teaching ability. One can have the desire to teach at a high level and still lack the skill to delivery the result. When a college is famous for one of its discipline/department, I assume that it was able to both attact high caliber scholar and quality lecturers. In such cases, the teaching quality will not be even “across all full-time faculty members”; the high teaching quality may be concentrated on that one particular discipline. This is true even among the elite colleges. JHU’s biomedical engineering department is one example.</p>
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<p>What schools do you have in mind here? My S took some advanced undergraduate classes at Harvard. He had to buy textbooks for all his classes.</p>
<p>Well, my kids’ experience is at the University of Chicago. My own was at Yale, and I didn’t have many courses with textbooks, either – maybe 4 or 5 total. Books, sure, but by “textbooks” I understand those fat things that try to present a whole field in a logical way, chapter by chapter, with question sets, etc. They were the meat and potatoes of high school and law school, but I barely saw them in college, and I know my kids have barely seen them because I buy the books.</p>