Ratemyprofessor and the other social media tools have changed the “terrible teacher” phenomenon dramatically.
Not every bad teacher has become a fantastic teacher overnight. But colleges see which courses and sections are always over-subscribed and which end up getting moved to a smaller room. And they are heavily related to the online comments, the end of semester student reviews, etc. No matter how arcane the subject, a highly rated teacher with rave reviews is going to be teaching to a crowd- unless it’s a specifically capped seminar. And Dean’s and the Provost know this.
Back in our day it was word of mouth- “don’t take this course, take that, the professor is boring”. Now it’s public.
Perusing through the Top 10 in the various areas of study, you see a lot of Carleton, Swat, Vassar, Williams, Wesleyan, Wellesley and others, but Amherst less frequently than one would expect. Of course, this list covers 2016 through 2020, so there’s that limitation. And they do show up in the Top 10 in a few areas, just not as consistently as others. Or maybe I’m missing it. It was a quick drive-by.
In any event, some of HSLACs have a bigger rep than others for being relatively more pre-professional, but Amherst isn’t one of them from my perspective. That’s why I was mildly surprised. Hamilton is another one that I thought would show up in the T10 more consistently. But again, this is over a limited period of time.
Relative to all school categories, yes, I’m not surprised they’re in the T20 on a per capita basis. It wasn’t meant as a dig.
Comparing Undergrad at a Big public to Grad at a rich private is no different than comparing LAC’s vs. big R1s’: apples and oranges.
If the author would have remained at Berkeley for his PhD, he likely would have written something similar – undergrad is “harder”, particularly lower division classes – with the exception of the parking ticket.
You know, some 17 and 18 year olds pick a college and CHANGE during the college years. They may go in thinking they’re going to go to law school or get an MBA or get a job on Broadway and something changes - them, the economy, cost of grad school.
My daughter would have done very well at an LAC but the finances were there so off to a flagship she went. She changed her major 3 times and ‘found’ her department. After graduation she went off with her boyfriend to another state, he decided to join the army, and then Covid hit, her substitute teaching gig ended and she was somewhere (Indiana) she didn’t want to be. What was she to do? Why go to grad school of course. Going into college she never thought she’d be getting a masters in history but that’s where the world spun for her. The requirement to take the GRE was waived (she is horrible in math), she knew the professors (went to the same flagship as her undergrad), the position is fully funded, the boyfriend is off to different army bases and she was not going to follow him from podunk GA to podunk MO to KY… Grad school it is!
I doubt she’ll go for the PhD, but who knows?
So I think some of the PhD stats from the LACs are that LACs attract the students who really love school and want to keep learning, some may have no real ‘job’ skills and another degree will help them (not saying LAC degrees are useless, but they may not have as direct a career path as say engineering or nursing), some knew all along that they’d get a degree in English or bio and need a higher degree.
My first thought on reading the high number of higher degrees coming out of Hope or Corinthian was that many could be in Divinity. Those schools are religious and many grads want to continue with careers in counseling or ministry, which may require an advanced degree to even get an entry level job. They may even be sponsored for their advanced degrees by the religious organizations.
I believe he is comparing undergrad at Berkeley with undergrad at Stanford (while he was sharing office with a TA?) I thought. Whether Berkeley and Stanford are peer for EECS undergrad can be a personal view. Creating an environment where teachers are afraid to give bad grades (according to the author) is that better than having atrocious professors? It is a personal viewpoint.
I thought the original purpose of this thread was to discuss non-elite undergrad schools “punching above their weight” in some area. Yet it seems to have turned into a focus on elite R1’s vs elite LAC’s, a debate that’s been had a thousand times on CC.
As for Hope College, I don’t know the actual breakdown but my guess is that the majority of the PhD outcomes are STEM. Not that many people who go into ministerial careers get a PhD. There is a “Studies in Ministry Minor” that prepares one for entry level positions in church organizations. Center for Ministry Studies | Hope College. And there is a Religion major with 4 tracks, one of which is Biblical Studies and is the recommended major for those who want to go to seminary. But most of those students will get an M.Div. or at most a D.Min. (Doctor of Ministry). Degree Programs | Religion Department
Absolutely. If we can extrapolate from even a fraction of the number of kids who go to college thinking med school, this is probably more often the rule than the exception.
So let’s move off that topic. If a user feels the conversation is worthwhile (although as noted, there have already been 1000 threads on the topic) they can start a new thread.
And now, I won’t move those posts into a new thread, but further posts on that topic here are subject to deletion without comment.
Now that the thread is back to talking about College institutions that punch well above their weight class in regards to produce PhDs , I would just like to mention a particular school’s program specifically tailored to producing PhDs in STEM fields for underrepresented minorities. The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) has a program (Meyerhoff Scholars Program) that started as a program to provide financial assistance, mentoring, advising, and research experience to African American male undergraduate students committed to obtaining Ph.D. degrees in math, science, and engineering. This Program from a non-flagship state school has become a powerhouse in producing minority STEM PhDs and MD/PhDs (#1 in producing African-American MD/PhDs over the last 20 years). I have gotten a good look at the program with 2 Meyerhoff alum siblings going on to get PhDs in a STEM field and seeing the unbelievable success of their cohort. Here are some some of the numbers from their webpage
Meyerhoff by the Numbers
Since 1993, the program has graduated over 1400 students. As of December 2022, the program has achieved the following results:
Alumni from the program have earned 403 Ph.D.s, which includes 71 M.D./Ph.D.s, 1 DDS/Ph.D., and 1 D.V.M./Ph.D. Our graduates have also earned over 155 M.D. or D.O. degrees, as well as over 320 master’s degrees, primarily in engineering, and computer science and related areas. Meyerhoff graduates have received these degrees from such institutions as Harvard, Stanford, Duke, M.I.T., Berkeley, University of Michigan, Yale, Georgia Tech, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, Rice, University of Pittsburgh, NYU, and the University of Maryland.
71 alumni currently hold faculty appointments at universities like Duke University, University of Michigan, Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Over 300 alumni are currently enrolled in graduate and professional degree programs.
An additional 245 students are currently enrolled in the program for the 2022-2023 academic year, of whom 69% are from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups and 31% are from non-underrepresented racial and ethnic groups.
The program is having a dramatically positive impact on the number of minority students succeeding in STEM fields; students were 5.3 times more likely to have graduated from or be currently attending a STEM Ph.D. or M.D./Ph.D. program than those students who were invited to join the program but declined and attended another university.
It’s great that they’ve obviously had some research studying the results of their effectiveness. I know that there is another oft-quoted study around here where it indicates that students who are accepted to Big Name schools but choose to go elsewhere tend to be as successful as they would have been otherwise (apart from students from low income families). But that 5.3 time as likely number seems to show a definite impact on the students. And the grad schools they’re attending and a number of the institutions where they’re teaching definitely seem without reproach. Thanks so much for putting this on our radar!
Yeah, this could be a function of not just the intellectual curiosity of the student (self-selection, really), but of the effectiveness of the career services of the school – getting them great jobs coming out of undergrad.
The fly in the ointment of the “great career services” argument is a school like Princeton – of course they have a great career center, yet they still have a high proportion of PhD choosers. So it isn’t always or simply that. For at least some PhDs – maybe most (unknowable) – the motive is intellectual curiosity, appetite, and stamina.
I think that you are are thinking of masters degrees, not doctoral degrees.
As I have written before, a PhD is not three or four more years of classes that somebody has to pass. A PhD is a research degree.
For a PhD, a candidate is required to produce something which is not only original, but is considered as adding something substantive to the field. It is not simple, it’s not easy, and it’s a huge amount of work.
It’s tens of thousands of hours of research, which includes thousands upon thousands of hours of data collection, thousands of hours of analysis, and thousands of hours of writing and rewriting. It requires the ability to conceive the idea, to figure out how to collect data, figure out the analysis methods, and then to understand the result. Finally, it requires the ability to put these together in a way that other will be able to understand.
Moreover, there is not single reputable PhD program which will accept a student who has not already demonstrated an affinity for research. No such program will accept a student who has not actually engaged in research activity, no matter what their undergrad GPA happens to be.
Students do not pay to attend a PhD program, the program pays them. Advising is time consuming as well. An applicant has to be good enough that the program would be willing to put the time, effort, and money into helping the applicant get their PhD.
Perhaps there are some students who apply to PhD programs because they cannot find a job, and perhaps some re even accepted to a PhD program. However, these will almost never actually complete a PhD, and so will not be part of the count of “number of produced doctorates” which is the topic of the thread.
I’m pretty sure that a PhD in Criminal Justice from SHSU will do a lot in helping somebody get a job which requires a PhD in Criminal Justice, especially if that job is in Texas. So it definitely improves their marketability for jobs that require a PhD in Forensic Science, or for which such a degree is preferred.
The market for people with PhDs, like the process by which a person earns their PhD, is not really comparable to any other type of job-training or job market. So one cannot simply extrapolate from the training and the job markets for other careers, including that of MDs.
