<p>I’m not claiming that they are negatively correlated because I don’t think that they are. However, I am strongly claiming that if a professor is considered a good researcher, that does not automatically qualify him/her as a good instructor. </p>
<p>Also, as noted above, the CP A+ grades were given to colleges that combine both elements. I don’t think anyone would accuse Dartmouth, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and U Chicago as being weak on research and yet their students give them the highest marks.</p>
<p>The CP survey suffer from the same problems as any such survey–it is unscientific. Thus any “results” are invalid and meaningless.
According to the actual scientific NSSE survey results at UW 94% of seniors rated their academic experience excellent or good which was well above the 90% for public research U’s.</p>
<p>Hawkette, there are many such surveys I suppose. You were always very keen on the teacher’s rating that was conducted by the USNWR back in the 90s. There was a time you were referring to it constantly. Now that the USNWR has released a new teacher’s rating that has Cal and Michigan ranked #11 in the nation for commitment to undergraduate instruction, you no longer seem to accept it. Now you have moved on to CP. Is there a real difference between a self-rating of A and a self rating of B+ accoridng to CP? Who knows. Is there a difference between a school that is ranked #1 and #31 in its commitment to undergraduate instruction? I suppose we will never know. But quality of faculty is not really up for debate. If I am sick, I want the best possible doctor to check me up, not the nicest doctor or the most pleasant doctor, but the doctor who is best qualified. That’s me. Some people do not care about getting the right analysis, they just want to feel comfortable with the doctor, regardless of how qualified the doctor is. </p>
<p>For the record, the vast majority of the best professors I had in college were also the most famous for their research and technical prowess. Guys like Sidney Fine (History), John Holland (Psych), William Adams (Econ), Hal Varian (Econ), Kenneth Lieberthal (Political Science), Brian Coppola (Chemistry) etc… I always hated Chemistry in High School but prof Coppola made me love the subject. I am sure some great professors aren’t great at teaching, but in general, great professors are great teachers.</p>
<p>Alex,
If you are now agreeing that there is great value in the teaching aspect of a professor’s job, then that is nice to hear. </p>
<p>You will recall that my support of the USNWR Teaching survey hinged on the belief that I found it superior to the PA survey, but that neither should be included in their annual rankings methodology. I still think that, but given the choice of USNWR’s PA results and its Teaching results, I’d choose the latter. </p>
<p>As for the latest USNWR teaching results, I’m still not sure what to make of them as 12 colleges dropped from the 1995 listing of national universities, but only 3 of them actually experienced a decline in their PA score over that period. So what changed?? I also wish that USNWR had chosen to list more than 17 national universities for their latest list (25 were in the original 1995 version). There were 27 LACs listed in the latest survey. </p>
<p>As for my current preference for CP, I find the College Pr.ow…le.r data far more extensive and transparent for Academics and other elements of college life, including scores of accompanying comments that give color about each school. I am impressed by how extensively they have visited college campuses and asked the students directly for their opinions. I feel that I can place more trust in that as the sample sizes are often as many as 300 students on a single campus. As I have suggested previously, if you have not read much of CP’s stuff, I urge you and others to do so. It’s not perfect, but IMO it’s usually pretty accurate. </p>
<p>IMO, the fact that there are multiple sources (CP, Sparknotes, NSSE, USNWR, students…review, rate…m.y. professor) on the matter of classroom teaching is a good thing as you can cross check the results. My instincts tell me that if ABC College shows up repeatedly as being recognized for good classroom work, then that is probably a good indication of what is going on at that school. </p>
<p>As for your analogy about doctors, you miss the key point. Proponents of good teaching are not claiming that nice and pleasant communicators beat researchers. No one is arguing that. In fact, just the opposite as students will repeatedly tell you that their favorite professors are the ones who:
knew their topic well
were smart, both intellectually and in their ability to deal with people
made the students work to achieve in their class
encouraged and inspired them along the way. </p>
<p>My argument is that, for undergraduate education, effective communicators AND brains AND a high bar for conducting/leading/inspiring a class beats pure research reputations every day of the week. And that is what undergraduate tuition dollars should be spent on. </p>
<p>For grad school, it’s a different story with a much greater emphasis on the research. PA scores probably have a better relationship to grad schools and what it means for the student experience.</p>
<p>Oh, please, hawkette. Now you’re quoting the CP survey? Give me a break! Based on, what, a dozen or two self-selected respondents per school? It is so easy for kids at small schools to manipulate those results by recruiting their friends and classmates to make their school look good. It’s embarrassing that any self-respecting adult would take that garbage seriously, much less advise gullible kids to do so.</p>
<p>Besides, who knows what those “grades” mean? Compare the following two excerpts from CP’s summaries of the comments on teaching at two major research universities:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Sound pretty similar, right? Would it surprise you to learn that one of these schools got an A+ and the other a B+? Can you guess which is which? Strange, no?</p>
<p>The first passage is CP’s take on MIT (A+), the second passage on Michigan (B+). So what explains the grade discrepancy? Well, it’s hard to tell; the methodology is completely non-transparent. MIT’s grade is accompanied by comments from exactly 11 students, of whom 3 gave the school 5 stars, 2 gave it 4 stars, and 6 gave it 3 stars, for a mean grade of 3.72 and a median of 3. Hmmm . . . not so great on a 5-point scale. Michigan’s grade is accompanied by comments from exactly 14 students, of whom 13 gave it 3 stars and 1 gave it two stars, for a mean grade of 2.93 (lower than MIT, to be sure) and a median grade of 3 (same as MIT). But are these 11 and 14 students, respectively, the total sample? Can’t tell. </p>
<p>And what do the stars mean, anyway? To my mind, comments like “The professors are awesome here. The Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs) get totally mixed reviews. You just have to be proactive and switch your class if you don’t like the teacher.” (3 stars, Michigan) or “Most of the teachers here are phenomenal—except for first-year calculus GSIs.” (3 stars, Michigan) are at least as favorable as “Most of the classes at MIT are taught by professors (with a few exceptions taught by graduate teaching assistants). Teachers run the gamut of being excellent professors who are engaging and accessible, to those who talk only of themselves.” (5 stars, MIT) or “Sometimes, you have foreign TAs that may be a bit hard to understand, but the professors, for the most part, are really good.” (4 stars, MIT). In short, the substantive comments are virtually indistinguishable.</p>
<p>Bottom line, the CP “grades” are completely bogus. Read the individual comments if you must, taking them with a grain of salt as representing a self-selecting (and therefore likely biased) and extremely small sample of opinion at the school. But given selection bias and small sample size, any “grades” based on these surveys should be totally disregarded.</p>
<p>For MIT, CP got responses from 210 students.</p>
<p>For U Michigan, CP got responses from 272 students.</p>
<p>As for the comments, glad that you read them. I encourage everyone to do the same as they can provide a lot of color into an institution and what it is like on a variety of metrics. </p>
<p>As for why U Michigan got a B grade, maybe it was comments like this:</p>
<p>Last year on CP Michigan received an A- grade for Academics. Michigan is a big school. There are going to be classes taught by GSI’s. Not all Michigan professors are great, and certainly not all professors at other schools are great. Regardless of that, Michigan still has some of the best programs across various fields of study. Gaining access to a good professor depends on how proactive you are. When registering for classes ask other students and faculty for their opinions on good professors for any class that you are going to take. That’s how I pick my professors and I haven’t had a bad professor yet.</p>
<p>As a parent of a freshman at the University of Miami, I would like to say that I am so very pleased and impressed with the school. My daughter is a top student and I was a little concerned that the academics would not be up to par, but that is very far from the case. She is thrilled and inspired by her professors and she does not impress easily. One of the main reasons she LOVES Miami is because of the small classes, which are taught by actual professors (who are extremely interested in and accessable to the students). </p>
<p>This stat from earlier is telling (Miami being the last UM):</p>
<p>CLASSROOM DATA </p>
<p>% of classes < 20 students , % of classes >50 students , Stu/Fac Ratio , % classes taught by TA
35.2% , 13.7% , 18/1 , 15% , UM
45.9% , 17.8% , 15/1 , 14% , UM
51.7% , 5.4% , 11/1 , 8% , UM</p>
<p>She has a guaranteed transfer to Cornell for next year and will not be using it as she is VERY happy with the school.</p>
<p>I think the slightly lower retention and graduation rate might be somewhat explained by some students falsely assuming Miami is a school to attend to party and suntan (they quickly find they are mistaken and transfer). That may have been true in the distant past, but today (thanks in large part to Donna Shalala) Miami is a top notch institution which is definitely on the rise. It is currently top 50 in USNWR and I just see it climbing higher on that list in the future.</p>
Question: When nationally ranked universities make faculty hiring and tenure decisions, which factor is more important:</p>
<p>(1) “a high bar for conducting/leading/inspiring a class”, or
(2) “pure research reputation” ?</p>
<p>Answer: (2) pure research reputation. The ideal prof has both (1) and (2), but (2) is more important. You can succeed at a national university with (2), even if you fall short at (1). But (1) won’t get you tenure at a major research university, if you fall short at (2).</p>
<p>
If this premise was generally accepted, then undergraduates would strongly prefer LACs, where factor (1) reigns, rather than universities. This is obviously not the case – total university enrollments far outweigh LAC enrollments. It therefore seems apparent that most undergraduates place a lower priority on “a high bar for conducting/leading/inspiring a class” than hawkette does.</p>
<p>"Professors at Michigan are okay. I mean, I had a couple of really good ones. Remember that the school is huge, so there are a whole of lot of professors. For the most part, there are not really bad ones, but there are some really difficult classes (Elie Wiesel, for example, teaches classes in the University Professors, theology, and Core). "</p>
<p>Where did they get these Michigan students? At BU? Prof Wiesel has been a professor at BU for 3 decades.</p>
<p>I think that explains enough about college *******.</p>
<p>corbett,
I’m not arguing that that is how hiring decisions are made. But I am arguing that faculty reputations don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand with a good classroom experience. A lot of folks expect this and are surprised and disappointed when they don’t get it. So it’s a bit of caveat emptor. </p>
<p>As for whether they should choose LACs or not, there is a lot that goes into the college decision, but based strictly on the classroom aspect of the experience, it’s hard to argue that, for the average undergraduate, the settings at the national universities are superior to those in the LACs. That is part of the beauty of the top privates. They are small enough to convey a lot of the benefits that one finds in LAC-land and yet large enough to offer the resources of a research university.</p>
<p>Yeah, right, hawkette, and MIT got an A+ for comments like:</p>
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</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
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</p>
<p>Some, of course, are more positive—as are many of the comments about professors at Michigan. As I said, the substantive comments about the quality of instruction at MIT and Michigan are virtually indistinguishable, and there seems to be almost no correlation between how favorable the comment is, and whether to the respondent it merits 3 stars or 5. The “grades” are garbage.</p>
<p>It’s not about the size. It’s about faculty commitment.</p>
<p>A prof has to ask the question: what do I need to do to have a successful career at my institution? </p>
<p>If the prof works at a national university, then the answer is probably “I have to do research that garners national attention and respect in my discipline.” So research becomes the highest priority. Teaching undergraduates becomes secondary (or even tertiary, after supervising grad students). Some university profs happen to be good teachers nonetheless, others are not. It will always be a mixed bag, because fundamentally university profs are not hired or tenured based on their teaching ability. </p>
<p>If the prof works at a LAC, then the answer is probably “I have to be a top performer in the classroom, and inspire undergraduates to learn.” So teaching becomes the highest priority. Research is secondary – and the research that does occur is likely to be judged by the extent to which it involves undergraduates, rather than by the national attention that it garners. LAC profs, by and large, are better teachers, because fundamentally LAC profs are hired and tenured based on their teaching ability. Lousy teachers don’t succeed at LACs.</p>
<p>National universities may have higher or lower standards for teaching, but I question whether there is any national university – even among the top privates – that makes undergraduate teaching the top priority for faculty hires or tenure. </p>
<p>Fundamentally, if the quality of undergraduate teaching is your top priority, then you should be looking at institutions that share the same priority. That means LACs, not universities.</p>
<p>I think this overstates the case. Read, e.g., the LAC student comments in the “academics” section in CP. You’ll find a lot of complaints about inconsistent and sometimes plain bad classroom teaching at even the top LACs. What LAC students love about their profs and their schools is not so much the quality of classroom instruction as the accessibility of the faculty and the intimacy of the setting.</p>
<p>Some examples:</p>
<p>Williams student: “Sometimes, I thought that the science professors I worked with were too interested in their own research careers to even notice students.”</p>
<p>Bowdoin student #1: “Definitely take classes based on which professors are highly recommended to you. I’ve taken a class because the title sounded fascinating but was then really disappointed in the professor, so the class was really a bust.”</p>
<p>Bowdoin student #2: “The quality of teachers can vary widely. There are many good professors, but you need to be smart and find out who they are. If you just pick any professor without researching first, you may well end up with some who are boring or disorganized.”</p>
<p>Amherst student #1: “You can’t really say that every professor here is a gifted orator. Some are, so you sit in their classes and time just flies. Some aren’t, and this makes their lectures a little tedious. And some have their good days and bad days. It’s just like any other school in this sense.”</p>
<p>Amherst student #2: “Some of the professors are good, and some aren’t. You’d expect only the best at a place like this, but that is hardly the case.”</p>
<p>Wellesley student #1: “The professors at Wellesley range from outstanding to terrible.”</p>
<p>Wellesley student #2: “I’ve had some really great teachers and a few really horrible ones.”</p>
<p>Carleton student #1: “If the classes are big, then the profs are boring. The bigger the class, the less personal the prof is. Also, no professor really wants to teach intro classes.”</p>
<p>Carleton student #2: “Professors are very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about working with students on the whole, but some can be boring. It’s hit or miss, like just about anywhere I think”</p>
<p>But you’ll find the LAC pages studded with comments like this:</p>
<p>Bowdoin student: “The professors I’ve had have been excellent. It’s really nice to be given the chance to get to know my professors intimately as an undergraduate. I’ve found it easy to meet with my professors, and most have set aside quite a bit of time to meet with students each week—outside of class.”</p>
<p>Amherst student: “I personally know dozens of professors here, and they will sit down with you at nearly any time. They are genuinely interested in what you have to say and will really try to get at exactly what you’re thinking. You can also chat with some of them about everyday stuff and joke around with some of them, but this depends more on their personality. Most professors I’ve met here really seek out and enjoy interaction with students.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, back at Harvard: “You’re lucky if you ever meet your professor in almost every class. Graduate students do the majority of the instruction. Some of them are good teachers, and some of them are not. Classes can be interesting, but those are often the hardest ones.”</p>
<p>In my personal experience both as a student and as an academic, students almost invariably give higher teaching marks to faculty whom they’ve gotten to know personally. What students at LACs perceive to be high quality teaching may in fact be partly the warm glow of a comfortable intimacy and personal connection with the teacher. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but I’d take all these subjective evaluations with a large grain of salt.</p>
Every student at every school is going to have complaints about some of their teachers.</p>
<p>But LAC students are sheltered. Wait until after they’ve graduated, have gone on to grad school at big-name research universities, and have first-hand views of university teaching. Then ask them to compare the undergraduate classroom experiences. If you are at a research university, you should be able to find LAC alumni among the graduate students who will give you a candid comparison if you buy them a beer. </p>
<p>This is not to say that LACs are superior in all respects. For example, many LAC alumni are impressed by the social or athletics scenes that university students take for granted. But odds are that they wouldn’t trade the classroom experience.</p>
<p>LOL. I can get them to talk to me without lubricating them with beer. I just ask them about their schools, which I’m genuinely interested in because my own D is very LAC-oriented, preferring that “sheltering.” LAC alums are almost universally loyal to their schools. But a lot of them tell me just the opposite of what you suggest—that they’re surprised at how good the teaching is at research universities, because they’d been taken in by the usual LAC propaganda that you can only get a good education at an LAC.</p>
<p>But back to the original topic of this thread: the University of Maryland does have a pretty good (top 25) engineering school, and top 25 departments in math, physics, astrophysics/astonomy, and computer science. It’s also got one of the top oceanography departments in the country. Also a top 25 econ department and a pretty decent business school. In the humanities and social sciences generally it’s not a world-beater, but certainly better than average. It’s a solid choice for Maryland residents. I think it gets overshadowed a bit by Georgetown and Johns Hopkins in the Baltimore-Washington metro and by UVA in its sister state to the south, but overall it’s a pretty good public university.</p>
<p>The University of Miami., on the other hand, may be a bit overrated, in part because there’s so little high-end competition in Florida. You’d have to say Miami is the top private in the state, and arguably a legitimate competitor with UF for best school in the state, at least from an undergrad perspective. But it’s a megastate with a paucity of high-end academic institutions. Consider this: Florida now has roughly the same population as New York. But New York has, inter alia, 2 Ivies, at least 4 other private universities ranked at or above U Miami’s level, and 7 or 8 LACs ranked in the top 50—not to mention dozens of elite colleges and universities in nearby states that are heavily populated with New York students. No wonder Miami can be so selective without putting top academic programs on the table—it’s pretty much the only game in town in a huge state starved for high-end educational opportunities. If U Miami were in the Northeast, it would be viewed as nothing special.</p>
<p>Funny how your data shows 6 YEAR GRAD rate–because U of MAryland’s 4 yr grad rate is VERY low-- when you say the pricetag is is great for students please factor in AT LEAST one additional year if not two!!! BUYER BEWARE!!!</p>
<p>The latest figures I’ve seen say the undergrads are 50% OOS, but whatever. You can’t infer from the fact that 50% (or 57%) of those attending are OOS that a similar percentage of the applicants are OOS. Like many colleges and universities, U Miami probably places something of a premium on geographic diversity. It could therefore reject extremely large numbers of Floridians while accepting OOS applicants at a significantly higher rate. Therefore a high rate of OOS attendance does not disprove or stand as evidence against my hypothesis.</p>
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</p>
<p>You’re absolutely right about this; sorry, I forgot about U Miami’s Marine Science Program, which is right up there with U Maryland’s as one of the best in the country, and nne of a very small number of academic programs at Miami to hold that distinction.</p>