<p>PA is an opinion poll. Nothing more, nothing less. Why not have an opinion poll on which schools focus on undergrads. Right now having Tufts compare against Michigan or UCLA vs Rice is already ridiculous for High schoolers.</p>
<p>I believe good and band teaching is pretty much everywhere, but a large pool of high SAT scorers? Not really.
Although people b1tch about peer assesment like no other, do the PA’s really affect the USNews Ranking so much that schools aren’t ranked where they ought to be? Does anyone have any specifics?</p>
<p>^ Search Hawkette’s posts for your answer. </p>
<p>Public research universities are probably most enhanced by PA scores.</p>
<p>Only students and alums of second-tier privates (e.g. lower ivies, Duke, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, etc.) dismiss the PA.</p>
<p>Curiouslee where did you go? Hyps right?</p>
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<p>Worked out fine, but I decided I’d rather go into a field where I felt I could do a lot of good and get out of the lab a bit more where science knowledge is severely lacking and in high need. I just didn’t think that doing the Chem PhD thing and becoming a professor was the best use of my particular set of expertise, however, being someone intimately familiar with science as an education reformer would be very beneficial.</p>
<p>I don’t think I’ll see the classroom unless it’s at a college or university.</p>
<p>Good teaching is not dime a dozen and it’s also quite hard to “measure”-- it’s a huge issue right now education reform and research. I don’t think there is a great way to measure it yet, however, to dismiss this as a potentially useful metric if it were ideal is absurd. Of course a huge component of having the best faculty for undergraduate education is not that they are brilliant behind closed doors, but rather, that their brilliance is something they can transmit to their students. A medium level researcher who’s amongst the best teachers in the nation is more useful to an undergraduate than the best researcher in the nation who absolutely cannot teach.</p>
<p>Undergrads are not looking for institutions with “top faculty” so they can learn from books and sleep when the faculty members are teaching. The problem is that not only do we have a really poor metric for “top faculty”, but that metric has yet to tackle the question of teaching expertise which should receive far more attention as a component of what it means to be a top faculty.</p>
<p>^ IMO, being a good teacher is more of a personality trait…it requires patience, communication skills and ability to read people. These traits are hard to quantify and lots of people possess these skills. You can have good teaching skills but be far from a subject matter expert. </p>
<p>Universities aren’t looking to regurgitate discovered knowledge, their mission is to expand knowledge. </p>
<p>modest, I didn’t want a lab research job either.</p>
<p>
That’s completely untrue and perhaps the most limiting notion of a university mission I have ever read. Almost every major university in the United States has the expansion of knowledge as but a single part of their mission.</p>
<p>All of the evidence on teaching, btw, shows that having a strong background in the subject matter is one of the most important traits that good teachers have in common. I can completely understand why you think the way you do about teaching, but I do suggest reading a bit of the K-12 research on good teaching that’s been going on for the better part of 40 years which has taught us a lot about what we know about good teaching and what we don’t yet. While K-12 is still light years away from understanding the complex web of factors which lead to excellent teaching, it’s equally far ahead of higher education.</p>
<p>As for the lab research job thing, as an engineer I assume there are more options for you out there. A chem PhD does have quite a bit of options to not be in the lab, but they’re pretty tough to get, and more than that, I don’t think that I have the drive to be in lab 60hrs a week in order to get the doctorate in 4 or 5 years right now in my life. So I changed courses this summer and enrolled in a master’s program in something else. Never a bad thing to have a bachelor’s of science in a physical science and policy master’s.</p>
<p>But public research universities aren’t even ranked that high to begin with. Which is what I find sort of odd. Though I guess the argument could be advanced that they don’t even deserve to be ranked as high as they ought to but when it comes to (let’s not start this actually haha) Duke vs Berkeley, Duke is ranked higher in spite of a lower PA score. So I don’t know why the Duke proponents like Hawkette keep maligning PA even though the same ranking that uses PA manages to find Duke better than Berkeley.</p>
<p>ModestMelody, I have to strongly disagree with you on the good teaching. Good teaching is everywhere, and more often than not teachers are good. As UCB said it’s a personality trait that I’d be surprised that if measurable you’d find in statistically significantly different quantities at different schools. I’m not going to go all out on this thead over this, since it is a research topic way beyond the scope of this thread but I just wanted to point it out.</p>
<p>Morsmorde-- all you have to do is look out in the field of education to see that good teachers are not universal. There are definitely good teachers everywhere. There are adequate teachers at a lot of places. But are there pockets where exceptional teaching flourishes? And shouldn’t those pockets be celebrated for undergraduates? If there are no such pockets, then isn’t there something fundamentally wrong with our incentive structure since one of the main goals of universities, alongside the creation of knowledge, is the dissemination of that knowledge to future generations through teaching?</p>
<p>And here is the fundamental impasse between myself and many on here. I think it’s nonsense to set up a system by which the desired outcome-- students who have actually learned in their classes a great deal and are prepared to go forward learning with that knowledge-- is something which is assumed and cast aside in the interest of other, distantly related factors. If undergraduates exists on campus for reasons other than bringing in tuition money to pay faculty with, then it would seem a colleges should align themselves, and be judged by, the preparation of those students. Why then measure things which are only distantly connected, at best, and maligning indicators which are clearly closer to this purpose?</p>
<p>mordesmore:</p>
<p>the reason ppl like Hawkette constantly malign PA, etc, is because it somehow ticks them off than their school is not better than others in every field. There is a certain sense of dignity and pride that is hurt when these people see PA scores that don’t necessarily show their schools rising above schools like UCB, UMich, etc, which they often wrongly consider as below them.
It’s quite funny actually, but that’s just the way people’s prides and minds work. They aren’t willing to accept that their school won’t be the better in every field.</p>
<p>schools like brown and duke consistently rank a LOT higher than schools like Berkeley, Michigan, etc, but in the one field where Berkeley, etc excel, they gripe and claim it is unreasonable to use PA, etc.</p>
<p>What they fail to note is how often schools play with their own numbers like expenditures, acceptances, etc.</p>
<p>For example, UChicago stating that they twisted some expenditure numbers around in that one year that they jumped 6 spots to the top 10 from #15, etc.</p>
<p>Distortion is common in all facets of ranking, and if PA is to be discounted, then so should a lot of other factors which are often exxagerrated and toyed with.</p>
<p>
Bingo! Glad you’re applying critical thinking up there on the Farm… 
What do high PA schools have that low PA schools don’t? </p>
<p>Here’s a clue:
[National</a> Academy of Sciences:](<a href=“http://www.nasonline.org/site/Dir?sid=1011&view=basic&pg=srch]National”>http://www.nasonline.org/site/Dir?sid=1011&view=basic&pg=srch)</p>
<p>National Academy of Science Members on current faculty/PA score:
Stanford: 127 / 4.9
Harvard: 154 / 4.9
MIT: 114 / 4.9
Berkeley: 130 / 4.7</p>
<p>Duke: 19 / 4.4
Michigan: 23 / 4.4
Brown: 11 / 4.3
Notre Dame: 0 / 3.9 (?)</p>
<p>Ask an academic to rate his/her peers, they are going to be comparing themselves on prestigious and visible qualifications that are important to them…things that can “distinguish” a faculty.</p>
<p>
OK, but if there are definitely good teachers everywhere, how does this provide a distinction among universities? Do some universities have a greater number of better teachers? Hard to say/measure… A school can have a greater focus on teaching, but having a greater focus doesn’t necessarily mean the teaching is good…I can be focused and disciplined at something and still suck at it. :)</p>
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<p>Easy to say, hard to measure, but should be! That’s my point!</p>
<p>And yes, somewhere that is systematically and institutionally dedicated to strong teaching is far more likely to have resources for improvement and far more likely to have incentive structures in place which value teaching. As a result I bet what you see is not more exceptional teachers, but rather, far fewer ineffective teachers and that makes a HUGE difference. </p>
<p>Is this the perfect measure? No, of course, it remains a proxy that is only somewhat related. However, does this measure far closer to the desired goal than the others being presented? Yes, so let’s go with it while we develop even better, more sensitive measures that are more directed toward what we’re seeking to quantify or qualify.</p>
<p>
Modest, good luck to you in your quest for this measure. Sounds like an interesting thesis topic. :)</p>
<p>
I’m not going to lie, I’m definitely considering looking at UCLA or one of the other higher ed grad schools and doing that study as a thesis topic.</p>
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</p>
<p>[04.28.2009</a> - Six faculty members elected to NAS](<a href=“http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/04/28_NAS.shtml]04.28.2009”>04.28.2009 - Six faculty members elected to NAS)</p>
<p>Should your number not be 136? Or, did you, perhaps, make sure to account for the NAS members who have not seen the inside of a class in a couple of years?</p>
<p>Oh, btw, how did some other schools fare on this summary:</p>
<p>National Academy of Science Members on current faculty/PA score:
Stanford: 127 / 4.9
Harvard: 154 / 4.9
MIT: 114 / 4.9
Berkeley: 130 / 4.7</p>
<p>Princeton ?
Yale?
Dartmouth?</p>
<p>^ :D</p>
<p>I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist throwing a jab in here, xiggi…;)</p>
<p>FYI: Alex Filippenko is a fantastic teacher…you can find his lectures on Youtube.</p>
<p>A jab … perhaps! But, a puny one. In the meantime, I suggested you’d change your tally to 136. </p>
<p>Qui bene amat, bene castigat! ;)</p>
<p>
Princeton: 75 / 4.8
Yale: 60 / 4.8
Dartmouth: 2 / 4.3 or 4.2 … I don’t recall.</p>
<p>Dartmouth is overrated on this measure…but science isn’t really its thing. Princeton and Yale look in-line.</p>
<p>Nah, I’m not going to change it…just go by what NAS says to keep it fair. :)</p>