<p>I think it's a huge mistake to equate an "unusually strong commitment to undergraduate teaching" with "teaching excellence." These are very different concepts. In the first place, university presidents, provosts, and deans of admission are in no position to independently assess the quality of classroom teaching at other schools; they have a difficult time even judging the quality of teaching at their own institution. Unlike scholarship which is entirely public and open to inspection by others in the business, teaching is something that goes on behind closed doors. So at best, you're going to get unreliable hearsay. PA at least measures something university presidents and provosts (but not deans of admission) are in the business of judging, the scholarly distinction of a faculty, something they are well qualified to assess.</p>
<p>In addition, if I'm asked as an academic which schools have "an unusually strong commitment to undergraduate teaching," my first thought is not which schools have the best teaching---something which again I'm in no position to judge. My first thought is that I'm being asked which schools place the greatest undergraduate teaching demands on their faculty, as opposed to the research, service, and (for research universities) graduate-level teaching components of the job. So, other things equal, if school A requires all faculty members to teach at least three undergraduate courses per academic year and school B requires only one undergraduate course per academic year and school C has no specific undergraduate teaching requirement but expects teaching to be at the graduate or undergraduate level as needed, then I'd say school A has the "strongest commitment to undergraduate teaching" of the three, even if it has the worst undergraduate teaching. An "unusually strong commitment to undergraduate teaching," then, could mean only that the institution requires its faculty to teach more undergraduate courses than is the median for comparable colleges or universities. </p>
<p>Now one might argue that other things equal, having the faculty devote more of their time to undergraduate teaching is beneficial to undergraduates. But that's something one ought to be able to measure objectively, without relying on hearsay filtered through presidents, provosts, and deans of admission: what's the total number of classroom hours taught by tenured and tenure-track faculty, divided by the number of students? That might be a fair measure of how much attention undergraduates are getting, and on that score probably many large research universities would rank well behind the top LACs and a few smaller undergraduate-oriented research universities. It's also probably a better measure than simple student-faculty ratio, which can be hugely misleading insofar as it doesn't necessarily translate into actual classroom hours, which will vary depending on the teaching load, leave policy, etc. Still, even conceding that other things equal more attention to undergraduates is a good thing for the undergraduates, we're still a long, long way from measuring "teaching excellence," which is how hawkette and others want to label the US News "undergraduate teaching commitment" survey. And I'd also note that a heavier teaching load is not an unalloyed positive from either the school's or the students' point of view, either; it can be a huge factor in the competition to recruit and retain top faculty, as well as in faculty satisfaction which may in turn be reflected positively or negatively in the enthusiasm and effort faculty put into their teaching. Sometimes greater teaching demands mean worse teaching on average because faculty are disgruntled, distracted, and under extreme time pressure to keep up with their research, scholarship and other job obligations. Sometimes teaching too many classes means you can't devote enough time to any one class to do it really well. Sometimes less is more.</p>