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<p>Well, actually, the truth is that the students do teach themselves. After all, you typically spend maybe 15-20 hours per week receiving classroom instruction. You spend far more than that per week interacting with other students, and that is where much, arguably most, of the true learning of any college experience actually takes place. </p>
<p>As a case in point, I learned virtually nothing about thermodynamics in my actual course, for the course was poorly taught (see below). Where I actually learned thermo was in late-night rap sessions with other students where we debated the finer points of thermodynamics and its relationship to cosmology (i.e. the entropic end state “heat death” of the Universe), its connection to the evolution of life and non-equilibrium thermodynamics, and the philosophical implications of entropy and its connection to time (i.e. the so-called “Arrow of Time”). That’s where you really learn thermo.</p>
<p>On the other hand, to this day, I still do not understand what the heck the thermodynamic Maxwell Relations (MR’s)actually mean in any real-world sense, and that is what the course purportedly tried to teach. Nor have I ever once found the MR’s to actually be useful in any practical sense. Sure, I can do the MR math, but what the heck does it actually mean? Who knows? Nobody knows! At least, nobody who took the class with me knew. </p>
<p>[Maxwell</a> relations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell_relations]Maxwell”>Maxwell relations - Wikipedia) </p>
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<p>Well, we have to be careful about what we mean by ‘better faculty’, and the truth is, better faculty in a research university context almost always means a better researcher - meaning somebody who has more and higher-quality research publications and discoveries. But that has little correlation with whether they are actually good teachers. </p>
<p>This is particularly salient within the context of engineering, as, let’s be honest, the vast majority of engineering undergrads are not going to become researchers. They just want to learn how to work as regular engineers. They therefore just need somebody who can teach them practical knowledge in a clear and succinct manner. Instead, we ended up wasting time on obscure topics such as the Maxwell Relations, and, by the end of the class, never understanding what they really mean or why we learned them. Heck, to this day, I still don’t know what they really mean. </p>
<p>Let me proffer the following example. I remember being taught multivariable calculus and linear algebra in college, and wishing that I was alternately being taught by my old high school math teacher. Granted, he wasn’t a brilliant math researcher with published proofs in the highest math journals. But who cares? At least he knew how to teach math in a manner that was clear, engaging, and fun, something that my math professors did not know. Nor are undergrad linear algebra or multiv calculus groundbreaking material: the techniques we were being taught had been well established for at least a century, if not more. I am not interested in learning how to complete the latest proofs, as I’m never going to become a mathematician. All I wanted to know - and all that the other engineers wanted to know - is how to use the basic math tools of matrices, partial derivatives, and so forth in a clear and concise manner. But that is precisely what we did not receive. </p>
<p>Nor am I the only example. My brother went to Caltech - a school infamous for top researchers who also happen to be terrible teachers - Princeton Review singled out Caltech as having the #1 Worst Teachers of any school in the nation. My brother said that while he enjoyed his experience overall, he concurred that the teaching quality was rather poor, to the point that he would usually never go to lecture at all, for he discovered that he learned more just by sitting in his room reading the book. The poor teaching would mean that attending lecture would often times actually make you moreconfused. Nor was he the only one - it’s become something of a cultural norm at Caltech to not go to class, because of the poor teaching. You interact with professors in order to join research projects, but not for the teaching. </p>
<p>The optimal solution for USNews or any other ranking would be to rank faculty by their teaching quality. Unfortunately, this is probably a white whale, so the next best thing is to at least make sure that you go to a school with a high quality student body, for at least you can learn from them, and like I said, that is where the real learning actually occurs.</p>
<p>But I think even more important, the other students provide the student culture, which may be even more important than the direct learning you may obtain from those students. Let’s face it, students, just like human beings generally, tend to follow the social cues they see around them. When you’re surrounded by hard-working and intellectual peers, you tend to want to become hard-working and intellectual yourself. But when you’re surrounded by lazy students who are more interested in partying and drinking rather than actually studying, you tend to want to do the same. Again, remember, you’re only going to be in class for 15-20 hours a week, but you’re actually going to be living amongst the other students, and so your motivation level will be largely dictated by the student culture. </p>
<p>Now, granted, you can choose to defy student culture. You can choose to be hard-working even when the surrounding students aren’t. But that’s a hard choice to make. It’s practically impossible to quit smoking when all of your friends continue to smoke - and hence, many groups of smokers have successfully quit by all quitting together, because of the difficulty of quitting individually. Social forces are hard to fight, such that you are better off placing yourself in an environment where you don’t have to fight them.</p>