<p>Below is an excerpt from Wikipedia about Caltech.
Anybody has any thought on it? I am particularly concerned about the second part. </p>
<p>Karen</p>
<p>Caltech has the lowest four-year graduation rate among the leading US universities -- about 80% [3]. This is despite the fact that entering students have consistently higher average test scores (on the SAT 1 and 2) than any other university or college, as indicated by the major college rankings. Reasons for this include the fact that Caltech has less grade inflation and a smaller percentage of students who graduate with honors than academically comparable colleges. Additionally, its core curriculum is required for all majors.</p>
<p>Caltech professors are sometimes criticized for poor teaching due to the strong research emphasis of the institute. Nevertheless, Caltech students do encounter skilled teachers. The required courses are often taught by distinguished researchers who are not always the best teachers, and who focus instead on introducing students to the forefront of modern research. However, the situation has improved greatly over the last few decades; over 85% of entering students graduate in six years or less, compared to fewer than a third 40 years ago.</p>
<p>Don't come here if you want professors who dedicate most of their time to figuring out how to teach you better. That is what they do at small, non-research institutions, where the professors are professional teachers. This is not a uniquely Caltech phenomenon. At any top research school -- Caltech, MIT, Princeton, Harvard, you name it -- most professors are focused primarily on their research and are pretty good at teaching but don't dedicate their lives to it.</p>
<p>I think exactly the same is true here. There are a lot of phenomenal teachers, some mediocre ones. It is easy to learn who is who and avoid the few who are not fun to take classes from. I have been positively surprised more often than negatively.</p>
<p>If focus primarily on teaching is a priority, go to a small college that focuses on teaching alone. If you go to a research university, the price for getting involved at the forefront of various disciplines is that profs have to divide their focus between research and teaching.</p>
<p>I know the opposite is true at the University of Chicago mathematics department. Being able to teach is pretty highly valued and they definitely adopt the VIGRE approach.</p>
<p>Edit: I don't know how relevant that is to anyone reading this, but I thought I'd throw it in there.</p>
<p>I want to add (since Ben didn't) that Ben wrote a really long and good summary of his experiences (which I think are relatively typical) with Caltech teaching. If you click on his name, it'll give you a list of his posts. I think it was on the order of a month ago.</p>
<p>I don't know of a specific person who was denied tenured because of poor teaching. Although I can say that (most of) the tenured professors take their teaching duties pretty seriously. </p>
<p>There is definitely an emphasis on teaching, even at the undergraduate level. Even the summer REU program requires some sort of teaching.</p>
<p>This would certainly make Chicago a pretty extreme exception to the rule. At the other top math departments, good teaching is kind of a liability because it demonstrates that you're not devoting as much time as you could be to your research. (When we talk in person I can give you a depressing example.)</p>
<p>if you choose to attend any good research university, it's a given that the professors there will be more concerned with research (i mean what do you expect?) -- one prof at my place (which is supposed to be big on research and everything related) told me that if one receives very positive student evaluations for the class he or she taught, that is actually looked down upon by prof's superiors as it is thought that this prof spent too much effort on teaching and therefore less on research (isn't that horrible?) -- so as a prof, you don't want to receive bad evaluations, but rather mediocre ones</p>
<p>sadly, university rankings are based on a lot of things other than how well the students are taught -- colleges may boast having this or that many 'hotshot' professors, that few students in lectures, receiving a class with whatever stellar GPA or SAT scores -- but that says nothing about what they actually with these students after they get in</p>
<p>i think that lower graduation rates are great -- at my place i feel like they are not kicking out enough people -- as a result, these people get to graduate from same university with all the students who did great or decent and then apply to same jobs and grad schools -- this devalues your own bachelor's degree -- as employers and grad schools get a general feeling that the graduates from such school are no top notch on average -- to the contrary, graduates from Caltech have an easier time finding jobs and getting to grad school</p>
<p>besides, 80% may sound low for colleges in united states, but it would be considered a high graduation rate for some top colleges in other countries</p>
<p>BlueElmo -- I, and most others I know here, tend to think Wikipedia is a great resource as long as you understand the limitations of it's accuracy. It's a great place to find a quick overview of a topic you don't need to go into in depth, and it also can be a good starting point (keyword: starting) for a topic you need to go more in depth on. Of course, it's always seemed to me that the accuracy of an article tends to be inversely proportional to how scientific, technical, or math-dependant the topic is.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
I know the opposite is true at the University of Chicago mathematics department. Being able to teach is pretty highly valued and they definitely adopt the VIGRE approach.</p>
<p>Edit: I don't know how relevant that is to anyone reading this, but I thought I'd throw it in there.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>A close friend of my father's was a former tenured math professor at the University of Chicago. </p>
<p>He told me that the reason he liked the job was that he only had to work 8 hours a week, and not very hard at that. He saw work as a slightly annoying diversion, a chore that had to be done.</p>
<p>The guy was a brilliant, very talented mathematician, and was more than happy to work with intelligent, interested students. </p>
<p>At the University of Chicago, in almost every math class there will be one or two days each quarter where the TA will lecture in place of the professor. Does this happen at Caltech?</p>
<p>It's happened maybe two or three times in my three terms of core Math 1 here and the sub has always been either the head TA (who is very good) or another postdoc/grad student so there's really no problem with that.</p>