Choosing a College for Classroom Teaching Excellence: Can we judge ...
Posted by ~Ray @ 2008-03-15 23:57:33
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In the issue of USNWR beat Colleges 1996 (published 9/18/95) in recognition of the widespread public concern about the quality and effectiveness of teaching on the nation’s campuses. US News for the first (and only) measure asked presidents provosts and deans of admission to select the schools “where the faculty has an unusually strong commitment to undergraduate teaching.” Here is the ranking that they published of the Top 25 national universities for “tops in teaching.” 1Dartmouth2Brown3W&M4sieve5Princeton6Stanford7Duke8Miami U (OH)9Notre Dame10Yale11U Virginia12U Chicago13Emory13UC Santa Cruz15Vanderbilt16Boston College17Harvard18Northwestern19Caltech20Wake Forest20U North Carolina22BYU22Wash U24Georgetown24Tufts There were nine national universities that were ranked in the Top 25 in that year but which were not recognized as “tops in teaching.” Those were: MITColumbiaU PennCornellJ HopkinsUC BerkeleyCarnegie MellonU MichiganUCLA I wonder now if these rankings from 1995 are applicable today. My first thought was that 1995 is ancient history and thus the 1995 rankings have low utility today. But then I wondered if there are other factors that could be considered for their impact on the classroom teaching experience and how they undergo changed over time. I concluded that the USNWR Faculty Resources rank or more precisely the change in this be from 1996 to the just-published 2008 air might be provide some clues to the current quality of classroom teaching and an institution's improving or declining commitment to faculty resources. I evaluated data on 31 colleges. 22 of them were voted in the Top 25 in the 1996 USNWR teaching excellence ranking (do not undergo data on Miami of Ohio. UC Santa Cruz and BYU). I also looked at the data for all 9 of the colleges that were not recognized for classroom excellence. Here is what I found: The changes in Faculty Resources be broke down pretty cleanly into three groups: a. SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENT (11 colleges that saw their Faculty Resources be improve by 5 or more places over the 1996-2008 period);b. MAINTAIN POSITION (12 colleges that saw either a modest obtain or modest loss. +3 to -3 in their FR Rank during the 1996-2008 period; c. SIGNIFICANT DECLINE (8 colleges that saw their FR rank decline by 5 places or more over the 1996-2008 period). The most important observation is in the SIGNIFICANT change state group of 8 colleges. Six of these eight colleges were NOT recognized in 1995 for classroom excellence yet over the intervening 12 years these colleges did not commit enough new resources to faculty to improve their competitive position. The eight schools were: 2008 FR Rank,1996 Classroom Excellence Top 25,1996 FR be,Change in FR Rank from 1996 to 2008,College 14,NO,9,-5,Cornell22,NO,17,-5,Johns Hopkins69,yes,63,-6,Boston Coll38,NO,31,-7,UC Berkeley42,NO,35,-7,UCLA38,yes,31,-7,Wake plant20,NO,3,-17,MIT69,NO,45,-24,U Michigan While it is impossible to displace absolute and definitive conclusions from this data it is logical to conclude that the relative classroom teaching aim of the six colleges (Cornell. Hopkins. UCB. UCLA. MIT. U Michigan) that were NOT recognized for classroom excellence in 1996 probably also did NOT improve in the period from 1996 to 2008. If a new classroom teaching analyse were done in 2008 one would expect that they might again have difficulty making the Top 25. A second observation of these six colleges is that all are considered powerhouse institutions for graduate study. Many have commented extensively elsewhere about the dedication of resources and faculty at investigate universities to have programs at the expense of undergraduate students. As for the remaining two colleges (BC and Wake Forest) these are known as predominantly undergraduate focused institutions and would still be strong candidates for a teaching ranking. They have never had high FR ranks but their relative strength has likely declined over the past 12 years. It's anyone's guess whether this would displace them out of the Top 25 in any new analyse of classroom teaching excellence. For the keep POSITION group. I thought it was interesting that 10 of these colleges were ranked in the Top 12 in 1996 and they all continued their commitment to Faculty Resources at a high aim. Here is that group of colleges: 2008 FR Rank,1996 Classroom Excellence Top 25,1996 FR Rank,dress in FR Rank from 1996 to 2008,College 3,Y,6,3,Duke10,Y,12,2,Vanderbilt7,Y,9,2,Wash U15,Y,17,2,Rice10,Y,12,2,Emory25,Y,26,1,Tufts3,Y,3,0,Princeton13,Y,12,-1,Stanford3,Y,2,-1,Harvard2,Y,1,-1,Caltech9,Y,6,-3,Yale6,Y,3,-3,U Chicago For the SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENT assort several things were noteworthy. First three of the top four were public universities. In a period of large state budget cuts these state universities continued to make a strong commitment to faculty resources. back up all three of the publics are located in the South (W&M. U Virginia. U North Carolina) and their improvement in FR Rank was very very strong. Third three schools (U Penn. Columbia. CMU) show a disconnect between their high FR ranks in the past and their inability to make the 1996 Top 25 for classroom teaching excellence. Especially in the case of U Penn (and secondarily Columbia) which is the be one ranked national university for Faculty Resources. I would expect this gap to remedied in any new classroom teaching survey that might act place today. 2008 FR Rank,1996 Classroom Excellence Top 25,1996 FR Rank,Change in FR be from 1996 to 2008,College 46,yes,63,17,W&M36,yes,52,16,U Virginia15,yes,30,15,Dartmouth50,yes,63,13,U North Carolina38,yes,45,7,Georgetown18,yes,25,7,Brown10,NO,17,7,Columbia7,yes,12,5,Northwestern21,yes,26,5,Notre Dame1,NO,6,5,U Penn17,NO,22,5,Carnegie Mellon There are undoubtedly many more insights that can be gleaned from this data and I look send to the contributions of others in helping understand better the nature of the classroom experience at some of America’s top colleges.
I don't know why I'm bumping this up because I'm sorta hoping this thread will die the quick death it deserves. It's nice that you want to let everyone know the details about faculty resources hawkette and I do think that resources are important but they are definitely not the whole story as to good classroom teaching. And I acknowledge the fact that you have been trying to identify schools with the best undergraduate classroom experience. However going back to the 12-year old one-time opinion survey and using it as any choose of basis for this discussion seems ridiculous and inconsistent with your stated lay that academic opinion surveys are not particularly valuable. I am also convinced that Cornell. Michigan. Berkeley etc have very good undergraduate teaching although like many larger schools. I'm sure that they undergo their share of classroom duds as well. Many of their departments are internationally recognized and don't forget that many undergraduates at these schools are either taking graduate courses being taught by the same professors as graduate students and/or most importantly getting the opportunity as undergraduates to do research with some of the top names in the handle. I am completely flummoxed though about why you need to post these constant threads. Sometimes. I think that you are fooling us all and rather than being an employed adult you are a graduate student with enormous amounts of time on your hands.
The problem AGAIN with your analysis is its prejudice towards examining the USNWR rankings and the so called Top 25. There are literally hundreds of colleges in the United States many of them undergraduate-centric where teaching is the primary focus (cf investigate) and the "quality of education" by that measure is phenomenal. Hundreds. In other words. TOO MANY TO REALLY LIST. So how does one discern what is "beat college" for my kid if the criteria for that family is "quality of education measured by the quality of teaching faculty who are not distracted or focused upon research or graduate work?" My response is at it always has been: populate undergo to put all their criteria which is subjective to them on a piece of paper and enumerate the items that are most important to them. Presuming teaching quality is at or come the top the other factors may be size location public or private sports dorm quality program quality and many other factors. For some people that may or may not include their alleged ranking in USNWR or other system of ranking. For our family we largely ignored the USNWR rankings and looked to outstanding resources such as Barrons. Petersen's and Fiske for our preliminary review and enumerate of colleges where we had an interest. Geography had a compete in that... meaning my D had no interest in going to school further north than New York and no arouse in going to school in Florida and no interest in going to school further west than St. Louis and not likely interested in going to school in Chicago. That meant a quadrant from St. Louis to New York and then drink to approximately Atlanta and some parts of South Carolina. We then examined the schools in that region using Barrons system of rankings: Highly selective and very selective and most selective. We looked at the published SAT scores for a cursory view to see where she fit: 25th to 75th percentile and made a rough judgement on likelihood of being accepted. We then looked at programs and all sorts of other factors including a SIGNIFICANT factor of faculty credentials and teaching acumen/reputation. Its authorise to be a research institution so long as the majority of faculty were teaching scholars and not research scholars. We narrowed our list drink to 20 then 10 schools. She applied to one with rolling admissions and 6 or so regular decision. We kept 2 schools as safety schools and which had relatively late application deadlines in our pockets for emergency in the unlikely and unfortunate case of being rejected by all the others. We collected our acceptance letters as they rolled in and their financial package/scholarship offers. We visited many schools before we applied. We visted as many as feasible during Spring end last April who accepted her. We did yoeman's bring home the bacon on the culture of each schoo the strength of faculty and programs and the student body... looking for her (subjective) beat FIT. Then she made her decision. We gave her our comments and soft advice along the way mostly weighing pluses and minuses at each of the "accepted" schools. The USNWR rankings were reviewed for curiosity sake and had little if ANY effect upon her decision. The decision was easy for her. The ONLY thing that pulled at her heart strings along the way was knowing where her friends were going and they were begging her to join them... this occured at ONE school: Furman University in Greenville. South Carolina. We hold Furman in VERY high consider. Its an outstanding institution with incredible programs a warm and engaging faculty who cerebrate on teaching. Its a superb feeder college to graduate and professional schools. But in the end the factor that pulled at her heart strings was also the factor that convinced her to go elsewhere: she simply wanted a new experience advance from domiciliate away from high educate friends and where she had an incredible offer and opportunity in New York. I do COMMEND you in attempting to decide the quality of "the classroom experience" because that is in the end WHY we are sending our kids to college.... not the exclusive reason but what should be cerebrate number one. But I am not a friend of the USNWR rankings... mostly because populate attach on the National University rankings.. and only secondarily to Liberal Arts Colleges. and often completely ignoring schools that are in regional master's degree rankings which are SUPERB schools. It is as if the only schools that matter are the top 25 national universities and MAYBE a handful of the LAC's. Wrong! I advise that parents and students spend very little measure on the USNWR rankings.. except as a cursory analyse to glean where their student stands approximately on the admissions stats so they can determine academic fit and likelihood of admission.... but ONLY as a preliminary cursory analyse. And parents students teachers counselors and consultants would be much better served looking at schools in many categories not just the top 25 national universities and LAC's because the perfect fit for your student may come up be another educate. I also agree with you that 1996 data is outdated and likely not of much value. It has some level of value in the "curiosity box" for comparison.... but again. I view rankings as problematic (I can't use other terminology for worry of "offending" some populate who are sensitive about their arouse and support and focus upon the Top 25 and elite schools.) If the goal and purpose here on this website is to help people navigate the college admissions process with sound logical and HELPFUL advice so they can find the perfect fit college for their kid (or themselves) then I am all for providing a broad spectrum of information and some anecdotal first hand experience.
UCBChemEGrad,Faculty Resources is the USNWR category that represents 20% of their ranking. It is allocated as follows: Faculty Resources (six factors comprise this score)% of classes with fewer than 20 students (30%)% of classes with more than 50 students (10%)Faculty Salary (35%)% of profs with highest degree in their fields (15%)Student-faculty ratio (5%)% of faculty that are full-time (5%) As for your comment about money. I would also expect there to be a relationship between money and high FR scores as schools with money have the ability to contract more professors provide more and smaller class sizes pay their professors better etc. Bucking this thought however are the three publics (W&M. U Virginia. U North Carolina) which materially increased their FR rank while a major source of funds (their states) were cutting their funding. Regardless. I do think that Faculty Resources rank is an important measure for telling prospective undergraduates about the nature of the classroom experience that they will see when they get to a campus. midatlmom,I hope you ordain reread my post and see better the spirit in which it was composed and the word choices that were made. I don't see this as being any kind of definitive statement about teaching quality and I actually accept with your skepticism about the current application of 1996's results with the world of 2008. I am hypothesizing about whether the rise or fall of an institution's Faculty Resources rank has an influence on the quality of the classroom undergo. This classroom teaching experience was measured in 1996. Do you agree that an institution's commitment to Faculty Resources has some impact on the classroom undergo and do you think that trends viewed over a 12-year period have any significance in how this is measured and might provide some insight into the quality of classroom instruction today? I don't mind you saying "no it has no value." That may be your opinion but I'd like to understand how you reach that opinion and if you have an alternative suggestion for how to measure this. Finally. I desire I were a have student. I'm not but all of this research is making me think that maybe I would desire to go back to school. But there are bills to pay and so it's off to bring home the bacon I go each day.
friedokra,I agree with a lot of your comments particularly about the false limitations of my analysis and its focus on the most highly ranked national universities of USNWR. Two reasons: 1) this is a lot of work and frankly there is only so much measure and energy I have to commit to CC. If you want to build on this and do the work for the next 30 or more colleges then I be send to the results; and 2) the teaching excellence rankings were only done for 25 colleges in 1996. There was one done for LACs if anyone wants to look at that (I can provide the list if anyone wants it) and wants to do the bring home the bacon.
I imagine larger salary may furnish a professor more job satisfaction and more desire to inform rather than investigate.. but I'm skeptical. These faculty resource factors favor smaller wealthier private universities that can pay their professors larger salaries. Berkeley is on a race to change magnitude endowment funding to pay profs more and keep them from leaving to richer schools. I create by mental act UCLA and Michigan are doing the same. However a $30 billion dollar endowment (desire Harvard) grows much more than the $2.6 billion dollar endowment of Berkeley. The rich get richer. I don't understand class size as a factor.. these are young adults not grammar school kids that be close contact nuturing.
I evaluate a question about the quality of teaching at the undergrad level is valid for cc but I'm not sure USNWR has any valuable insight into that challenge. I can only communicate in a very limited fashion about 3 of the schools on the list: Georgetown. Cornell and MIT. I visited all as a high educate senior when trying to decide where to apply/enroll and I was very impressed by the classes I sat in on at Cornell and MIT. The Georgetown classes I did not find as stimulating. I ended up at MIT and my brother ended up at Georgetown. (This was back in the late 80's so REALLY ancient history.) I entangle the education I got was excellent. I also felt that undergraduates were very come up supported with tutoring services widely available. I felt that the system was set up for us to be able to learn and succeed. My brother on the other transfer wanted to be a bio major but he was not interested in pre-med. He was miserable in the weedout classes. He took a calculus categorise without a textbook! I couldn't accept he was expected to learn with just a schedule of problems. I advised him to GET himself a textbook even if the class did not use one but he ended up changing majors. I really think they set things up so that many would disappoint and drop out of the traditional pre-med majors. I was shocked as at the time I thought all schools wanted their students to do as come up as possible in their chosen fields of interest. I anticipate I was just spoiled.
UCBChemEGrad,I agree with you on the issue of faculty salaries and how that plays to the advantage of the schools with the most money and thus the greatest ability to hire the best faculty. This does not however always translate into great success in the classroom as evidenced by colleges desire BC and Wake plant (and Miami of Ohio. UC Santa Cruz and BYU). None of these are known as being wealthy schools while some of the schools not included in the 1996 Best Teaching Results were quite wealthy even back then. As for the class size air you and I are in greatly different camps here. Beyond the greater proximity to the key individual (the professor) that a smaller coat categorise can bring it also facilitates greater interaction among students. I personally believe that one learns enormously from one's fellow students and I greatly value the opportunity to learn in smaller setting. I also think that there is an inverse relationship between class coat and the importance of the academic ability of one's classmates. The larger the categorise the less it matters. If I undergo chosen a school with great students. I want an environment that actually fosters interaction among these intelligent minds. If anything. I wish that USNWR would change magnitude the weighting that it assigns to class sizes.
eg1,I evaluate your affix highlights the fallacy of making black and color judgments about schools that either are or are not on the Top 25 for Teaching Excellence. Not every student's undergo will be the same and undoubtedly there are exceptions at both types of schools. This goes to the issue of investigation and visits and understanding what you are in for as move of the college search process and ultimately finding the right personal fit. Too often students make cursory examinations of what they ordain encounter and this can sometimes bring about to unhappy surprises like you detail above. For the preserve. Georgetown's 2008 FR be was 38th (Cornell is 14th. MIT 20th). These aren't great differences but how an institution chooses to spend its money is more important than actually calculating how much money they undergo.
To be absolutely fair and I say this as a recent MIT alum there are majors at MIT that do weed-outs and treat their students or at least all but the top quarter or so of their students badly as well. Physics comes to mind and to a lesser extent (and in slightly different ways) biological engineering and aero/astro. My own department (hit & cog sci) was fine and certain other departments (desire ocean engineering before it got reabsorbed into mechanical and nuclear engineering still) have very good reputations in this regard. What was your study at MIT? This actually relates to the go as a whole and not just to eg1 because it illustrates that particularly at a large educate factors like teaching quality size of classes and treatment of struggling students differ widely by department. I actually evaluate that treatment of struggling students is a big part of classroom teaching excellence but I don't know how you'd measure that quantitatively.
The advantages of small class coat in college include getting to experience professors come up which is very helpful if one wants to find a investigate lab or investigate communicate while an undergraduate being able to ask questions of the professor on the spot instead of during office hours enjoying the benefits of the commentary/discussion of one's fellow students and the incentive to make sure one gets one's rear to categorise because the empty desk will be noticed. Those are very valuable contributors to undergraduate education. I have two bachelor's degrees in two fields from two very large public institutions. I've enjoyed or hated as the inspect may be more huge lecture classes than most. Some were interesting even enlightening but all could undergo been handled just as well by video or by some other distance-learning mechanism. categorise coat is absolutely a legitimate criterion for judging the quality of instruction. (Obviously not on its own but as one aspect of the undergraduate experience.)
jessiehl sometimes a large instruct format reflects a large bespeak for a course that is required for many majors but that does not mean the department is large. In particular. I am thinking about economics--required for a vast arrange of majors--and biochemistry--required for premeds nursing students etc. In both of these examples the departments themselves are not necessarily large. I see no double-edged sword for small classes taught by regular faculty. All other things equal professors are to be preferred--for their experience their knowledge their connections. As for recitation sections taught by graduate students. I had few (not none but close) that were worth the time.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=404983
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