Virginia vs. Maryland for Universities

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I understand that someone's child in this thread either went to or will go to William and Mary because the promotion of that school has been very aggressive so far. But, if it's so good for liberal arts then shouldn't it be ranked specifically for liberal arts very highly? Instead, the only reputable ranking of arts and humanities puts UMD at 150 worldwide and William and Mary at below 400 (https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2019/arts-humanities)

Do you even know what a liberal arts education means? Or what it means to be a LAC? Liberal Arts is about a broad educational experience. It is not about focusing on the humanities. One of the top LAC's is Harvey Mudd, which is focused on STEM, but with a broader societal view.

Liberal Arts colleges tend to excel in undergraduate teaching because that is their focus. Furthermore, most top LAC's use undergraduates for research -- even in the sciences.

Of course it is!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For state universities, VA is better. MD is on a tiered system while VA has a more independent system. This has enabled VA to develop more prestigious schools giving VA residents more in state options. W&M also has a very small/mid level private liberal arts feel to it which is really rare in state systems. If your child doesn't get into UVA then W&M or Virgina Tech are still good schools.

In MD everything below UMD CP is really bottom of the barrel community college. Everyone in MD is trying for UMD CP to avoid expensive private tuition so its actually hard to get into now which wasn't the case 10 years ago. UVA has been difficult to get into for decades because of its prestige.

+1. I don't even know how this is debatable. Everyone knows this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I understand that someone's child in this thread either went to or will go to William and Mary because the promotion of that school has been very aggressive so far. But, if it's so good for liberal arts then shouldn't it be ranked specifically for liberal arts very highly? Instead, the only reputable ranking of arts and humanities puts UMD at 150 worldwide and William and Mary at below 400 (https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2019/arts-humanities)

You have the sequence wrong. I only commented on William & Mary when someone made false claims, so the calling it "promotion" is misleading.

Rankings like the one you cited are largely based on research publications (citations per paper, H-index citations). It favors larger research universities. Colleges like Williams and Amherst that are considered by many to be strong in liberal arts education aren't even included in the QS rankings because they really focus on teaching, not research.

We are talking about undergraduate education here. Research may have some benefit for undergraduate education, but it can also certainly be detrimental. Faculty can spend time doing research or teaching. At many research universities, faculty get reduced teaching loads so they can devote more time to research. This "departmental" research (as opposed to sponsored research) is funded through the normal sources of tuition and appropriations. So you are in essence paying for the professor to do research rather than teach. The teaching load is then handled by 1) increasing class sizes 2) using less expensive adjuncts rather than tenured (research) faculty or 3) using teaching assistants. William & Mary doesn't have teaching assistants for lectures. They are only used for supervising labs.

What reputed university has teaching assistants for lectures? People keep mentioning this but this is simply not true at larger publics either, at least the ones that are talked about here.

W&M TA's teach lab and discussion sections - the exact same as Michigan, Berkeley, UNC, etc.

USNews cites these schools as having at least 18% of classes with primary instructor being a TA. It includes UNC at 20%. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/2017-02-21/10-universities-where-tas-teach-the-most-classes

The link said % of graduate TAs who report being a primary instructor, not % of classes where primary instructor is a TA.

Below are the 10 National Universities with the highest percentage of graduate TAs listed as primary instructors for undergraduate courses in fall 2015.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I understand that someone's child in this thread either went to or will go to William and Mary because the promotion of that school has been very aggressive so far. But, if it's so good for liberal arts then shouldn't it be ranked specifically for liberal arts very highly? Instead, the only reputable ranking of arts and humanities puts UMD at 150 worldwide and William and Mary at below 400 (https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2019/arts-humanities)

Do you even know what a liberal arts education means? Or what it means to be a LAC? Liberal Arts is about a broad educational experience. It is not about focusing on the humanities. One of the top LAC's is Harvey Mudd, which is focused on STEM, but with a broader societal view.

Liberal Arts colleges tend to excel in undergraduate teaching because that is their focus. Furthermore, most top LAC's use undergraduates for research -- even in the sciences.

Of course it is!

Humanities are part of a liberal arts curriculum. But it is not exclusive. LAC's try to create broader students. For example, at Harvey Mudd, there is a major called "Engineering". Not a specialized type of engineering, but rather broad exposure to engineering disciplines. Harvey Mudd produces excellent scientists and engineers who are in demand in industry.

Part of the draw of a LAC is the notion that specialization does not have to occur on day 1. At W & M, you do not declare a major until 4th semester. Obviously, if you are going into the sciences, you take more math and sciences from the get go, but not exclusively math and sciences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
UMCP is a solid school, but it's not as good as UVA or W&M overall, and for STEM you can do just as well as Virginia Tech as at Maryland.

Then, once you look beyond that tier of schools, Virginia has a whole bunch of schools (JMU, GMU, UMW, VCU, CNU, VMI) that are more desirable than the next tier of schools in Maryland (Towson, UMBC, St. Mary's) and other schools (ODU, Longwood, Norfolk State, Virginia State, Radford) that are as good as their Maryland equivalents (UMES, Salisbury, Frostburg, Bowie State, Coppin State, Morgan State).

Yes, UMD is as good as UVA. I would not live in Charlottesvile if it were free. And all the others are privates except VATech and W&M so it doesn't matter.

UVA is not as good as UMD and these are all public universities. So you're 0 for 2 and therefore cancelled.

I love it when stats win on this site and the posters turn personal because they have nothing left in their arsenal.

There is not a stat anywhere above. What are you talking about?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I understand that someone's child in this thread either went to or will go to William and Mary because the promotion of that school has been very aggressive so far. But, if it's so good for liberal arts then shouldn't it be ranked specifically for liberal arts very highly? Instead, the only reputable ranking of arts and humanities puts UMD at 150 worldwide and William and Mary at below 400 (https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2019/arts-humanities)

Do you even know what a liberal arts education means? Or what it means to be a LAC? Liberal Arts is about a broad educational experience. It is not about focusing on the humanities. One of the top LAC's is Harvey Mudd, which is focused on STEM, but with a broader societal view.

Liberal Arts colleges tend to excel in undergraduate teaching because that is their focus. Furthermore, most top LAC's use undergraduates for research -- even in the sciences.

Of course it is!

Humanities are part of a liberal arts curriculum. But it is not exclusive. LAC's try to create broader students. For example, at Harvey Mudd, there is a major called "Engineering". Not a specialized type of engineering, but rather broad exposure to engineering disciplines. Harvey Mudd produces excellent scientists and engineers who are in demand in industry.

Part of the draw of a LAC is the notion that specialization does not have to occur on day 1. At W & M, you do not declare a major until 4th semester. Obviously, if you are going into the sciences, you take more math and sciences from the get go, but not exclusively math and sciences.

Agreed. This thought that LACs don't do STEM is just plain wrong. Compare Swarthmore and UMD for graduates by field for 2019 graduates:

Swarthmore
CS 12.7%
Engineering 7.2%
Bio/Life Sciences 11.8%
Math/Stats 7.2%
Physical Sciences 5.4%
Total of Above: 44.3%

UMD
CS 8.8%
Engineering 14.6%
Bio/Life Sciences 7.6%
Math/Stats 2.2%
Physical Sciences 2.1%
Total of Above: 35.3%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I understand that someone's child in this thread either went to or will go to William and Mary because the promotion of that school has been very aggressive so far. But, if it's so good for liberal arts then shouldn't it be ranked specifically for liberal arts very highly? Instead, the only reputable ranking of arts and humanities puts UMD at 150 worldwide and William and Mary at below 400 (https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2019/arts-humanities)

You have the sequence wrong. I only commented on William & Mary when someone made false claims, so the calling it "promotion" is misleading.

Rankings like the one you cited are largely based on research publications (citations per paper, H-index citations). It favors larger research universities. Colleges like Williams and Amherst that are considered by many to be strong in liberal arts education aren't even included in the QS rankings because they really focus on teaching, not research.

We are talking about undergraduate education here. Research may have some benefit for undergraduate education, but it can also certainly be detrimental. Faculty can spend time doing research or teaching. At many research universities, faculty get reduced teaching loads so they can devote more time to research. This "departmental" research (as opposed to sponsored research) is funded through the normal sources of tuition and appropriations. So you are in essence paying for the professor to do research rather than teach. The teaching load is then handled by 1) increasing class sizes 2) using less expensive adjuncts rather than tenured (research) faculty or 3) using teaching assistants. William & Mary doesn't have teaching assistants for lectures. They are only used for supervising labs.

What reputed university has teaching assistants for lectures? People keep mentioning this but this is simply not true at larger publics either, at least the ones that are talked about here.

W&M TA's teach lab and discussion sections - the exact same as Michigan, Berkeley, UNC, etc.

Berkeley has lots of TA.

Do these TA's teach lecture classes? Having TA's versus them teaching large lecture classes i.e. the class itself is very different. If anything having a lot of TA's is helpful for students, they basically act as tutors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I understand that someone's child in this thread either went to or will go to William and Mary because the promotion of that school has been very aggressive so far. But, if it's so good for liberal arts then shouldn't it be ranked specifically for liberal arts very highly? Instead, the only reputable ranking of arts and humanities puts UMD at 150 worldwide and William and Mary at below 400 (https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2019/arts-humanities)

You have the sequence wrong. I only commented on William & Mary when someone made false claims, so the calling it "promotion" is misleading.

Rankings like the one you cited are largely based on research publications (citations per paper, H-index citations). It favors larger research universities. Colleges like Williams and Amherst that are considered by many to be strong in liberal arts education aren't even included in the QS rankings because they really focus on teaching, not research.

We are talking about undergraduate education here. Research may have some benefit for undergraduate education, but it can also certainly be detrimental. Faculty can spend time doing research or teaching. At many research universities, faculty get reduced teaching loads so they can devote more time to research. This "departmental" research (as opposed to sponsored research) is funded through the normal sources of tuition and appropriations. So you are in essence paying for the professor to do research rather than teach. The teaching load is then handled by 1) increasing class sizes 2) using less expensive adjuncts rather than tenured (research) faculty or 3) using teaching assistants. William & Mary doesn't have teaching assistants for lectures. They are only used for supervising labs.

What reputed university has teaching assistants for lectures? People keep mentioning this but this is simply not true at larger publics either, at least the ones that are talked about here.

W&M TA's teach lab and discussion sections - the exact same as Michigan, Berkeley, UNC, etc.

I have a friend that taught English classes at Yale as a TA. Pretty sure this is fairly common practice.

I'm 100% sure Yale does not have TA's teaching English courses and fairly sure you are entirely incorrect. Your friend who was a TA maybe led a discussion section for the course, which is exactly what happens at W&M.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I understand that someone's child in this thread either went to or will go to William and Mary because the promotion of that school has been very aggressive so far. But, if it's so good for liberal arts then shouldn't it be ranked specifically for liberal arts very highly? Instead, the only reputable ranking of arts and humanities puts UMD at 150 worldwide and William and Mary at below 400 (https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2019/arts-humanities)

You have the sequence wrong. I only commented on William & Mary when someone made false claims, so the calling it "promotion" is misleading.

Rankings like the one you cited are largely based on research publications (citations per paper, H-index citations). It favors larger research universities. Colleges like Williams and Amherst that are considered by many to be strong in liberal arts education aren't even included in the QS rankings because they really focus on teaching, not research.

We are talking about undergraduate education here. Research may have some benefit for undergraduate education, but it can also certainly be detrimental. Faculty can spend time doing research or teaching. At many research universities, faculty get reduced teaching loads so they can devote more time to research. This "departmental" research (as opposed to sponsored research) is funded through the normal sources of tuition and appropriations. So you are in essence paying for the professor to do research rather than teach. The teaching load is then handled by 1) increasing class sizes 2) using less expensive adjuncts rather than tenured (research) faculty or 3) using teaching assistants. William & Mary doesn't have teaching assistants for lectures. They are only used for supervising labs.

What reputed university has teaching assistants for lectures? People keep mentioning this but this is simply not true at larger publics either, at least the ones that are talked about here.

W&M TA's teach lab and discussion sections - the exact same as Michigan, Berkeley, UNC, etc.

I have a friend that taught English classes at Yale as a TA. Pretty sure this is fairly common practice.

I'm 100% sure Yale does not have TA's teaching English courses and fairly sure you are entirely incorrect. Your friend who was a TA maybe led a discussion section for the course, which is exactly what happens at W&M.

I'll go tell her she's lying.

[Anonymous]

I think maybe people are confused. There are schools that use undergraduate or masters students as TAs to lead discussion sections, or potentially PhD students. This is fairly common. However, also at many PhD-granting universities, PhD students will teach entire classes. However, in that capacity they are not "TAs" but rather they are instructors, just like any instructor. Often they are better prepared and have better knowledge of the difficult theoretical underpinnings than an adjunct professor or other lecturer without a PhD would, and it's almost necessary to have them teach courses because they need to have teaching experience under their belts before they hit the academic job market.

I would be surprised if PP's friend who was a "TA" taught an actual lecture section (because, again, that's not called being a "TA"), and if she did then I would be very surprised if she wasn't in the PhD program. Either way PP sounds a little confused on terminology. Further, the reason why W&M might have fewer PhDs teaching sections is that, well, W&M doesn't do much research or have much of a PhD program in almost any field. I wouldn't frame that as a necessarily a good thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
UMCP is a solid school, but it's not as good as UVA or W&M overall, and for STEM you can do just as well as Virginia Tech as at Maryland.

Then, once you look beyond that tier of schools, Virginia has a whole bunch of schools (JMU, GMU, UMW, VCU, CNU, VMI) that are more desirable than the next tier of schools in Maryland (Towson, UMBC, St. Mary's) and other schools (ODU, Longwood, Norfolk State, Virginia State, Radford) that are as good as their Maryland equivalents (UMES, Salisbury, Frostburg, Bowie State, Coppin State, Morgan State).

Yes, UMD is as good as UVA. I would not live in Charlottesvile if it were free. And all the others are privates except VATech and W&M so it doesn't matter.

UVA is not as good as UMD and these are all public universities. So you're 0 for 2 and therefore cancelled.

I love it when stats win on this site and the posters turn personal because they have nothing left in their arsenal.

For heaven’s sake, how many times do we have to state it? UVA is no 2,3 or 4 for the last 27 years in USNews&Workd Report. UMD is in the 3Os. This is not rocket science. Everyone knows this.
There is not a stat anywhere above. What are you talking about?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think maybe people are confused. There are schools that use undergraduate or masters students as TAs to lead discussion sections, or potentially PhD students. This is fairly common. However, also at many PhD-granting universities, PhD students will teach entire classes. However, in that capacity they are not "TAs" but rather they are instructors, just like any instructor. Often they are better prepared and have better knowledge of the difficult theoretical underpinnings than an adjunct professor or other lecturer without a PhD would, and it's almost necessary to have them teach courses because they need to have teaching experience under their belts before they hit the academic job market.

I would be surprised if PP's friend who was a "TA" taught an actual lecture section (because, again, that's not called being a "TA"), and if she did then I would be very surprised if she wasn't in the PhD program. Either way PP sounds a little confused on terminology. Further, the reason why W&M might have fewer PhDs teaching sections is that, well, W&M doesn't do much research or have much of a PhD program in almost any field. I wouldn't frame that as a necessarily a good thing.

At Yale I believe they are called Teaching Fellows. They have not yet completed all their PhD requirements.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think maybe people are confused. There are schools that use undergraduate or masters students as TAs to lead discussion sections, or potentially PhD students. This is fairly common. However, also at many PhD-granting universities, PhD students will teach entire classes. However, in that capacity they are not "TAs" but rather they are instructors, just like any instructor. Often they are better prepared and have better knowledge of the difficult theoretical underpinnings than an adjunct professor or other lecturer without a PhD would, and it's almost necessary to have them teach courses because they need to have teaching experience under their belts before they hit the academic job market.

I would be surprised if PP's friend who was a "TA" taught an actual lecture section (because, again, that's not called being a "TA"), and if she did then I would be very surprised if she wasn't in the PhD program. Either way PP sounds a little confused on terminology. Further, the reason why W&M might have fewer PhDs teaching sections is that, well, W&M doesn't do much research or have much of a PhD program in almost any field. I wouldn't frame that as a necessarily a good thing.

This is exactly correct. Ph.D. students that teach lectures under supervision of a professor are usually in their 6th or at the very least, their 5th year of Ph.D. This means that these students already have their master's. Furthermore these students generally teach very small seminars that are specialized in their area of interest or research. Teaching a course is a requirement of their Ph.D. graduation, otherwise they would go to the job market with no teaching skills. And furthermore they are called instructors.

Basically, these students are as qualified or possibly more as any instructors with a master's degree, of which there are plenty throughout any school, including and especially schools like W&M - hiring instructors with master's degree is much cheaper than hiring Ph.D.'s.

Something important to understand is that the fact that these 6th-year Ph.D. students teach a few seminar courses is not at all a downside of top large publics, entirely because they bring more variety of courses into the pool of classes the students can pick from. The students can pick entirely from Ph.D.-professor taught courses if they like - they can simply pick the more niche seminars lead by Ph.D. students as well. Compare this to W&M, where while only Ph.D.-professors might teach, there is a dearth in course selection compared to the large publics at the higher levels, simply because they can't find qualified people to teach them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think maybe people are confused. There are schools that use undergraduate or masters students as TAs to lead discussion sections, or potentially PhD students. This is fairly common. However, also at many PhD-granting universities, PhD students will teach entire classes. However, in that capacity they are not "TAs" but rather they are instructors, just like any instructor. Often they are better prepared and have better knowledge of the difficult theoretical underpinnings than an adjunct professor or other lecturer without a PhD would, and it's almost necessary to have them teach courses because they need to have teaching experience under their belts before they hit the academic job market.

I would be surprised if PP's friend who was a "TA" taught an actual lecture section (because, again, that's not called being a "TA"), and if she did then I would be very surprised if she wasn't in the PhD program. Either way PP sounds a little confused on terminology. Further, the reason why W&M might have fewer PhDs teaching sections is that, well, W&M doesn't do much research or have much of a PhD program in almost any field. I wouldn't frame that as a necessarily a good thing.

This is exactly correct. Ph.D. students that teach lectures under supervision of a professor are usually in their 6th or at the very least, their 5th year of Ph.D. This means that these students already have their master's. Furthermore these students generally teach very small seminars that are specialized in their area of interest or research. Teaching a course is a requirement of their Ph.D. graduation, otherwise they would go to the job market with no teaching skills. And furthermore they are called instructors.

Basically, these students are as qualified or possibly more as any instructors with a master's degree, of which there are plenty throughout any school, including and especially schools like W&M - hiring instructors with master's degree is much cheaper than hiring Ph.D.'s.

Something important to understand is that the fact that these 6th-year Ph.D. students teach a few seminar courses is not at all a downside of top large publics, entirely because they bring more variety of courses into the pool of classes the students can pick from. The students can pick entirely from Ph.D.-professor taught courses if they like - they can simply pick the more niche seminars lead by Ph.D. students as well. Compare this to W&M, where while only Ph.D.-professors might teach, there is a dearth in course selection compared to the large publics at the higher levels, simply because they can't find qualified people to teach them.

So you are arguing that using the cheaper TAs/PhD candidates and adjuncts to shoulder more of the instructional load is done in the interest of undergraduate education and to expand course selection? Right. If course selection is what matters, why are the far more expensive tenured and tenure-track faculty teaching less and less and spending more and more time on research and publishing while tuition goes up and up? Seems like an obvious bait and switch.

[Anonymous]

PP compare the number of courses offered for CS, Physics, or any subject really at UT-Austin vs. W&M, and then come back to complain about course selection.

W&M uses a large number of adjuncts, as does UVA, as do the vast majority of SLACs other than perhaps the very tip top ones.

You simply seem to have very little understanding about how teaching happens at universities.