Top universities are “top” essentially because of professional schools?
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Anonymous
Average Michigan LSA grad would lose to swarthmore. Engineering is a different matter. |
Anonymous
| Undergraduates at schools like Michigan and Wisconsin subsidize research and graduate students. |
Anonymous
You’re comparing a small SLAC to a giant state university. The top students at Michigan would easily compare wirh the top students at any SLAC. |
Anonymous
What does that even mean? |
Anonymous
I'm comparing the quality of education for the average student. |
Anonymous
…and what makes you an expert on the subject matter? Furthermore, this is a discussion about top universities with professional schools. Why was Swarthmore even entered into this discussion? |
Anonymous
You said"humanities" not history in your first post. No one says UVA is weak in the humanities. Then you cherry-picked history because it was the only example you could find that might prove your point. FWIW my DD was a history major at UVA. My wife and I were history majors at slacs discussed here. I read DD's syllabi for her UVA history courses. She received a far better education in history at UVA than we did at our slacs. And then she won - out of UVA - with letters of recommendation from her UVA proffessors a full scholarship at Oxford for a Dphil in history. We could not be more pleased with UVA. |
Anonymous
This is not an accurate statement. Almost all US colleges & universities subsidize undergraduate education. Profitable grad schools in law & business typically subsidize undergraduate education. Other grad programs need to attract research funds from private businesses and government. |
Anonymous
DP. You can always tell when you've won an argument on DCUM when a mom uses "totally laughable" or "you're insufferable". Both are terrible woman-speak terms that convey no substantive meaning and add nothing of use to the thread - they are just a trite, non-substantive arrogant slams which serve no purpose but to make the poster feel momentarially superior before going about their miserable life. A verbal b@tch slap, if you will. |
Anonymous
You’re mistaken. I was the one who responded to the UVA booster of whom you quoted. I never said anything about UVA humanities because I didn’t make the original posting. I’m not surprised that your child received a better education in history than you did at your SLAC. She probably would have received an equal or better history education at Wisconsin or Michigan as well. |
Anonymous
Fine. You’re delusional if you think Duke and UVA are top 4 law schools. Happy now? |
Anonymous
DO. "Delusional" is another trite woman-speak phrase sed on here to b@tch slap other women. Such comments add nothing of substance to the thread |
Anonymous
I understand how these schools work. Swarthmore has a student-to-faculty ratio of 8:1. It is 15:1 at Michigan and 18:1 at Wisconsin. If you then look at how the faculty spend their time, there will be significant differences. In general, tenured faculty at research universities spend roughly 50% time for teaching, 50% time for research during the year. The teaching time is typically evenly split between undergraduates and graduates. This means 25% of time on undergraduate education, 25% on graduate education, and 50% on research. Faculty performance assessments are based much more on research. For a school like Swarthmore, the equation is different. There are no graduate students and the expectations for research are lower, so a typical ratio would be 60% teaching and 40% other. The time dedicated to teaching is entirely focused on undergraduates. Faculty performance assessment are based much more on teaching. This means, from the perspective of an undergraduate, faculty time and focus is much higher at a school like Swarthmore than Michigan or Wisconsin, significantly higher even than the student-to-faculty ratios indicate. For this reason, schools like Swarthmore typically have higher student survey ratings for faculty commitment, availability, etc. One more thing. At a research university, the university must come up with institutional funds to get research grants (typically about 30% of the total). A likely source of this is undergraduate tuition. This is much less likely to be the case at a school like Swarthmore. |
Anonymous
Yeah, so? |
Anonymous
Excellent retort, refutation, and marshalling of evidence on your part. |