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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]i have a phd from a top (ivy league) phd program and i nobody i know wanted to be a professor at a slac. this is considered an acceptable option but is nobody's first choice. [b]the best researchers/scientists do not teach at SLACs[/b].[/quote]

This is a true by definition. Researchers will not teach at SLACs simply because SLACs are not research universities. This is not a reflection of the quality of SLACs. [/quote]

I also have a PhD from a top university and i[b]n my social science field a person would sell their arm for a tenure track job basically anywhere.[/b] SLACs can land excellent faculty.  The disadvantage, for SLACs, is that they have -- by definition -- higher teaching loads than R1s and that is generally seen as a negative.

Having been in/around academia for most of my adult life, you can end up with crap professors everywhere.  At R1s, these are likely to be grad students or completely socially inept people who view teaching as completely beneath them (BUT you are less likely to find those in an honors program), at least for classes where that matters.  At SLACs, your crap professors are likely to be sabbatical replacements -- and depending on how you define "crap" they almost certainly won't be publishing with as much regularity as their R1 counterparts.

If quality of teaching is what you're after, OP, go with a SLAC.  100%, every time.  My husband is on faculty at an Ivy and he was explicitly told that teaching DOES NOT matter for his tenure decision and that he should do as little as possible in that arena so long as he doesn't raise any red flags.  That being said, R1 profs tend to be fairly 'high quality" people anyway and might be good teachers regardless, but at SLACs teaching quality is very important.[/quote]

academia is a winner takes all place. quantitatively speaking, majority of phds would take tenure track job anywhere, but top grads are almost never going to teach at slacs. those on the top get multiple offers from the best schools and slacs are really not on their radar. [/quote]

Mmmm, not what I've seen at all. There are so many reasons why someone awesome might take a job at Amherst over Yale, including factors completely unrelated to the school.

There's also a self-selection bias.  Those people who want Ivy jobs are going to apply to Ivys and their ilk, but that's sort of a special group.  The kind of person who will land at Michigan is, indeed, the same kind of person who might land at Williams, at least from what I've seen.  There's also a fair amount of shuffling around. [/quote]

honestly you have no clue. i mean sure someone who can get the bed job will on occasion will take an inferior job to be close to family, illness etc, but overall this is not the case at all. people who to slacs to do research are considered losers.[/quote]

Maybe this is a question of  field or even subfield.  My sense is that the last poster is a scientist and that the poster s/he is responding to is a social scientist.  People in the humanities and social sciences typically don't have the capital/equipment/overhead needs that most scientists do.  Also, some of us are in subfields where even research institutions might only have 1-3 faculty.  This means that the number of jobs available nationwide in any given year may be very small and it’s unpredictable which category (public, private, MRU, SLAC) the most desirable or prestigious one will be in any given year.  Since many of us are do-it-yourself researchers whose colleagues will mostly be elsewhere, it’s not a huge sacrifice to be outside an MRU.  So the trade offs can look different, especially if there’s a partner in the mix and/or strong regional preferences.  And people do move around and across institutional divides all the times.  Sometimes colleagues influence choices, sometimes family circumstances, sometimes amazing offers (start a program for us).  And even though my preference structure is such that having grad students is highly desirable, that’s only true if the grad students I’d have would be employable (and thatks true only for a handful of schools in my subfield).  So top LAC might even trump a very good MRU is the strength of the grad program jst wasn’t there.

Bottom line:  I agree that there are good (and bad) teachers everywhere and that faculty move around and don’t typically self-select along the public flagship vs SLAC divide.  But that also makes me skeptical of the claim that teaching is better at SLACs.  You may have to be a reasonably well-liked teacher to get tenure at a SLAC, but there are lots of ways to be well-liked (easy, entertaining, flattering, sociable) and I’ve seen smart faculty burn out, lose interest, start phoning it in after spending a decade talking shop primarily with undergrads
[/quote]

you have this theory that might make sense but things just don't look that way. most fresh  phd graduates are young people (mid-twenties) whose priorities are not families, quality of life etc but doing the very best research they, if at all possible. they are not choosing slacs; in fact a good chunk would give preference to a very prestigious postdoc than a safer tenure track position at a slac.

and while i am not familiar with the dynamics of every single field, obviously, i can tell you right off the bat that your theory does not apply to philosophy. this is a field of study requiring basically zero resources. i happen to be very familiar with it and nobody who can choose (which, admittedly, is a very small number of only the very best) teaches at slacs. there are basically no top philosophers at slacs. i am very doubtful that it applies to history or english, either. i also don't understand what is your obsession with minor subfields of 3 people - few demand to work with people doing their exact same thing. smaller departments would often prevent more than one person from a subfield getting hired because they won't have appropriate range of people to teach classes.[/quote]

Does it matter? You cite this as something extremely important, but it really isn't. So what if the LACs aren't hiring the strongest people in the field? Somehow, their grads are still getting into the best PhD programs. You cited Philosophy, so I quote:

http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2011/10/sorry-cal-state-students-no-princeton.html

19 graduate students in the top philosophy programs come from a couple of top-regarded LACs- absolutely more than those from much larger universities ranked 11-25- and probably on a per capita basis higher than any other institutional category. You mind explaining how those top LAC grads, woe be them with their piss poor faculty members, were able to stand out in incredibly selective elite PhD programs over those from other universities? If 27 students are coming from 8 universities, so on average 3 students each from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc., then Williams, Swarthmore, Amherst, Pomona, etc. are actually doing better with 1 given their undergrad population is three or more times smaller than those universities. Reed stands as a special powerhouse with 3 by itself just among 1400 undergraduates. A look at Reed's Philosophy department shows rather sparse offerings, with just six professors: https://www.reed.edu/philosophy/faculty/index.html

It's a classic case of focusing on the wrong picture- presumed quality vs. a different kind of aptitude. You could be the most accomplished researcher in your field. You could have hundreds of patents, thousands of published articles, and whatnot. That doesn't qualify you to be a good teacher, to be able to advocate for your students, to help foster their growth across any sort of experience level instead of being an elitist asshole who only seeks to connect with the established "best students" (perhaps this is why you are not an educator? No LAC would hire anyone like you.) Of course it doesn't mean the opposite either- that if you're a researcher, you have to be a poor educator. But LACs are ACTIVELY seeking out the best TEACHERS. One look at a faculty hiring advertisement between the two schools reveals the difference.

If you or your Ivy buddies want to be a researcher or working for the industry above being an educator, so be it, but don't look down on those who want to build a pipeline of talent across many walks of life rather than concentrating within people who largely get by through whom they know, not what they know or are capable of. The top LACs do a far better job in taking a student from level 0 to an accomplished academic than any Ivy or top university would.[/quote]

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