Reply to What’s the educational difference between a highly-rated college and a good one?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Profs don’t always favor SLACs, but when their kids aren’t interested in or aren’t competitive for top R1s they have enough info to steer them to (and distinguish among) a variety of good schools that aren’t as universally well known as Ivies or state flagships. Hence the relative popularity of SLACs among academics.

I really don’t believe SLACs provide a better education (or have faculty who are better teachers) than R1s. R1s have many more resources and a much broader range of course offerings (more majors and more courses within each major as well as multiple profs in the same subfield) than SLACs. They also have more people doing cutting-edge work.

Whether and how that matters to your DC is a real question, but for me as an undergrad it did. My kid was the same. And both of us (at different R1s and in very different fields) had close relationships with faculty members (and also appreciated the presence of grad students).[/quote]

Faculty as teachers? Get serious. It’s the TA’s who are doing the teaching. I hear two of my kids who go to Big Ten schools talking about their TA’s relative suckitude and it’s depressing. My two SLAC kids look at them like they’re aliens. [/quote]
[b]Literally no Big Ten has TA's teach/lecture courses.[/b] They have TA's that lead discussion or lab sections - the same as any private school.

Some parents are so uneducated about basics in college education that they simply repeat what they've incorrectly heard ad nauseum, until it becomes true. Again, R1's don't have TA's teaching courses - they have PhD's. Even GMU, which some here  thumb their nose at, has PhD's teaching courses, not TA's.

And ironically, at your SLAC you might not even have PhD's teaching courses - they may simply be "instructional staff" with a Masters. Nothing wrong with it, of course, but their academic background is essentially the same as a TA's. [/quote]

USNWR disagrees.  https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/2017-02-21/10-universities-where-tas-teach-the-most-classes

PERCENTAGE OF GRADUATE TAS LISTED AS A PRIMARY INSTRUCTOR (FALL 2015)

Top 10

[b]1) Purdue University—West Lafayette (IN)	26%[/b]	 	
2) University of South Florida 25%	 
3) University of Georgia 24%	 
[b]4) University of Iowa	20%	[/b]
5) University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill 20%	
6) University of Hawaii—Manoa 19%	
[b]7) University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign	 19%[/b]	
8) Florida State University	18%	
9) University of Arkansas 18%
10) University of Kansas 18%[/quote]

wow-that is shocking to me.

They don't even go through the motions of pretending students will be taught by prof's!!!

--SLAC  fan[/quote]

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