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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]my value is in informing the parents that 1) faculty at research universities are not incentivized to teach undergraduates, but rather to publish research. Good teaching at these well-known schools is by accident, not by design; 2) SLACs are where you will find faculty incentivized for strong undergraduate teaching;[/quote]

I am not a professor but really disagree with this. It's so hard to get a job in academia now--and has been for some time--that there simply isn't a pool of applicants who ONLY apply for jobs with LACs because they are primarily interested in teaching and another that only applies for jobs in universities because they want to research. Everyone in a field applies to any opening they know about and takes any job offered. Junior faculty--even at LACs--aren't guaranteed tenure. Thus, they HAVE to keep researching and publishing in case it becomes necessary to look for another job. Junior faculty at research universities need to get good evaluations for teaching in case they do not get tenure and need to apply elsewhere.

And, of course, this doesn't include adjuncts and/or visiting professors.

I'm not saying there is NO difference in what the institution incentivizes --just that, as a practical matter there's much less of a divide than you might expect.[/quote]
As a professor, I can see this view is partially correct, but conclusions are wrong. Yes, the job market is highly competitive. In my field, there are only a couple of tenure lines open per year and there are probably close to 100 applicants for each position. The R1s will look for students who have a highly promising research agenda, the SLACs will look for a solid research agenda and evidence of strong teaching potential/interest. Once you land one of those spots, departments at both LACs and R1 unis try very hard to ensure that junior faculty meet the requirements for tenure, which are established by the departments and approved by deans and provosts, because there is no guarantee that the department will keep the tenure line should the assistant professor not get tenure. 
Once an assistant professor starts at a LAC, there is a significant amount of mentorship with regard to teaching. Teaching evaluations and regular peer faculty evaluations, frequent required pedagogy workshops, and consistent, structured out-of-class interactions between students and faculty are commonplace at LACs. At the very best SLACs (PAWS, etc.) faculty will not only be trained to become strong teachers during the 6 years as an assistant professor, but will also publish research. There are very few, if any, graduate TAs at SLACs who will teach undergraduates. The tenure dossier will contain significant amounts of evidence of teaching effectiveness and a statement on teaching philosophy. My educated guess is that teaching counts for 40% of the dossier, with 40% for research and 20% for service. In my field, you'll need to publish 3-6 articles in peer reviewed journals for tenure.
I attended a SLAC, but have spent 25 years as a tenured professor at different R1s, and the differences in expectations for assistant profs still exist. At my R1, there is virtually zero teaching mentorship, peer teaching evaluations are hastily completed in the months only leading up to the mid-tenure and then tenure review, pedagogy workshops are voluntary, even for faculty with mediocre teaching evaluations. In the tenure dossier, there many be a few pages of teaching evaluation compilations, and a paragraph on teaching in the larger statement, which will focus 85% on research, 10% on teaching, and 5% on service. Unless are egregiously bad at teaching, a stellar research record will carry you. In my field at an R1, you'll need 6 peer reviewed articles, a book published by an academic press, and evidence of your next project to get tenure. Also at my R1, adjuncts and graduate students teach about a third of undergraduate courses. Some are good, some are bad, but none are expected to be great. They typically fill a need when a faculty member is out for research leave or to teach undergraduates when a faculty member has enough money in a grant to "buy out" a course they don't want to teach and then hand over to doctoral candidates.
Does good undergraduate teaching happen at R1s? Of course. Many faculty want their students to have a good learning experience, but not all. And so long as their research agenda is solid, they won't be penalized at all for mediocre teaching.
No one wants to believe that for $90K their kid at a large research university is having a less than ideal educational experience. And many students are happiest at a large university with big time sports, etc. But unless you have seen first hand the difference between the two models, you have really no clue the gap in overall teaching quality between a SLAC and an R1. [/quote]

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