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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]1. Take US News Top 50
2. Remove these 5: UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, Wisconsin, and Illinois
3. Insert these 5: [b]BU[/b], Northeastern, William and Mary, Wake Forest, Rochester
There’s your top 50…[/quote]

BU is already T50 (low 40's).[/quote]
Sorry. I meant top 40. Follow instructions above for top 40. America’s top 40 — Casey Kasem-like.[/quote]

+100 
That sounds right based on how parents and students decided.[/quote]

But you don’t know for sure because your system doesn’t actually tell us.[/quote]

Exactly. Ignore him.

Guys like him just don't want publics passing their mediocre privates.

[/quote]

Public’s are great if you want to get trained in a trade like CS, Accounting, or engineering. Large classes taught by TAs are not a great educational model if you want to learn to think and communicate, key skills higher up the food chain.

Those who know, know; the rest go to large public’s and think that they are getting an education but in reality are just being trained.[/quote]

This is such a bad take if you actually know anything about the top large publics. Or even ones a bit further down. For starters, “large classes taught by TAs” does not describe the overwhelming majority of classes a kid will take, or maybe any classes at all in many cases. Just ignorance cloaked in smug faux knowledge.

[/quote]

I taught at a large public in my grad school days. The idea that undergrads are exposed to elite profs is pretty much not the case. The top profs did research with their PhDs mostly, that was their job. Most lower classes are taught by assistant professor though along with some PhDs needing extra money. I knew full professors who hadn’t taught any undergraduate classes in many years. It is a waste of their time.[/quote]

Cool story. That has nothing to do with large classes though. And I went to a large public not so so long ago and had many associate and full professors, especially at the 300 and 400 level, including the head of a department, the dean of the honors college, and a former FTC chairman. And these were classes with fewer than 30 kids. It still happens today. It’s normal. While a few superstar professors may get out of it (and this is true at private research universities too, btw), most full professors are still required to teach an undergrad course once a semester or once a year.

This “large publics with hundreds of kids in every class taught by a 24 year old grad student” is mostly a DCUM myth, though far from the only one around here.[/quote]

Not a myth…
I have taught at three t30 Publics, including one that most people here talk about often. I was not tenured. I now teach at private university. This is what my experience has been up to this point. At every one of these publics, the top professors rarely teach any Freshman/Sophomore classes. Some will teach Jr/Sr classes, but MOST will only teach graduate students. The vast majority of lower level classes are taught by a combo of non-tenured professors and PHd students. That is just how it is. At some publics the ‘big name’ tenured professor shows up two or three times a semester…..typically in the 1st class and then sometime mid-semester. The rest of the class is taught by his/her PhD Students.

At my private, one of the conditions was that I HAD to teach all 3 undergraduate courses (two entry level) and 1 graduate course. Im not supposed to let my grad students do anything other than be a TA. All tenured professors have to teach entry level classes.

It is a big difference. I know some here would like to pretend it is not, but it is. The larger the dept, the higher the likelihood you kids will have a PhD student or a non-tenured professors teaching them. My kid is now a Sophomore in HS and depending on his major, I will guide him accordingly.

[/quote]

But see, you've pulled a bait and switch here. It went from “large classes taught by TAs” to “top professors don’t teach freshmen/sophomore classes.” There’s nothing wrong with being taught by an assistant or associate professor. There’s not some brilliance that comes with suddenly being promoted. Nor do you need a top researcher in their field to teach an intro class. 300 and 400 level classes are almost exclusively taught by tenure-track or tenured professors, including full professors.

But your experience also seems to be subject specific, because it simply isn’t the reality for a lot of top publics. I work with faculty all over and most of them teach undergrads. You can talk to the kids. You can see the undergrad courses online and you can see which faculty teach what. Terrence Tao taught undergrads at UCLA until he won the Fields medal. The entire econ department at Berkeley—one of the best in the world—teach undergrad classes, including Bates Clark medal and Nobel winner David Card until he switched to emeritus status a few years ago. I guess for the CS or some of the STEM lemmings, they may be stuck in a bunch of huge lectures, but it isn’t the case in most of these subjects or for most students.[/quote]

DP.  It's true that profs often teach undergrads but the administration doesn't reward great teaching...so profs don't consider teaching important.  There are many good things about UCLA and Berkeley (several grads in our family), but undergrad teaching is not really a strength.
[/quote]

PP. Sure, but I would take that even further and say top professors are not necessarily good teachers or focused on it at all (public or private), which is why this whole debate is silly. Plenty of adjuncts or full-time lecturers are better than their research-oriented counterparts. I just hate the whole “everyone is being taught by TAs,” because it isn’t true in most cases.

But if you want great/prioritized undergrad teaching, LACs are the answer.[/quote]

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