Reply to Should LACs no longer be considered the model of excellence?

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[quote=Anonymous]IRL (which has included teaching graduate students), I'm not seeing any evidence that graduates of  LACs (and I'm generally looking at people who graduated from the most prestigious ones) are better educated than people who got their undergrad degrees at major research universities (public or private).

There are a number of reasons why that make sense.  The people who become professors were grad students.  Grad students aren't trained to teach.  In the quest for tenure-track jobs, IME, the grad students who are the best teachers don't seek out jobs at LACs -- most are looking at prestige, resources, location, spousal employability, and are of course at the whim of what positions are available when they come on the market.  So it's not as if LACs corner the market on good teachers or even have first pick.

That said, one could certainly argue that LACs won't retain profs who are bad teachers and research universities will.  I'm not going to deny that there are profs who do important research but can't teach.  But I'll also point out that "good teaching" at a LAC typically involves getting good course evaluations which may reflect a host of factors other than the educational progress/improvement made be students (which isn't measured).  It's also the case that academics who stay at LACs tend to be "the" expert in their field, aren't continually challenged by the influx of (grad) students who have been well-trained by others, and end up having to teach the same basic courses year after year (because they need to be taught and there's nobody else there to do it).  It's easier, more fun, and safer to be the cool/popular prof in this environment than to be the demanding/challenging prof.

WRT the student experience,  being forced to write papers in college doesn't make you a good writer, especially when the lowest grade you're likely to get, regardless of what you turn in, is a B.  Similarly, participating in small seminars doesn't make you a critical thinker.  In fact, it makes lots of kids good bullshitters.  They quickly discover that they can get by without doing the reading in many classes if they talk regularly in class and figure out which are the magic words the instructor wants to hear.  All that's before we get to the fact that kids who go to universities also have plenty of access to seminars and courses that require writing.  So in both contexts, the kids who want to improve their writing and to think more critically can do so.

Again, my point isn't that a smart hard-working kid can't get an excellent education at a LAC.  And  I'd certainly acknowledge that there are kids for whom a LAC is the best educational choice.  What I don't buy is that LACs are the gold standard of what undergraduate education should be.  To me, they're more like glorified high schools.[/quote]

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