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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Small highly ranked universities [/quote]

[b]Yes. Where professors teach everything[/b][/quote]

Because they have to since they were unable to get employment with a National University. Not intended as a knock against teachers, but the real experts in each field are at National Universities, not at small schools.[/quote]

I'm a prof at a R1 and I would love to teach at a good SLAC.  Those jobs are hard to find.[/quote]

At which R1 university are you a prof ?

And how do you define "a good SLAC" ?[/quote]

I'm a professor.  The implication here is that some schools are aspirational and some schools are not.  The fact is that in many fields (not all) people who want to become professors don't have choices.  They are lucky to receive even a single job offer, especially one that is tenure-track, and they have to focus on fitting in where they land and adjusting their professional expectations accordingly.

Moving around (again, in many fields) is extremely difficult at the assistant professor (before tenure) level and almost impossible at the associate (has tenure) or full (most senior) levels, unless you have superstar-level achievements in a specific sub-sub-sub-discipline for which there is an endowed professorship open.  There simply are no jobs, because higher education as a field is both contracting and changing shape at the same time, and so quickly that the employment models have not kept up.  Competition for any full-time position at all tends to be extreme.

The end result is that the vast majority of us teach where we earned tenure and cannot move.  There are extraordinary researchers who have learned to be happy at small undergraduate colleges, born pedagogues who have made the best of large state universities, and every possible variation in between.  But to assume that only "national universities" have good faculty (or that all of the faculty at "national universities" are good ones) is to simply not be apprised of the landscape of higher education.

BTW, this might all sound as if I personally am resentful.  I am genuinely not.  To me I have the best profession in the universe, and a pretty great actual job, too.  But I cannot choose a new city, a different climate, or proximity to friends and family if I am to stay in this line of work.  It is a major trade-off, and one that most of us make in order to pursue a career that we genuinely love.

More of us do a good job than you think.  Be open to the institution that is truly the best fit for your child.[/quote]

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