It may be too late to rescue this thread, but I'll tell you honestly, I was delighted and surprised to find how bright and fun to teach the kids were at the regional MA-granting small university where I had my first teaching job. It punctured my prestige bubble, which I needed.

Me: I went to a top private schools, a top SLAC, and an internationally-renowned university for grad school. I was *deeply* attached to academic prestige and though happy and eager to start teaching anywhere with a reasonable teaching load after my PhD, in truth I couldn't imagine who these kids were who were stuck going to a school I had never heard of before I saw its job ad. That doesn't mean that I approached my students with contempt, but I went into the classroom as a new teacher not knowing whether I would need to moderate my expectations for them, because they were I student population of whom I had no experience at all.

My first day in the classroom dispelled any doubts. As a group, they were as intellectually challenging to me as I could have hoped, with perhaps the cultural difference that they were more polite and relucant to speak up—at first—than my own undergrad classmates had been. Some of them were brilliant, all of them were incredibly hardworking, several went on to great things, most to wonderful careers, and many are still friends today and are adults I'm proud to have taught and to have been taught by.

It's worth admitting that I was a snob and getting out of my academic bubble was necessary for my growth as a decent human being.

I've taught at several schools, ranging from top 10 to ~75. You'd be surprised how many crappy or weird students there are even in the ivies.

At the "best" school, I had a student come to me and say that a guy in the classroom was cornering her every morning before class and forcing her to give him her homework under threat of physical violence. It launched a whole headache of a process and many sleepless nights as I worried about this student. Another student at the school was basically a psychopath and stalked me on facebook trying to manipulate me into giving him a better grade in the class.

At another top 20 school, the students were soooo entitled it was difficult to accomplish anything. They thought they were god's gift to society and I was constantly getting told that my materials were incorrect (they weren't) or that their mom or dad was in industry xyz and they knew better than me.

All of these schools also have a handful of kids that can't grasp basic concepts. How do those kids get into a top 10, top 20 school? I don't know - ask admissions. There are definitely more of those kids as you move down the rankings. It is certainly irritating when you teach a concept and 95% of the class instantly gets it, but then you have to spend 99% of your outside class time helping the same 3 students over and over and over again with basic equations. For example, last year I had a student that didn't understand what exponents are.

I imagine it would be worse at a directional school and I am fortunate not to have to deal with that. But it's no picnic teaching at top schools, where I had some of my worst experiences.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:David Foster Wallace preferred teaching at Illinois State University to Pomona, where he went after being offered an endowed faculty Chair

What do you expect them to say? "These kids are lazy underachievers, very few actually read the assigned material, plagiarism is rampant, and lectures are like talking to a wall."

But didn't he say the words above when he was teaching at Pomona? So actually, he was saying exactly what you said-- these kids are lazy underachievers, etc-- only he was saying it about Pomona students.

Anonymous wrote:Damn happy to have tenured professorship at ANY college in an area of the country that doesn’t suck!

This! Plus, not everyone wants to be held to the research expectations of a top school. A lower tier school with lower publication and grant requirements for tenure actually allows you to focus more on teaching, if that's your thing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love this question! As a former student at two lower-to-medium-tiered state schools, I can tell you the professors that did not have ties to my state were generally incredibly snobby and overall unhappy to be there. On the other hand, it was incredibly inspiring to get to know professors from my state who had gone on to Ivies, worked and taught oversees, had prestigious clerkships and then come back to their home state to teach.

It's a job; a cozy six-figure job with the best benefit package in the world until they croak. It's not altruism.

Ehh. I'm married to a professor and good friends with one who both came back to their home state to teach at small private schools that aren't highly ranked or selective. We are also familiar with the pay rates and community colleges and lower tier publics and privates in the area from applications and interviews. New professors start at $45-60k, similar to kindergarten teachers. The pay is not what people think it is, and there's a massive gulf between these schools and R1s.

The job itself is great though. As someone who went into an office job post-PhD, I often tell my spouse that they get paid *less* because they're in a passion job tons of people want, regardless if the amount of training it took.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is such an ignorant question

It’s what we’re all thinking.

It's really not. Professors who like teaching generally find teaching rewarding, and some of those "bottom tier" colleges are full of students who REALLY want to be there, and who are working hard to attend college. And many are just as bright and talented as students at "top tier" colleges, even if they weren't raised with the same opportunities.

+1. I want to teach students who want to learn. Not kids who are there just for the name.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the best schools for learning is at a local community college. Profs there do not have the usual publish or perish mandate. They focus more on students. You might say it's a poor man's SLACs that charge $80,000+ per year. My point is, don't rule out outstanding profs from higher ranking schools who teach there.

Have you been a student at both a community college and a SLAC?

NP. The reason why I think PP said that is because both SLACs and community colleges usually have small class sizes and teaching-focused instructors (lecturers or professors). Of course here are a ton of differences between the two types of schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is such an ignorant question

It’s what we’re all thinking.

It's really not. Professors who like teaching generally find teaching rewarding, and some of those "bottom tier" colleges are full of students who REALLY want to be there, and who are working hard to attend college. And many are just as bright and talented as students at "top tier" colleges, even if they weren't raised with the same opportunities.

Anonymous wrote:One of the best schools for learning is at a local community college. Profs there do not have the usual publish or perish mandate. They focus more on students. You might say it's a poor man's SLACs that charge $80,000+ per year. My point is, don't rule out outstanding profs from higher ranking schools who teach there.

Have you been a student at both a community college and a SLAC?

Anonymous wrote:I’m aware that the academic job market is really competitive, and thus people with PhDs from top schools can end up teaching at regional colleges. I imagine that it must be frustrating to teach those students. I looked on the website of a directional university and the faculty have PhDs from Harvard, Yale and other schools that are much, much higher ranked for grad and undergrad than that school.

WTF is a "directional university"?

Anonymous wrote:The professors at an easy admit school where I grew up really liked teaching. They went to elite schools themselves because they were passionate about their subject. They teach because they’re passionate about teaching.

This status seeking elitism is so obnoxious.

My kids went to a bottom-tier college. They had professors who went to MIT, Yale, etc.

There are not a lot of jobs in academia, and their professors were very nice and supportive and encouraging.

I don't know how they felt about all the kids, but these professors really liked and encouraged my kids, and for that I'm hugely grateful.

FYI, obnoxious elitists, there are lots of REALLY smart kids whose parents never went to college, who don't have a lot of money, who don't know all that much about financial aid and college choices. These kids end up at bottom tier colleges. Thank God for the great professors who do their best for these kids (and for all their students). If the professors dismissed the kids at the bottom tier colleges, they'd be missing out on some really great, smart kids. Two of the graduates in my child's class went to HYP for grad school. From a bottom-tier college. Impressed me.

Anonymous wrote:This is such an ignorant question

Ignorant and obnoxious.

OP are you new to the United States?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So many generalizations.

There are great professors at R1s and crappy professors at R1s. Tenure is not a "pipe dream" for newly minted PhDs. There are good professors at regional universities and crappy professors at regional universities. There are bitter professors who wish they taught at Harvard and bitter professors who *do* teach at Harvard.

I know tenure is hard to get and it's also hard to get a TT position. But anecdotally, every single person from my 30 person cohort in political science (at a top R1 public school) who went into academia has received tenure. That's 15 people from a class that started in 2006. The rest of us either dropped out before completion or went into nonacademic jobs -- I think 20 of us received PhDs. In the cohort that followed mine, most people have tenure and two are at Ivies. The ones that are at Ivies are fantastic, award winning teachers. The ones that are at regional colleges are happy and successful as well.

But I have literally never heard anyone complain about their students being crappy at the regional colleges. In fact, my friends at those schools talk about their students with PRIDE. Because they're not assholes.

Nice guys finish first.

That was pre-recession.

Nope, heart of recession. Our class entering in 06 graduated between ‘11 and ‘15.

Damn happy to have tenured professorship at ANY college in an area of the country that doesn’t suck!

Anonymous wrote:My graduate adviser studied at Princeton and a professor I worked for did graduate studies at UChicago. I went to grad school in a place that most people on DCUM would laugh at. The professors who went to those prestigious schools spent time with me, advised me on my career and life, and occasionally we went out for beers and pizza. If they had some amount of disdain for me because I was attending a bottom tier school, it certainly wasn’t obvious over the handful of years I spent with them.

Grad school at DSU is another topic entirely. I saw the disdain briefly. They hide it well bc they need the research done.