Everyone agrees that large research schools are bad at teaching and that at least some small schools are better.
“Everyone agrees” huh? Do you have any evidence for that? As far as I can tell correlation between prestige, research quality, and teaching quality is highly positive in Polish universities’ computer science (that’s the only kind I know closely, for everything else I would just guess their quality from their prestige).
I would say there is a general positive correlation between teaching quality, research quality, and prestige, with some exceptions for smaller schools that specifically focus on quality undergraduate education (like Princeton). But don’t be fooled by a college saying that its classes are better because its smaller- you actually need to attend both classes and compare. People can be very proud that their school has ‘great’ lectures in what I would consider high school level biology, simply because their professor is ‘fun.’
But don’t be fooled by a college saying that its classes are better because its smaller … People can be very proud that their school has ‘great’ lectures in what I would consider high school level biology, simply because their professor is ‘fun.’
It seems to me that you are mainly objecting to people caring about teaching quality than disagreeing with their assessment. Maybe people are fools to care about class size and student evaluations, but they appear to care, unless I’m confusing consoling lies with actual advice.
Yes curriculum matters, but that is much more predicted by student quality than professor quality: two kinds of prestige diverge.
“Everyone agrees” huh? Do you have any evidence for that? As far as I can tell correlation between prestige, research quality, and teaching quality is highly positive in Polish universities’ computer science (that’s the only kind I know closely, for everything else I would just guess their quality from their prestige).
I would say there is a general positive correlation between teaching quality, research quality, and prestige, with some exceptions for smaller schools that specifically focus on quality undergraduate education (like Princeton). But don’t be fooled by a college saying that its classes are better because its smaller- you actually need to attend both classes and compare. People can be very proud that their school has ‘great’ lectures in what I would consider high school level biology, simply because their professor is ‘fun.’
It seems to me that you are mainly objecting to people caring about teaching quality than disagreeing with their assessment. Maybe people are fools to care about class size and student evaluations, but they appear to care, unless I’m confusing consoling lies with actual advice.
Yes curriculum matters, but that is much more predicted by student quality than professor quality: two kinds of prestige diverge.