| Afan,
Truth be told, I don’t place much more faith in the classroom teaching rankings than I do in the PA rankings. IMO, both are pretty suspect and neither should be included in any ranking system for undergraduate education. But I thought it was interesting to include the teaching excellence data in this comparison and see where the colleges that are considered excellent in the classroom fared in the PA and overall rank comparison.
I disagree with your description of the “small” role of classroom teaching in the later undergraduate years. IMO, for the average undergraduate, excellent classroom teaching is the single most important function (by a large margin) that college faculty perform. Undoubtedly, students perform more independent and research work, but this is hardly the majority of what is going on for the great majority of students in their junior and senior years (unless you consider things like Junior Year Abroad to be independent, research-oriented study). |