For undergraduate students, how do you measure faculty quality?

College Search & Lists
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<p>There is a relatively reliable foundation for the measure of the talent of a student body but there is no way to measure how it migrates from one end of a campus to the other, how the herd moves into various classes, interacts, contributes in the classrooom, makes friends, socializes, connects etc… ZERO. You can attempt to measure the quality of a student body, but that does not speak to how it translates into learning. Furthermore, until all universities are asked to report GPAs and SAT/ACT scores in the same exact way, it is not really possible to compare figures. Finally, GPA, SAT/ACT scores should be measured by department, not by overall unversity. It is unfair to compare SAT scores of an entire institution like Cornell or Michigan, where 15% or so of the students major in Kinesiology, Nursing, Agriculture, Music, Dental Hygene etc… to the entire student body at Chicago, Dartmouth or Duke, where 100% of the students major in Arts and Sciences or Engineering. So yes, there are hard numbers to help us determine the quality of student bodies, but those numbers have not yet been sorted through for consistancy and relevance.</p>

<p>“Given your view that rating the quality of overall faculty is futile, why do you support the results of surveys that actually attempt to do this?”</p>

<p>I assume you are referring to the PA. I have always maintained that the PA is not an accurate ranking. I have, and continue to say, that the PA is a reflection of the collective opinion of universities as seen by Academe. To some, the opinion of Academe and graduate school adcoms is meaningless. To others, it means something. Either way, I never said the PA measured academic quality concretely, absolutely and accurately.</p>

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<p>I think teaching quality is roughly equivalent among schools with similar selectivity. If students were uniformly unhappy with teaching, they would leave and the graduation rate would fall. Yet, the predicted graduation rates fall pretty close to the actual graduation rates (most are ± 3 percent) and the schools where predicted and actual difference exceeds 3 % can be explained by factors other than teaching, such as the percent engineering/science majors.</p>

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<p>Based on anecdotal evidence, I would disagree with the view that retention/grad rates are related to selectivity. I have read and heard many times, here and elsewhere, about students dissatisfied with the quality of instruction at elite universities, but that they accept this in exchange for the prestige associated with receiving a degree from said college. IMO, the stronger the brand power, the more likely it is to overwhelm the concern/frustrations of students, including shoddy classroom experiences.</p>

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<p>Did you intend to say “related to teaching quality”?</p>

<p>You said “selectivity”.</p>

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<p>yes, thanks</p>

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<p>The National Study of Student Engagement has a question about how often you receive prompt feedback from faculty. Based on 23 universities and 41 LACs that voluntarily made their data available, about 62% of university students said Often or Very Often whereas 77% of LAC students said Often or Very Often. Individual LACs ranged from 56% to 88%. Individual universities ranged from 48% to 80%.</p>

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<p>Something that really impressed my son about his chosen school was how interested the faculty were with the kids and how the kids loved their profs. This was reiterated in e-mails and post that he received after his visit from profs he met. This was, by the way, the only school that responded that way. Though he got letters from other schools’ profs,they were not the ones he met and talked to. Now that he has accepted the school, he has gotten even more mail and ever so much in the way of welcome. What a difference from my other boys’ schools.</p>

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<p>Is there a trade-off for faculty between being demanding and being friendly/well-liked?</p>

<p>I think there is.</p>

<p>Is being friendly/well-liked necessary for quality instruction?</p>

<p>I guess optimizing friendliness with high expectations is part of the art.</p>

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<p>On the NSSE there is also a rating of friendiness of relationships with faculty from Unfriendly to friendly on a 7-point scale. Students from LACs rated their relationships more friendly than university students. But, there was a lot of variability. LAC: average 73% very friendly (range 47% to 88% at 41 LACs). Universities: average 53% very friendly (range 40% to 70% at 23 universities).</p>

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<p>I wonder if there’s a significant difference between the mean rating for the friendliness of faculty at liberal arts schools and the mean rating for the friendliness of faculty at universities. (Okay, that’s the AP Stat side in me not going away.) You can probably find that out from the data, if we knew the standard deviation and the number of people surveyed for each.</p>

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<p>First, I’d draw a distinction between “good faculty” and “good classroom teaching.” These are not unrelated, but classroom teaching is only one part of the job of faculty who are also primary producers of new knowledge. Research universities are sometimes criticized, perhaps with some justification, for overemphasizing the knowledge production (research and scholarship) side at the expense of the teaching side, but in my judgment it’s just as big a mistake to overemphasize classroom teaching at the expense of research and deep scholarly engagement at the highest levels in the field. The best faculty is one in which individual faculty members, and the faculty collectively, are both deeply committed, engaged, and productive scholars, and also deeply committed, engaged, and effective teachers. Students will learn more and engage more deeply if they have the opportunity to learn from, intellectually engage with, and model themselves after genuine scholars who are grappling with cutting-edge questions in the field. And this goes not just for graduate students. The best undergraduates, especially upperclassmen, are certainly capable of this kind of deep intellectual engagement, where the best and deepest learning occurs.</p>

<p>I must say I’m a bit mortified by several of Collegehelp’s criteria, like favoring lecture over discussion, not wanting class participation to count for anything, and preferring neatly prepackaged “take home messages” in the form of web-accessible lecture notes, powerpoints, etc. This favors a style of teaching and learning as one-way communication, from professor as fount of all knowledge to student as passive recipient. That’s not the kind of deep intellectual engagement on the student’s side that genuinely good teaching should foster.</p>

<p>Now it’s true we don’t have good metrics for “good faculty,” either on the scholarship side or on the teaching side. But I think the metrics on the scholarship side are actually somewhat better. Ultimately it does go to reputation among one’s peers. Scholarship has impact only if it gets noticed; by definition, it’s influential only if other people in the field pay attention and are influenced by it. By and large, other people in the field do have a pretty good idea of who the most influential scholars in the field are, and the faculties they’re on get rated pretty highly by their peers in things like NRC rankings. But that’s at the top end. At the middle and lower levels, things may get a bit muddier; there may be a lot of good, competent but not yet stellar scholars out there who just don’t get noticed very often, and there’s no clear metric to distinguish them from the truly pedestrian.</p>

<p>On the teaching side, the metrics are much worse. Most schools use student teaching evaluations, but these are more a measure of student satisfaction than of the effectiveness of the teaching, and I submit these are not the same thing. Teachers who are funny, tell a lot of stories, and have vibrant, charismatic classroom personae tend to score wildly high in student teaching evaluations, but those characteristics can sometimes be a substitute for, even a distraction from, genuine intellectual engagement and effective teaching and learning. Students also tend to rate highly teachers who put everything in a nice, tidy, easily digestible package, and give predictable exams that are easy to master with a little diligent memorization of the pre-packaged course material; but again, that sort of teaching and learning may not produce deep engagement with the truly hard and uncertain questions in the field. Good teaching, in short, is really, really hard to measure, even for an individual teacher, much less for an entire faculty. Student satisfaction is part of it, but only a part, and probably not the most important part.</p>

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<p>Students learn more from engaging with faculty than from engaging with each other. Consequently, lecture style with opportunities for questions is most effective.</p>

<p>Faculty must be clear about what students are expected to learn. There should be a correspondance among lecture, reading, and exams. It should be organized, with goals, and assessment aimed at determining how well students met those goals. It certainly isn’t a crime to learn something unplanned but there should be a clear plan.</p>

<p>Is this what you perjoratively describe as a neat, tidy, package? You seem to favor an unplanned style of instruction. I wouldn’t call that effective teaching.</p>

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<p>In disciplines like literature and art, goals are more broad, and it might be advantageous in those disciplines for faculty to be more inventive and spontaneous.</p>

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<p>I’m not saying teaching should be unplanned or disorganized, I just think in a lot of disciplines there aren’t neat, tidy answers and to structure the course and present the materials as if there are is to do the students a grave disservice—a kind of educational malpractice in some cases, even if that’s what the students want. I also think one of the greatest gifts of a quality undergraduate education is “learning how to learn,” that is, how to investigate a subject and establish a research program and actively go out in pursuit of knowledge, rather than passively following someone else’s pre-packaged outline. But a lot of students have no patience for that kind of active learning, which is a lot more work but a lot more rewarding than the passive kind in which students are spoon-fed every step of the way. Good teaching can gently guide students in that direction and help students develop the research skills and the intellectual self-confidence to pursue knowledge on their own initiative. That’s more important than learning the particulars of any course they might take. </p>

<p>As for discussion, I think you’re just dead wrong. Students need to come to the discussion prepared and focused, and it’s the teacher’s job to structure the discussion, keep it on topic, advance the ball when it’s getting bogged down, and steer the discussion toward deeper insights. That’s a challenging task, and probably not many teachers do it well. But good teachers and good students rise to the occasion, and it can be a vehicle for students to engage much more deeply and gain much greater insight than if the students are simply sitting passively taking notes and asking clarifying questions. It’s not a question of “learning from each other” versus “learning from the teacher.” In a good discussion, the teacher and the students learn together through deep intellectual engagement, dialog, and probing, challenging questioning of each other’s assumptions and arguments, all under the guidance of a skilled and knowledgeable teacher/discussion leader. Of course it may depend on the subject matter. In a chemistry class, a lecture coupled with hands-on learning-by-doing in the lab is a tried-and-true formula; a discussion wouldn’t add much except as an additional opportunity for students to ask questions. But in a philosophy course, a literature course, or a history course, for example, discussion is indispensible to quality education.</p>

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<p>When students are prepared, a discussion can be very good… Say their job is to read a couple articles, a book, etc. , and then there is a discussion during class on the topic covered by the articles/book. By talking about the issues that the author addressed, I’d say the information is more easily retained than if they had seen a powerpoint or summary done by the professor. Yes, the professor is the one renown in the field, but students need to be able to think critically and form their own ideas and express them, not just repeat back information that was handed to them.</p>

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<p>One way to judge, albeit broadly, faculty would be where they are employed. Smaller LAC- type schools attract faculty where teaching is the focus and not research. if you wanted to be a researcher you would not teach at Davidson. Conversely if you wanted a lot of student interaction and have your job depend on how well you teach, then going to Yale or Michigan wouldnt be a good career move.</p>

<p>People who want a job teaching undergrads and enjoying that experience will gravitate to schools that focus on undergrads. I know there are exceptions but, primarily you will get better teachers at schools that focus on teaching. Simple but true.</p>

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<p>Swish14,
I don’t agree at all. The way you pose this assumes there’s a direct trade-off: either you’re a good teacher and not a good scholar, or vice versa. Not true. In fact, I think the very best teachers are also top scholars at the top of their fields. Again, it may depend on the field. In a lot of scientific disciplines it’s probably not easy to bring undergrads up to speed on cutting-edge research until they’ve mastered the basics, so top scholars are naturally going to get more out of working with grad students. Also, most LACs won’t be able to provide the kinds of fancy and sometimes very expensive labs they can get at a major research university. In the humanities, on the other hand, it’s quite different. I studied philosophy as an undergrad at a top public, Michigan and as a grad student at an Ivy, Princeton. Both had faculty departments that at the time were ranked among the best in the country, both in the top 5. In both departments the bulk of the undergrad teaching was done by full faculty members, not grad students. Some of these faculty members were outstanding teachers, others less so. But there was virtually no correlation with their scholarly standing; indeed, the very best of them were BOTH extraordinary scholars AND outstanding teachers, and their teaching was enriched by their intimate familiarity with all the cutting-edge scholarship in the field, much of it produced by themselves and their faculty colleagues and their peers on other top philosophy faculties with whom they were in close contact and scholarly dialog. And I suspect it’s that way in other humanities fields as well. That’s not to say you can’t get good teaching in the humanities at small LACs, or indeed that you can’t get good humanities scholarship at small LACs. Some of the philosophy faculty at Michigan and Princeton had started their teaching careers at small LACs. But they naturally gravitated toward the top philosophy faculties when they had the chance, partly perhaps for the prestige, but more importantly because of the enhanced scholarly opportunities created by being in the midst of other luminaries in the field on a daily basis. </p>

<p>Bottom liner, I think this myth that you only get good undergraduate teaching at a small, undergraduates-only LAC is just that, a pernicious myth. There’s simply no evidence that it’s true.</p>

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<p>So, what percentage of the tenure decision at an R1 institute is based on undergraduate teaching excellence? What percentage on publishing scholarly research?</p>

<p>At the end of the day, the priorities are spelled out in the tenure evaluations. Show me the money, if you will. I’ve never heard of tenure track faculty at an R1 institute being advised to make undergraduate teaching the top priority to ensure tenure.</p>

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<p>"So, what percentage of the tenure decision at an R1 institute is based on undergraduate teaching excellence? What percentage on publishing scholarly research?</p>

<p>At the end of the day, the priorities are spelled out in the tenure evaluations. Show me the money, if you will. I’ve never heard of tenure track faculty at an R1 institute being advised to make undergraduate teaching the top priority to ensure tenure."</p>

<p>So what? </p>

<p>You can’t be a good teacher if research is your number 1 priority? Some talented people can multitask. Some of my best professors were heavily involved in areas besides teaching. I don’t know. Maybe, a music professor who performed music with Art Tatum, or a science professor who worked at Lawrence Livermore Lab, or an economics professor who worked with high profile economic think tanks, is not as good at teaching as those with teaching as the priority.</p>

<p>I don’t believe that for a minute. ;)</p>

<p>Don’t professors at Lacs have to engage in research? A friend of a friend taught at a Lac and was told if she didn’t publish a set amount, no tenure. Clearly, she couldn’t be the only one. My cousin is a law professor. No tenure if he doesn’t publish a certain amount of works by a set date.</p>

<p>And I guess it works both ways. The next time somebody from a Lac publishes anything, I will know it is second rate because research isn’t priority number one.</p>

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<p>Hawkette, I am highly curious as to your motivation in initiating and guiding this discussion. I would appreciate an explicit statement of your goals. Are you using this forum as research for another venue?</p>