Graduate quality vs. undergraduate quality

beyphy
Thu, 30 Jan 2014 03:17:18 +0000

Over the last 20 years, USC has been focused on improving its undergraduate offerings, while kinda’ ignoring its graduate schools and research.

The accepted explanation is that US News is more weighted toward undergraduate programs, while the others are weighted toward research, graduate and professional programs.



Another accepted explanation is that U.S. News overrates private universities and underrates publics. All USC being in the top 25 means that it does well enough according to U.S. News’ criteria to be placed there.

And USC’s graduate programs are nothing to scoff at. Doesn’t its Chemistry department have two Nobel laureates on its faculty? While that doesn’t seem like much in comparison to other schools (e.g. Cal) you have to realize that most schools in the U.S. and the world have no Nobel faculty on staff or even Nobel affiliations. So for USC to have two Nobel laureate faculty at the same time in one department is pretty impressive.

On the other hand I don’t think you’re justified in concluding that USC’s ignoring its graduate programs while embracing its undergraduate ones. For USC to be the elite national university that it seeks to be, it has to improve it’s graduate programs. There’s simply no way around it, and that’s what their huge fundraiser is likely, in part, to fund. While I wouldn’t doubt that USC’s improved its offerings over the last 20 years, I also wouldn’t doubt that they’ve actively dabbled in the U.S News game either.



But do you have any actual examples of significant discrepancy between graduate and undergraduate quality for a given field (provided a college has both an undergraduate and a graduate program in that field)?



This doesn’t exactly answer your question, but I think it’s important to discuss exactly what ‘quality’ is supposed to be.

‘quality’ is a vague and subjective word, and is likely to mean different things to different people. When people generally say a college or university has ‘undergraduate quality,’ they’re generally talking about indicators of such supposed quality. These are indicators that may have little to any impact on the student’s success during college and after graduation. Whether those undergraduate quality indicators are important depend on a student’s individual needs and goals. There’s no university that’s great for everyone, and certainly no university, or college, that offers the ‘best undergraduate education in America.’

Undergraduate quality indicators are generally associated with liberal arts colleges as they have things that are supposed to conduce a nurturing undergraduate environment. These factors include things like small-classes, small student-to-faculty ratios, and intimate relationships with professors, among other factors. However, I’ve long thought that liberal arts colleges are particularly weak outside of the liberal arts. If you want to do heavy and rigorous study, in the sciences or mathematics for example, you’d generally be better served at a university than a LAC; If you want to develop you’re writing level heavily, you’d generally be served better at a LAC than a university; if you want to nurture yourself with some of the world’s leading faculty, that’s generally easier to do at a university than at a LAC. So again, whether a LAC or a univeristy would be quality or not for an undergraduate would depend on the student’s individual needs.