<p>Actually, adjunctified, the difference between six years and four years is one largely based on socio-economic status. I didn’t graduate in four years, and that fact I attribute almost entirely to being a first-generation student and having to finance my own way through college. Yet, I still managed to graduate cum laude and ended up at Chicago for grad school.</p>
<p>I don’t think that I’m an “insecure” Ohio State alum. I, however, am (from my work with the university foundation and development offices) one that is very much aware of how Miami of Ohio, and to a lesser degree many of the other Ohio publics, negatively recruit against Ohio State. </p>
<p>As a former liberal arts student (History and Russian Studies) at Ohio State, I can also state that my experience was almost entirely dealing with tenured or tenure-track faculty. Those classes that did have TA’s were only introductory freshman classes where the Professor organized and taught the main lectures for two days, and the TAs taught smaller recitations for the other two. After that, grad students were primarily confined to the occasional doctoral candidate lecturing the class for a day or two in on the subject of his dissertation. Gee, what a horrible experience of having a young scholar doing cutting edge research in a top 25 (History, Economics) or top 15 (Political Science) department lecturing us on his research.</p>
<p>My advisor edited one of the three major journals in his field (the other two were edited at Stanford and Oxford). I was afforded the opportunity my senior (and fifth) year to take graduate seminars with his doctoral students and also to do the same with graduate classes in philosophy and political science. I ended up with a degree from a top 25 History department and one of the dozen or so Title VI comprehensive research centers in Russian and East European Studies. Those are things that no Miami of Ohio student could have been offered simply because the necessary requirements simply do not exist there.</p>