The age old debate: Are Elite College Courses Better?

Parents Forum
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I am a math prof with a doctorate from a top ranked university and teach at a directional university. Since the mid 1990’s, even smaller universities have a had their pick of PhD’s , and so faculty background is not so much of an issue - well, at least for full time, tenure-track faculty. The difference is in the level of assignments, exams and classroom atmosphere. All of this is driven by the student makeup and the capabilities of the middle 50%. The lower tier universities also tend to hire many adjunct faculty, especially in math - lots of courses, not enough FT faculty, and courses may not be as closely coordinated as in Big Flagship U. or Elite Private U. I think you are likely to see a lot of variance in teaching quality at all universities But with lower level students at lower tier universities, the variance in teaching quality makes a much bigger impact on student learning than at Big Flagship or Elite Private.

We are not allowed to post links to blogs. There is one by a higher ed administrator which discusses this issue (and more) for those interested. Google “Confessions of a Community College Dean”

BTW, if a parent has the qualifications to evaluate sample exams etc. of first year courses at various universities, it is worth the effort to ferret them out from the university websites, and judge for oneself.

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“lower level students at lower tier universities” - D’s Honors college eligibility at in-state public was top 2% of the HS class and ACT 31+. I would hardly call those 200 that got in “lower level students”. However, the fact is that it was a good number of these HS valedictorians who were derailed from their original track in the very first semester of Freshman year in the intro Bio class, that they were advised not to skip despite of having 5 on the AP Bio exam. Well, D. was shocked by the gap in academic level between her private HS (ranked #2 among privates in our state) and her intro classes at in-state public college. She also happened to graduate #1 in her HS class. Well, she adjusted her efforts up considerably in college and pulled it thru, those valedictorians (close to 100% of Honors kids were HS valedictorians) who did not realize that they needed to step up, got derailed. Also, this intro Bio class was taught by 3 profs at every lecture in a classroom each teaching his own subspecialty of this class. None of the D’s classes were taught by TA’s. Her HS friend at the private UG, had numerous classes taught by TAs.

Any judgment in this respect is very subjective. Take a science class, like Chem as an example There were numerous intro Chem. classes at D’s UG. They were different difficulty levels, for different majors, so how even one class like Chem. that had variety of offerings at one school could be compared to a Chem. class at different UG? I do not think that it is possible. You want to have a harder class, just take a harder class at your school. Not everybody wanted to take a Gen. Chem for engineers, my D. did not need it, she wanted to focus on many high level Bio and Neuroscience classes, so she took a lower level that served her actually very well all thru Med. School.

The student / college match is of essence of success at college. Thinking that Harvard is the best for a specific kid because of the Harvard name is wrong, it may backfire. My D. had no aspiration chasing admission to any Ivy / Elite. However, if someone had such a desire, why not? Just do not think that you would get a worse education and would be taking “worse” classes at your local unknown low ranked college. The person’s education is only in person’s hands, nobody and no place can make it happen. And if you say, good for you, it worked for your D. I wholeheartedly disagree, it has worked and it will work for any hard working student, the kid who are at college to meet any challenges and to take advantage of all resources and opportunities, guarantee.

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@mathprof63 : I think you hit the nail on the head with that one and what you speak of is what I am noticing at my current university for masters studies (at Georgia State University). First year and intermediate instructors seem overworked and understaffed to me which may explain why they can’t do but so much to challenge students or raise their level a bit. However, the honors section of some courses rival or are better done than many very selective colleges…the tiering continues. Back at Emory for my undergrad…there were always some standout instructors who were not trying to challenge students (because they simply don’t have time to deal with the fall-out, these were research faculty), but it wasn’t quite a majority at least in the sciences. Also, GSU has perverse incentives for making it easier or having sketchy grading such as increasing the graduation rate. At a selective school, students may kick, scream, and whine, but most will rise to the challenge well enough to pass, so affecting grad. rate is not much of a concern if an instructor chooses to challenge students.

There is also the following problem I see there: Many intro. science courses (I am in chemistry specifically) are using standardized finals such as the ACS for general and organic chemistry (there are some selective schools like Georgia Tech that do this, but I’m convinced it is because they may just be lazy for organic or something…they could also be using it as a de facto curve because they know most students should beat the national mean easily, trained well or not)…which means they must teach within the confines of that exam which is pretty limited I must say. Most teachers at my school went into FAR more depth because they could set their own standards and there was no need to kind of go over every reaction type and then teach them at a surface level. Their version of the course more so reminds of how many biology courses are taught, a mile wide and an inch deep (Unfortunately even many elites still also choose to teach general biology like this :frowning: …they just add more content load to challenge students a bit more, but they don’t necessarily require them to understand or apply it as I said above).

Either way, GSU and many schools like it may do this so that they (or mainly external evaluators such as the those who preside over highered in the state) can assure that their standards are up to par or at least near national averages. Selective schools don’t have to demonstrate this.

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Ask any professor of the humanities if he or she can teach the same class in European History or Russian Lit or Political Science to a group of kids with an average verbal SAT score of 500 vs. 750. Ask any professor of the humanities what it’s like teaching “America during the Cold War” to a group of kids who can read secondary sources for comprehension -but are lost if the assignment includes primary sources (transcripts, diaries, contemporary newspaper accounts) where they have to figure out their own taxonomy of what’s important and what’s not.

I have a relative who is a political science/legal theory professor and has taught at a wide range of schools. His favorite is the non-flagship state college- he found the kids highly motivated, some of them had real world experience in the criminal justice system (a parent on parole, the student on probation) which informed the discussions in a very meaningful way. BUT- you couldn’t assign the typical 300-500 page reading load per week that he did at the “elite” U. You couldn’t assign a research paper without directing the topic and creating the syllabus/list of sources. Not that the kids weren’t smart and motivated-- but their HS prep was so woeful in many ways that they couldn’t perform at the “college level” unless the expectations were toned down. And general cultural references- that a 20 year old should “get” from reading the newspaper- forget about it.

How does a kid write a research paper in college if they’ve never done anything besides a multiple choice test in HS???

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@blossom : Interestingly, the research paper thing can be a problem at elite colleges too, but just lesser so. It has been written about. Lots of students who think they know how to do it, but actually don’t. Then there is also the compounding issue of not really knowing how to use a library, especially ones as expansive as at these high tiered schools. It can make an assignment they are rather familiar with quite daunting. I personally found it exciting because in my first year English class, we got to do a paper on sources in the Rare Books Library :slight_smile: , but not everyone is initially comfortable with the level of independence needed to see the project through. The difference is that most students at a top tier can more or less “sail on through” the initial struggle.

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@MiamiDAP : let me clarify: there are varying levels of public universities below the top tier - I teach at a directional public which is at the third tier - below the tier of first and second tier publics . And the middle 50% , where the instruction is directed at, tend to drive the level of rigor. I was mainly commenting about the variance in teaching quality and how that affects lower level students, in particular. That’s not the same thing as saying everyone who attends the institution is of lower quality, or that the institution itself is of lower quality.

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In math, wouldn’t the students separate themselves by math ability “naturally”? I.e. the weaker-in-math students may start in remedial courses and then work only up to what is minimally required to graduate in their major (e.g. calculus for business majors), while the stronger-in-math ones may start in calculus 1 or higher and reach higher level courses for their heavier-in-math majors?

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@bernie12 very good point in #24 - I wholeheartedly agree - my S graduated last year from a very competitive, highly ranked public HS, and quite honestly was never challenged with an extensive research project. I can’t remember many details from my HS days, but I remember not only learning the methods, but actually doing the research, and completing several comprehensive research projects. I am waiting for my S’s first college assignment to do so, b/c I’m curious how he will respond.

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This is something I have wondered about myself and like @bernie12 I do not think there is any easy answer. There are differences in pace of instruction, expectations of depth of mastery, and expectations of preparation. At some schools, for instance, the typical student has taken the AP/IB/DE version of nearly all the pre-med or engineering prerequisites and might be better prepared to weather poor instruction or a fast pace than another student with similar or even higher SAT’s, who has not.

Other parents have told us, for instance, that what passes for gen chem these days at most elite schools and competitive state school honors colleges whose students have comparable stats, is taught at a level that was reserved for only the tippy-top students when they were undergrads at HYPM, probably in the seventies.

The version of gen chem that most students (including future physicians, scientists, and engineers) took is non-existent at many elite schools nowadays, and at state schools it is sometimes dominated by students who already got a good understanding of much of the material in high school but chose not to take the honors version.

OTOH, our high school’s grads have reported that intro STEM classes at many of our state directional universities are easier than the corresponding college prep classes at our high school.

And, the needs of students interested in developing deep understanding in one or more content areas are going to differ from those interested in getting a high GPA for professional school or even those who are focused on getting into graduate school. A student whose goal is to take advanced seminars with leading international experts in one or more fields of interest might find that the class is non-existent at a lower-ranked school, or exists in only a couple of departments.

I also agree that there are ways to inflate GPA at even the elite schools by paying close attention to strategy when selecting classes or planning out a schedule, and taking care to piggy-back on areas of strong high school preparation at least in the beginning. Few students who are doing well at elite schools are taking a “most rigorous” course load in college or taking multiple upper-level classes in areas with no overlap or outside of their comfort zones, although there are some.

What I am really wondering about is whether online instruction can replace large intro classes that grade on multiple choice and short answers.

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Badly. My sil flunked two courses first semester freshman year. Dropped out took classes at the U of Florida, realized maybe she wanted that Harvard degree after all, and came back with at least an idea of how to write a paper. She had high SAT scores, but her high school had taught her nothing.

Thankfully my kids got experience in writing research papers from day one in high school. My son was working with primary sources as a sophomore.

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My guess is that courses at Yale and University of Missouri are not very rigorous, given the current activities of many of the students :slight_smile:

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@TatinG : Cute lol, but Naw…Yalies and many students at elite schools have been juggling both high numbers of EC’s and “rigorous” courses for a while. I feel, if anything, the soft grading at Yale (even science grading is relatively soft compared to most elites except Stanford and Brown) can allow for more overindulgence outside of academics than other places, but if you look at the content of a Yale course, many will take most other types of schools for a ride, including other elites. It is just that the level of grade inflation says: “We will set high standards, but we don’t actually expect you to live up to them” lol.

With that said, One could maybe argue that B work in some of those courses requires a deeper understanding than normal. But then there is the nuance, of curved science courses at elite schools. Sometimes it can mask the deficiencies of the “perfect” students. For example, in my comparison of organic and physics classes…there may be schools with many sections with course directors who give the following types of exams if they decide to write challenging exams:

a)exams with a decent chunk of: “Yaah, you memorized the notes and problem types so you should get 1/2-2/3 of the exam” (much like most of a gen. chem exam-shade intended). As in the rest is application and maybe problem types that haven been seen before.
b)Exams with mostly new problem types or problems that are far more difficult versions of those done before (as in, they may not even resemble the rehearsed problems).

Curving for scenario a) allows average students to completely screw up the higher level problem types and get some sort of B grade (usually where curve is set at elite schools).So maybe a 60-70% average is not that special here.
Curving for scenario b) means that you have to have a pretty high level command of difficult material to even score, and much more to achieve a raw passing score on the exam before any curve is applied to the course. A 60% on this examination form is solid understanding and problem solving skills.

There is more masking in scenario b) than a). If exam a) was given to students at a less selective or lower tier school, many students will certainly pass it (average will be lower because more students will miss “gimme” points in greater proportions). Exam b) maybe not as much because you can’t really score without going quite a bit beyond memorization of the basic cases.

I’ve seen both of these scenarios, but students find acceptable strategies to improve on the first one more easily. Back at my school, for one organic instructor’s exam, one student said: “Didn’t do well on the first exam because I wasn’t used to an exam that had random applications for so much of the points, but for the second exam, I spent more time on the 1st half of the exam to ensure I got those points, and I didn’t really even bother that much with the second half”. This also reflects in the study habbits of most students in said instructor’s class. Many are just memorizing the basics and getting the lower level problem types on old exams like 1 day before the exam and don’t really even attempt to prepare for the higher level problems. Many more students in the other class get the lower level problem types down pat much earlier and start trying to understand key principles behind the more difficult practice problems because they know that the exam weighting is heavily biased toward them (furthermore, there is no “curve” in the class. Students must earn bonus points through pop quizzes or in-class problems on material that has not directly been taught in class yet). The second group of students have to stay on their toes and work more continuously (they also have real quizzes).

Even challenging students at elite schools can be a battle and to get the best result from them, you have to set up the right incentive structures or else we’ll just find shortcuts. You can tell that the second instructor must incorporate more elements (and thus do more work) into his course to ensure that most passing students come out able to solve high level problems. The other puts in a lot of work as well, but has more of a “damned if they do, damned if they don’t” approach and is content with only maybe 1/3 of the class coming out with really solid problem solving skills. The other is:“You can’t think, you get bad grade”.

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@ucbalumnus Majority of incoming students at our university (and at similar directionals) do not place into Calculus 1. They work their way up from College Algebra or Precalculus, so they are still fairly weak students when they get to calculus. They stay in STEM majors despite their weaknesses. So even the Calculus 1 and above students are weaker, in general, than the students taking that course at a more selective university.
Higher ed has become much more stratified than, say, 20 years ago. See post by @frazzled2thecore re: directional universities.

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the above makes sense. Other than for non-STEM majors, most selective universities offer nothing below calculus I (and even non-STEM majors basically only have one other option…stats)

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So much for “it doesn’t matter where you do your undergrad”! Of course it matters! Obviously, a student coming from the college type described above will get inferior education to the student coming out of more selective school.
Of course, one might argue that a motivated self-starter will get a good knowledge anywhere but somehow I have doubts about 17-year old “self-starters” who still didn’t make it into more rigorous colleges.

This is exactly why I am worrying about my S who is a classical “B+A” type. Doesn’t matter where he is, he still gets his Bs in the mixture. Only in a more rigorous environment he learns more and achieves more. Unfortunately, the colleges where he could work at his full potential are quite unlikely with his "B"s :-S

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@koshkas : Do not assume most students who attend selective colleges are self-starters (at least in the academic sense). Many/Most will find every possible way to avoid rigorous instruction at said institutions. At said rate, them attending the institution will effect their networking and EC opps. far more so than their educational outcome. There is too much incentive for students to merely come out of those institutions “looking” good academically which equates to A’s on the transcript. The goal for many is to use the selective college as a stepping stone to something better and that doesn’t necessarily mean coming out with more knowledge or thinking skills than before. If there ever was a day (it is debatable that it ever existed in the US) where tons of students went to these schools to “learn” just because…they are basically over. If you want, you can provide yourself with a so called “directional state” university at many elite schools and I’ve witnessed many opt into that sort of scheme, pre-professional or not. Both major and instructor selection were often merely based upon difficulty and not much else. Many students are willing to receive fairly poor instruction (as in the person has a reputation for providing poor instruction) for an A.

Take a look at the second comment on this RMP ratings page for an organic instructor at my alma mater. This is demonstrative of how many students think: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=240770

Basically: “I may struggle second semester, because I didn’t really learn much, but the A first semester is totally worth it!”…The only reason they got stuck with rigorous instruction second semester is because they had no choice (the one easy section of the 4 filled quickly).

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Here is a simple outsider’s view. When our ds was applying to schools, he met with several deans in the math/physics depts at different schools about how he might be placed in classes. (At that point he had taken multivariable, diffEQ, linear alg, and 5 semesters of cal up physics.) At one top 10 public, he was asked to submit his textbook/syllabi info for them to review. They actually called him on the phone a few weeks later and told him that they would accept all of his credits, most of which had been earned at a directional university.

Not sure that means anything, really, but he had been told by multiple “in the know” people that no way they would accept his credits.

Fwiw, he has had some top notch professors at his non-top schools. Some not so great ones, too, but some have been really good and have gone out of their way to offer him more outside of the classroom (lending him books from their personal libraries and giving him recommendations on additional projects to consider.)

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Actually, some highly selective schools do offer precalculus:

Princeton (100)
Cornell (1101)

or embedded precalculus in a two term calculus 1 sequence:

Harvard (Ma-Mb)
Brown (0050-0060)
Dartmouth (1-2)

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That is kind of shocking @ucbalumnus : Are science majors allowed to take it though? I mean, I’m sure many would be discouraged because it would offset their progress if intermediate courses demand knowledge of calculus. As for the latter three, I can imagine a scenario in which they just briefly roll over some pre-calc. in calc. 1 before the first exam and that’s it. It’s a somewhat common practice. What would be more interesting is to see enrollment figures for such courses. Are they populated well or not? If so, that would be very interesting. Emory doesn’t offer it on its main campus, but I can say that most calc.1/2 sections are underwhelming (even in comparison to AP…maybe because overworked grad. students teach the sections and don’t have time to challenge students…also many who have to take calc. 1/2 don’t plan to take more math or use it for subsequent courses so I guess it is merely a watered down service course…At places with engineering schools, you’ll have tiering such that there are calc. 1/2 for those folks and those who need the background for advanced courses and some for well…everyone else.) to say the least. Most AP folks who need solid math prep for their interests take an accelerated version of the second semester course or jump straight into intermediates and advanced courses. An honors (covers, multi, linear, and foundations over a 2 semester period…students will receive credit for all three if they complete both semesters) course was introduced this year and it got 25/30 freshmen, so that was impressive and surprising.

So I guess, when one thinks about it. You may offer a “fake” calc. class for the math challenged or transcript fillers, or you can split it into pre-calc. and a softer calc. class (that way, math challenged and those who simply don’t want to use AP credit/experience to place elsewhere don’t get thrown into the same section…you can avoid bimodal grade distributions by just prepping the math challenged before hand).

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I would imagine that anyone intending to take calculus who does not have sufficient preparation in precalculus concepts would be recommended to take precalculus first (or the slower paced calculus 1 with review of precalculus). Of course, for some majors, that can make it more difficult to graduate on schedule.

The precalculus review is presumably more extensive in those sequences (Harvard Ma-Mb, Brown 0050-0060, Dartmouth 1-2), since those are two term sequences that are equivalent to the normal one term calculus 1 course (Harvard 1a, Brown 0090, Dartmouth 3). After completing the two term sequence of calculus 1 with review of precalculus, students can take the normal calculus 2 course.

I would imagine that the enrollment in those courses is small at schools as selective as those.