The educational environment students choose can impact their general intellectual development. In the case of the below study, liberal arts colleges appear to have supported their students’ cognitive development beyond that available through less focused institutions:
(Pascarella, Wong, Trolian and Blaich. Higher Education. 2013.)
National Science Foundation Rankings By Total R&D (research & development) Expenditures–2017
To illustrate the absurdity of comparing LACs to National Universities for research, examine the NSF rankings of 902 institutions by R&D expenditures.
Not a single LAC came in the top 320 schools when ranked by R&D expenditures.
The top ranked LAC, Bryn Mawr College, ranked #321 with over $11 million in R&D expenditures.
Amherst College came in at about #420 with just over $4 million dollars of research & development expenditures.
The Top 30 Schools By R&D Expenditures in 2017:
Johns Hopkins (JHU)–$2,562,307,000 (over $2.5 billion)
Univ. of Michigan–$1,530,139,000
UC-SF–$1,409,398,000
UPenn–$1,374,293,000
Univ. of Washington–Seattle–$1,348,220,000
Emory University–$664,000,000
Amherst College at about #420 with $4,000,000.
National Science Foundation Ranking of Schools By R&D Expenditures for 2017:
6)Wisconsin–$1,193,000,000
7) Duke–$1,126,000,000
8) Harvard–$1,123,000,000
9) Stanford–$1,109,000,000
10) UNC-Chapel Hill–$1,102,000,000
Cornell–$984,000,000
MIT–$952,000,000
Yale–$951,000,000
Univ. of Pittsburgh–$939,000,000
Minnesota–$921,000,000
NYU–$917,000,000
Texas A&M System–$905,000,000
Columbia–$893,000,000
Ohio State–$864,000,000
Penn State–$854,000,000
Georgia Tech–$804,000,000
Univ. of Florida–$801,000,000
UCal-Berkeley–$770,000,000
USC–$764,000,000
WashUStL–$754,000,000
Northwestern University–$751,000,000
Vanderbilt–$712,000,000
Michigan State Univ.–$694,000,000
Rutgers NB–$681,000,000
Emory University–$664,000,000
The Top Ranked LAC for R&D expenditures in 2017:
OP wants to participate in research.
OP’s options are by 2017 R&D expenditures:
Michigan–$1,530,000,000
UPenn–$1,374,000,000
UNC–$1,102,000,000
USC–$764,000,000
Emory–$664,000,000
LAC: Amherst College–$4,070,000
LAC: Swarthmore College–$3,569,000
Even the “LAC-like teaching focus on undergraduate students” Ivies–Dartmouth College & Princeton University–have massive R&D expenditures compared to any LAC.
I don’t care how well funded they are for research, no undergrads are getting research opportunities at UCSF. ?
Are there any lists which detail research dollars per student enrolled?
Well, actually there are a few undergrads and HS (Lowell) students doing research at UCSF. :grimace:
https://mstp.ucsf.edu/summer-research-training-program
https://mstp.ucsf.edu/lowell-high-summer-program-and-symposium
Regarding your post #40 above which cites & quotes “How The Instructional & Learning Environments of LACs Enhance Cognitive Development”:
Should we alert:
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, UPenn, Cornell, Brown, Northwestern, UChicago, CalTech, MIT, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Rice, WashUStL, UCal-Berkeley, UCLA, WashUStL, Emory, Georgetown, USC, Carnegie Mellon Univ., Wake Forest, UVirginia, Michigan, Georgia Tech, NYU, Tufts, UNC, Wisconsin, William & Mary, Lehigh, Boston College, Boston University, the entire UC system, Northeastern, Villanova, Illinois, Texas, Ohio State, Penn State, Syracuse, Minnesota, Fordham, SMU, Pittsburgh, the SUNY system, UMass-Amherst, GWU, Rutgers, Clemson, Purdue, all state flagships & all public university honors colleges & programs–
that they are doing it all wrong ?
That the above listed “less focused institutions” (Ivy League schools & such) are not “supporting their students’ cognitive development” as well as an American liberal arts college because LACs “increase one’s exposure to clear and organized classroom instruction” which “enhances one’s use of deep approaches to learning” ?
On this basis, the American high school system should be the model for higher education.
Why are LACs & LAC supporters so insecure ?
@merc81: Not sure, but I will wager that none of the authors of the case study involving 17 schools ever went to law school if “clear and organized instruction” is the key to “enhancing one’s use of deep approaches to learning”.
Sorry, Socrates, apparently you, the Ivy League schools and all of the most famous & accomplished universities in the US, and all US law schools are wrong, wrong, wrong. Only LACs have it right, right, right.
P.S. And I am holding my tongue regarding US medical schools ! Wasting time on cadavers & rotationals and such when they could be in a classroom being spoonfed material !!!
Three of the four authors of the referenced study (reply #40) hold university positions.
The study cited by you was funded by an LAC–tiny, all male, 880 student, Wabash College in Indiana.
The “research” included surveys of almost 4,200 first year students from 17 schools.
Not surprisingly, 11 of the 17 schools were private LACs, 3 were “regional institutions”, and just 3 were “research universities”.
Also not surprisingly, the article failed to reveal any of the schools whose students participated in the paid study ($50).
@merc81 wrote:
“Three of the four authors of the referenced study (reply #40) hold university positions.”
I find it interesting that an LAC would hire research university staff to do research. (I wonder if the 3 university staffers did the “research” while the fourth non-university hire handed out the checks. 
)
The “research” article is a bit difficult to take seriously. My impression is that the study was funded by the tiny LAC in order to justify its existence.
“In the case of the below study, liberal arts colleges appear to have supported their students’ cognitive development beyond that available through less focused institutions:”
Apart from being partially funded by a LAC, this was their note of caution:
“While there were 11 liberal arts colleges in the sample, the comparison groups of research universities and regional institutions consisted of only three such institutions respectively. This constitutes an unequivocal limitation of the study. Consequently, with respect to generalizing to all four-year institutions, and particularly to research universities and regional institutions, the effects we uncovered must be viewed with substantial caution.”
Because there were only 3 national universities and 3 regional universities, they had to put in the phrases: unequivocal limitation and substantial caution.
I have other issues as well in terms of what they studied (mostly things a LAC does, and not a RU does wrt STEM subjects), unless they reveal the 17 colleges, it would be hard take much from this.
“the effects we uncovered must be viewed with substantial caution” = we were paid to write this BS.
I am a physician-scientist who graduated from Amherst. I have been a faculty member at several of the major research universities in the U.S-Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Duke. I would say that in terms of research opportunities, there are more undergraduate research opportunities at major research universities. It also is more likely to be cutting edge and the work environment will be more representative of what one will typically expect if one chooses science as career. If you want the best research experience as an undergrad, then attending a research university will give you the most opportunities to do so. However, it also is likely that your research experience will involve working with a post-doc rather than a faculty member. This may be fine since major research universities tend to draw the next generation of leaders in science. However, the primary goal for a post-doc is to generate data and to publish important papers rather than to teach; so the student’s learning experience in the laboratory will highly depend upon the willingness and ability of the post-doc to teach. Furthermore, learning to do research as an undergrad is only one facet in preparing for a scientific career.
I would say that students at Amherst and other LACs will get better teaching and possibly better mentoring in the sciences than at major research universities. They will have much closer interactions with professors if they choose to do their research at Amherst. The critical thinking and discussions encouraged in small, intimate science classes will be different than the way one learns the same material when the professor presents it to 400 students in a lecture format. Additionally, many Amherst students also will do research at other institutions (perhaps near their homes) during the summer. I recommend it highly for LAC students as a type of internship experience if they are considering a career in science in order to see what type of lifestyle that entails. I previously have hosted several Amherst students in my laboratory. However, I believe that there are hard to define, perhaps intangible, benefits to learning science at a liberal arts college, that seem to provide a strong foundation for success in science. Perhaps it is the broad liberal arts education, development of good writing and communication skills, encouragement to pursue one’s passion, and excellent mentoring that has enabled places like Amherst to train Nobel laureates in a much higher proportion than many primarily research institutions. https://www.nature.com/news/where-nobel-winners-get-their-start-1.20757 In this article in Nature, Amherst ranked in the top 10 institutions for producing Nobel Prize winners on a per capita basis. It probably is ranked even higher now since this list was compiled in 2016 and another Amherst alum, Jeffrey Hall, received a Nobel in 2017. Since Amherst may only have about 20-25% science majors per class, and this list was determined on a capita basis, it is amazing that it is just behind MIT which certainly has a much higher percentage of students majoring in the sciences than Amherst.