I went to a very small college my freshman year…and a public university for the remainder of my college years. To be honest, I felt smothered at that small school. I loved the biggger one.
Some people just don’t want to be at teeny tiny colleges…at all.
But that doesn’t mean they don’t want some rigor to their college programs.
@WorryHurry411 what do you really want to know here?
@TheGreyKing A directional school is a state public school that is not the state flagship.
@TheGreyKing it’s a local public college that isn’t a community college but not a state flagship or major college. An example is Eastern Michigan University.
Thanks for the definition!
I went to UT (Texas) when the student population was 48K. I never had a TA as a primary instructor. I had a few for labs and small discussion groups only.
I have encountered the most amazing people/professors in places people want to live…the UP, northern and western Michigan, the western slopes of Colorado, Montana, northern California, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine…makes sense to me. Why would you want to be a tenured prof somewhere you don’t want to live. I’m sure there are dozens of others places. My two older kids at small colleges in cool places “best” thing about college was their professors…my youngest child on a Big 10 campusbiggest gripe is the lack of professors that actually teach and preponderance of TAs as teachers and TAs that don’t speak English. So sad.
The best directional school was the one invented by Peter Schickele, who “discovered” PDQ Bach. He taught at the University of Southern North Dakota.
I went to a community college with inspired teaching, on the Monterey Penninsula. Again, a place that many want to live. My later experience at a CSU was disappointing in comparison.
Would like to point out that part of the educational experience is your fellow students, and their enthusiasm for learning as well as aptitude. My Ds went to LACs with some wonderful teaching as well as motivated learners. One D sat in at our state flagship on some classes and was dismayed with the open laptops, and less engaged students. The open laptops were not done at her LAC, at least at that time.
Much of it comes down to what the actual individual student needs. A student struggling with basic concepts is not going to be able to appreciate the “seriously amazing professor” who is teaching 3 levels above his head. A student needing a lot of extra assistance is not going to get it from the “seriously amazing professor” who has a section of 250 students and 3 teaching assistants. Sometimes, the teaching assistant is much closer to the struggles of the freshman and sophomore students than the “seriously amazing professor” who has not been a sophomore in 30 years and can do all the problems in his sleep.
What you should be looking for is an academic environment that suits your child, not some abstract ideal which may or may not suit anyone.
LACs as a whole give you more contact with professors, but not necessarily higher quality professors. Those are two different questions, both valid.
I agree about the glut of PhDs leading to outstanding young faculty pretty much anywhere you go. This includes full-time staff at community colleges – the problem there is a lack of full-time staff, not its quality. IMHO, applicants should worry more about the quality of their fellow students, because there’s a much wider range in that population, and the professors have to teach to the students they have.
I actually really enjoyed many of my lectures, and they were given by professors (fossils) who had really gotten good at it. I also chose a major where classes were small and there was lots of interaction with professors. I worked with two of them on my honors thesis - I knew them both quite well already. One of my TAs was a million times better than the professor in charge of the course. One of the worst courses I took was taught by a guy who wrote one of the seminal books in his field.
@momofthreeboys, the glut of PhDs is so great that you don’t have to be someplace nice to live to find great talent among profs. Directionals and lower ranked colleges get some amazing people these days.
“and to be quite blunt the superstar researchers may not be great teachers but have a reputation for what they published” - Good point.
Just go look up his dept at some of your targets and see who teaches what, the prof backgrounds, interests and how active they are in their fields. Most of what you’d learn from a bunch of other posters is based on when we were in college or what we learn from our kids.
And doing this leg work (D1’s intended major was a subject not often taught or taught by non-specialists) was enlightening and helped us find the right schools. Why not try it? Go straight to the sources.
Oh come on. My best mentor was a faculty member who other students really didn’t like. He became my thesis advisor, and I corresponded with him frequent,y after I graduated. Loved the guy…and learned a ton from him.
My internationally known professor in undergrad…actually I had a few…were NOT folks people would write home about. But one is a sort of household name in my field. The other was a pioneer in his field but his prelim work was happening when I worked with him.
Point being…your KID might find a star mentor at Podunck University. You just never know.
I found that the tradeoff is going to a small college where the profs know your name and teach you, but
as a small school, they have few upper level classes in most majors. Limited profs in each dept.
Very limiting in choices of classes.
Larger unis will have a full course catalog but profs who are not there to teach and don’t care.
One of my boys goes to a mid size school and it seems like a good balance.
Lots of resources but the school does seem to care about undergrad learning.
Niche has a ranking of colleges with best professors. Rice University is #1.
And FYI a “directional” school has a direction (North, South, East or West) in its name.
So Rice has no bad profs? And they do have TA’s. Oops.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been here a long time and have realized that many posters use “directional” much more broadly than just those unis who have a direction in their name.
Like, when they prepare you for a career direction.