Quality of faculty

The quality of the faculty is very important, but it's hard to judge in an accurate manner. If you are applying to grad school, how much the faculty publishes may be important, but professors who are more interested in doing research than teaching is not beneficial to undergrads. My advice to those applying for undergraduate programs is to look at somewhat smaller schools, you are more likely to find professors who think that teaching is important. I went to a small school as an undergrad, and I just took the fact that the professors cared for granted. But when I got to grad school at a larger university, it seemed that most of the professors just cared about their research, and teaching was just something that they had to do to keep their position. I've been a teaching assistant for a couple of years now, and for the most part the professors who teach the undergraduate classes don't do a very good job, and rarely care.

Of course everyone agrees that quality faculty are the cornerstone of any institution. Every college claims that it has great faculty, but surprisingly few of them are actually clear on what that means. Some seem to think that faculty are of high quality if they publish a lot. But having a professor on your side who has clout in the field is really important only at the graduate level. For undergrads, faculty who can take innovative approaches to the classrom make all the difference. But since colleges have been so lazy about developing ways of evaluating teaching, we all end up with substitutes like ratemyprofessors.com, which is silly and inadequate, but it fills a need. Students should demand information from prospective universities about how they recognize and reward good teaching, if at all.

While at face value, the quality of the faculty should be a top consideration when choosing your college or university; however, as a practical matter I'm not sure it can be (resulting in my three stars). First, as other comments have noted, this factor probably has less bearing on undergraduate than on graduate studies. Second, when evaluating faculty, higher education seems to overemphasize publishing and peer recognition (which feed on each other) than on actual ability to educate. When these are the measurements, rankings and peer evaluations border on meaningless for the typical student no matter which school is under consideration. As another comment noted, a good balance between big picture/detailed nuance (i.e. publishing) and real world information would be the ideal for the student to both prepare for a career and to excel over the competition. Third, it doesn't matter if a school has a great faculty overall (assuming a reasonable measurement) if the faculty members in the cu... Read more

Without a good faculty,you're not going to get a good education.No other feature will make up for a lack of quality here.

You want to get a good education but being an equestrian major it was very important. I chose Findlay because real top knotch trainers taught the riders. They knew horses and what it took to make a living in the industry and didn't baby anyone...you either had it or you got out.

yeah.. quality of the faculty is really a plus faactor!!!

A good thing, but how are faculty rated one school against another? All schools have good and bad educators, so be careful in picking classes. Ask friends, roommates, upperclassmen who they liked and hated.

In general this is extremely important, though when you begin an undergraduate program you may have no idea who your professors will actually be. But it is ten times as important if you are applying to graduate school--find out WHO is on the faculty in your program, and by all means talk to them, write them, learn about them, MEET them before taking that assistantship or fellowship. They're the ones who not only are teaching you--they are your advisors and will be on your committees.

This is very, very important. I want to ensure that I am going to attend a college where I am going to have pragmatic and wise professionals teaching me the things that I need to know to succeed in my chosen profession. I don't want professors who are going to integrate their own political views into their lectures- they are there to teach, not to preach.

If the faculty aren't recognized in their fields of study, nothing else on campus can compensate.

Faculty who contribute to the scholarship in their field are, over all, the best college teachers (thought they wouldn't necessarily be effective in a high school or a college of high school calibre).

It's important to have top notch coaches....the teachers at Universities don't do much anyway.

I think this matters more at the graduate level. Being an undergraduate doesn't quite make you a slave to the ideology of the faculty. . .grad students are more open to being punished by profs who want to impose their wills. Faculty quality is more important at the graduate level because those are the profs that will really guide your career. . .if you're lucky.

I think you also gotta look at the politicial ideology of the faculty... if you're college has all Marxists like NYU, then you're in trouble.

Obviously, the faculty that a university has should be a major factor when picking out a college. It is very easy just to read a book to learn about a certain discipline, but professors who have a "real world" outlook in their fields will be able to convey that sentiment to their students, thus creating a well-educated work force. I chose the university that I did (Florida International University) because the faculty for the most part are not Ivy League intellectuals, but are pragmatists who don't live in an ivory tower. They live in the community among the people.

10 Universities with the best faculty: Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Berkeley, Princeton, MIT, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Chicago & Michigan.