Quote:
Originally posted by Superman
Most large, well-known universities do more research than teaching. The teaching they do tends to be sterile. It's an education that you could get, if you worked at it, without ever entering a classroom. In fact, at most large universities, it can be pretty difficult to get a conference with your professor. I've heard of professors who are so enamored with their research and so contemptuous of their teaching duties that their conference schedule is once per week, for a half-hour, and only by phone!
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I went to a large state school (Illinois State - about 20,000 undergrads). Professors in my college (College of Business) were required to have something like two hours of office hours (conference time) each day! Then again, this particular school emphasized teaching over research...U of I is less than 50 miles away so it's hard to compete with them on research. I only had two classes taught by graduate students my entire four years there. Sure, some classes like Econ 101 had 400 people in them, but by senior year none of my classes exceeded 20 people. After I got my "general education" requirements out of the way, I made a point to introduce myself to each and every professor I had. (That really helped later on when I needed recommendations to get into certain classes.) Bottom line, there are some large state schools out there that are not research-driven.