Miami Oh should be #1! Outstanding professors strictly focused on teaching and developing undergraduates.
RedhawkCawof FL12:45AM May 24, 2012
This is extremely flawed methodology and, equally important, it is being used in a flawed way by many schools' "admissions marketing" departments.
First, to survey administrators OPINIONS about "commitment to teaching" tells you nothing about ACTUAL commitment to teaching, either by institutions or by individual instructors. Second, "commitment" is nice, but actual effectiveness is what students should really be interested in. This is, of course, notoriously hard to measure. However, even some measure of how much time faculty put into teaching would be better than the nonsense you report. I can assure you that at least one of the schools highly ranked using this methodology talks a good game but actually only rewards faculty for research productivity.
The other problem, not yours but presumably important to your readers, is how the marketers use this information. They regularly ignore the Carnegie category, which, among other things, means there are lots of "#1"s. It also invites absurd comparisons. Would anyone really want to say that a high ranking on this measure at a Research 1 university means "better undergraduate teaching" than at even a middling-rated liberal arts college? But that is the buzz that the marketers try to create, and it just ain't so!
Ivy Prof and LAC parentof CT9:35AM September 21, 2011
Oh please -- Yale, U of Chicago, and Clemson on a list of schools that supposedly put undergraduate teaching first? Everyone knows that Ivy League schools and many of their clones are famous because of their research and huge graduate programs, with the possible exception of Dartmouth and Brown. They are known for having professors that are largely inaccessible to undergrads and view them as a nuisance. And Clemson is no different than its land-grant peers throughout the country, where research, huge lecture classes, TAs are the norm, not undergraduate focus. William & Mary has a much better average class size and student-teacher ratio than most of the schools on the list, and it is public to boot, so you are getting those smaller class sizes and accessible professors for a fraction of the cost of many of them. Another school that should be high up on the list is Wake Forest. Anyone who knows these schools will laugh if they see you ranked Clemson ahead of Wake on caring about teaching. Clearly the factors being considered for you ranking methodology are quite flawed, because the reality that current students are experiencing is quite different than what your rankings would have prospective students believe.
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RedhawkCaw of FL 12:45AM May 24, 2012
Ivy Prof and LAC parent of CT 9:35AM September 21, 2011
College Mom of VA 8:49AM September 13, 2011