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Most Bothersome Wake Forest Development in the last 12 months? Pit/Tunnels Adjace

PhDeac said:
scooter, again none of things you fear happening would help chase rankings. Your fears are not legitimate.
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Imagine a school with 1000 students and 100 professors; a 10:1 student:faculty ratio. If the school decided it wanted to focus on undergrad education and small classrooms, they would hire, train, and encourage all professors to teach, which would result in very small classes (10 students per class). Conversely, if they decided they wanted to chase the new US News ranking methodology, since class size no longer matters, they would ask 10 professors to teach and 90 to conduct research and publish. This would result in large classes (100 students per class), but that wouldn't matter because class size no longer matters in US News rankings.

Removing class size wasn't a small tweak, it was the third most important variable last year (out of 17 variables) in their rankings. I think if you asked prospective academically minded students to rank the most important variables when choosing a college, class size would be at or very near the top of the list. Note that US News tried to still include a proxy measure of class size (student:faculty ratio), and they increased this importance in the liberal arts category, but as demonstrated above, this doesn't really get to the issue of class size. I think it's very possible that class size gets added to back next year or in the near future.

With the new methodology, US News has chosen to de-emphasize the undergraduate experience, and has prioritized research. That's OK, but the issue is that their rankings are mainly used by prospective students to choose colleges for their undergraduate experience.
 
donaldross said:
Scooter you are right we very much disagree about smaller classes.

I challenge you to go watch a small section at wake forest. No one interacts with the professor during the lecture. Y’all in the 1960s.
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I'm a professor. I teach small classes and large classes. The small classes are a significantly better learning experience for the students. I also have a child in college. He takes small and large classes, and he likes the small classes significantly better. In fact, the large classes all have small class sessions taught by TAs, because the school and professors recognize the value of small classes.

Do you all have kids in school? Do you like your kids to be in a classroom with 15 students or 45 students?
 
Of course schools need to evolve and adapt. But mebee don't be in too big of a rush to escape your past. It might catch you up.

stress+relief
 
donaldross said:
Wake Forest alums think it matters whether every Professor has a doctorate and that 30 students are listening to a one sided lecture rather than 80.

The rest of the world thinks it matters what income your graduates earn from the skills they learn and also whether the University has cutting edge researchers.

This sort of is what it is. We’ve chosen our old school values. America doesn’t share them. We haven’t acclimated, and now say that we will not even try.

We are choosing not to be a top ranked University. We think the rest of the world is nuts. Yet our graduates must venture into it. Prayers that they they find more success than the last generation of Wake Forest graduates found.
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Can we get your brilliance on the BOT and Executive committee of the Deacon Club? WFU would be so much better with your ideas!
 
Rafi, you know it’s often not either teaching or research. At that hypothetical university, there are several changes they could make. They could keep more research active faculty at a one course load and give less research active faculty an additional course. They could hire more faculty. None of this is an either/or.
 
scooter84 said:
Yes, I understand that but you definitely missed the point. Abandoning small class sizes, etc. could definitely help our ranking if we do so to focus on criteria that the formula values.
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Then they will move the goalposts again.
 
Rocket said:
Do Wake grads actually make less than students from other schools when controlling for field of study, location, or any other relevant factors? If so, I would tend to somewhat agree with you but I haven't seen that data and don't care to search for it.

If we have a higher percentage of students majoring in humanities or other soft sciences that don't pay as well then it makes sense we would have a lower average income then other schools. How do we compare in income if we compare by major? I think that's the more applicable measure.

And specifically for donaldross, what factors made you decide to attend Wake? Do you think you would be better off if you had chosen a different school?
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Tim Duncan and not getting into Duke.
 
Rafi said:
I'm a professor. I teach small classes and large classes. The small classes are a significantly better learning experience for the students. I also have a child in college. He takes small and large classes, and he likes the small classes significantly better. In fact, the large classes all have small class sessions taught by TAs, because the school and professors recognize the value of small classes.

Do you all have kids in school? Do you like your kids to be in a classroom with 15 students or 45 students?
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I have 2 in college today and one who recently graduated. I'm a parent with kids who see the world and learning differently
One prefers the anonymity of large classes. She grew up in an online world. She lived through Covid with online classes. She experiences learning differently than I did. The other one prefers small classes

you can't say small classes categorically are better. that's just silly.
 
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Hey, as long as students/their parents are willing to pay for the small class size experience, we should be all set!
 
PhDeac said:
I am a professor. And again, as someone who has evaluated grad students and evaluated faculty, I can tell you grad instructors (which are not the same as TAs) are not automatically less effective than professors. In fact, it's a contradictory argument to say professors who focus on research are less impactful in the classroom then say they're automatically better than grad students.

Small classes are great for some classes like senior seminars or higher-level elective courses where the professor may work directly with students on ongoing projects.

But after taking small classes as a student, taking and TAing for small classes as a grad student, and teaching small and large classes as a professor, small classes are not automatically better. A boring lecture in a small class is the same as a boring lecture in a large class. Class discussions can be interesting, insightful, and intimate in both classes. Students can be anonymous in either format or they can develop a relationship with the professor in either format. The classes I took with 30-35 classmates at Wake are classes I teach with 45-55 students at a much much larger university now. There's not that much difference. Either way, it comes down to how the teacher teaches and how the student learns, particularly whether or not the student takes the time to email the professor, attend office hours, seek help, etc.

By the way, large universities also have small classes. Y'all act like every class is in some massive lecture hall. If I offer an elective course and 15 students sign up for it, I teach 15 students. If 55 sign up for it, I teach 55. Some courses are capped at around 30 students. Some intro courses are in massive lecture hauls with one professor and a bunch of TAs. Others are in small sections. The students can choose which experience they want.
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Since you apparently don't value the things that make Wake Forest different, do you think we are accurately ranked as the 47th best University as opposed to between 25-30 where we have been for 3 decades?
 
scooter84 said:
Since you apparently don't value the things that make Wake Forest different, do you think we are accurately ranked as the 47th best University as opposed to between 25-30 where we have been for 3 decades?
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I don't think you can accurately rank universities. But it's something people do and a game universities play.
 
PhDeac said:
I don't think you can accurately rank universities. But it's something people do and a game universities play.
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I mean I basically agree that a numerical ranking of 1 to whatever is pretty silly, but, this particular ranking carries a lot of weight in the circles of kids looking at colleges. So, accurate or not, it matters.
If you don't want to nitpick 28 versus 47, or whatever, do you think the schools ranked around us now are correctly deemed our peers versus the schools that were formerly ranked in the same range as us?
Phrase the question however you want - are we actually a tier 3 school instead of a tier 2 school?
 
06deacon said:
You know what they say…if you see one incompetent teacher that’s probably accurate. If all you see is incompetent teachers, you’re probably a tier 2 student.
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Was lazy, but got in the only two schools
mako1331 said:
22 is definitely not doing himself any favors towards getting invited to the ct cool kids Thanksgiving Myrtle Beach meetup right now.
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I said there are many excellent teachers. Just like any profession, there are more bad ones than good ones. And in small towns, that’s particularly true.
 
Rafi said:
Imagine a school with 1000 students and 100 professors; a 10:1 student:faculty ratio. If the school decided it wanted to focus on undergrad education and small classrooms, they would hire, train, and encourage all professors to teach, which would result in very small classes (10 students per class). Conversely, if they decided they wanted to chase the new US News ranking methodology, since class size no longer matters, they would ask 10 professors to teach and 90 to conduct research and publish. This would result in large classes (100 students per class), but that wouldn't matter because class size no longer matters in US News rankings.

Removing class size wasn't a small tweak, it was the third most important variable last year (out of 17 variables) in their rankings. I think if you asked prospective academically minded students to rank the most important variables when choosing a college, class size would be at or very near the top of the list. Note that US News tried to still include a proxy measure of class size (student:faculty ratio), and they increased this importance in the liberal arts category, but as demonstrated above, this doesn't really get to the issue of class size. I think it's very possible that class size gets added to back next year or in the near future.

With the new methodology, US News has chosen to de-emphasize the undergraduate experience, and has prioritized research. That's OK, but the issue is that their rankings are mainly used by prospective students to choose colleges for their undergraduate experience.
Click to expand...
Class size was very important to me because all the folks in education told me how important it was. It never dawned on me that they were in education for a reason. Now that I'm in the real world I see first hand that was a giant myth.

My best classes at Wake, Duke and UNC had lots of folks in them whom I built relationships with. I became a multimillionaire leveraging those relationships. I have not a damn clue what they taught in the classes and I can assure you Russian history won't help you in life. Even if taught by a dude talking to 20 hungover students as opposed to 100.
 
scooter84 said:
I mean I basically agree that a numerical ranking of 1 to whatever is pretty silly, but, this particular ranking carries a lot of weight in the circles of kids looking at colleges. So, accurate or not, it matters.
If you don't want to nitpick 28 versus 47, or whatever, do you think the schools ranked around us now are correctly deemed our peers versus the schools that were formerly ranked in the same range as us?
Phrase the question however you want - are we actually a tier 3 school instead of a tier 2 school?
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TIERS!
 
Don't you mean multibillionaire? Multimillionaires are those idiots on the PGA Tour that didn't jump to LIV. Clearly, you are more successful than those loyal dolts.
 
PhDeac said:
I don't think you can accurately rank universities. But it's something people do and a game universities play.
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Do you think that it is possible to make quantitative or qualitative comparisons between universities? If yes, isn't then possible to generate rankings reflecting those evaluations? Obviously there is ample room for debate as to the correct metrics and methodologies, and to debate marginal differences in the evaluations, but it strikes me a odd to deny its possible to rank universities. Maybe the term "accurately" is the key or are you rejecting rankings categorically?
 
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