OT: University of Michigan stays at #12 in the world in terms of reputation

I believe that Illinois has one of the largest international student populations in the world as well...so I can see them coming in that high

An overcrowded lecture with little to no opportunity to interact with the professor, supplemented by a discussion section led by a graduate student . . . how many classes at this school does that describe?

As someone who was part of the second largest major at the university (i.e., psychology), I can honestly say that only intro-level courses are the huge lectures. Once I was past the survey-level, none of my classes were more than 100 people. And even in big 300+ person lectures, meeting and interacting with the professor was a function of just asking.

From a student stand point, it comes down to what you're looking for. If you want 4 years of small classes and a lot of direct interaction with professors, big research institutions are not where you should be going.

To be honest, I don't think i would have had a tremendously more beneficial educational experience if my psych 111 class was smaller. I would also imagine that your classroom size complaint is non-unique to any larger institution and is even worse at schools that use undergrads or nothing in place of where michigan uses graduate students (who are generally well qualified in their own right).

Also, there is more to an educational experience than how big your classrom is...

things like how information is presented, what information is presented, how information is tested (for example, our organic chemistry class used coursepacks that were all short answer which forced a deeper level of understanding vs. other schools using exclusively multiple choice), etc. that I think you are overlooking when it comes to education.

Regardless, all of my classes as an upperclassmen were not "overcrowded lecture with little to no opportunity to interact with the professor, supplemented by a discussion section led by a graduate student". Most were, in fact, in stark contrast to that.

Also, the list is measuring reputation....so its not really looking for what you are which is your perceived educational value/experience, which would be extraodrinarily more difficult to measure.

 

"An overcrowded lecture hall with little to no opportunity to interact with the professor, supplanted by a discussion section led by a graduate student...how many classes at this school does that describe."

I've never understood the argument about how class size and/or student to faculty ratio indicates a better college experience. It's college, not preschool. If someone needs a college with a maximum student to teacher ratio of 10:1, then go somewhere like Franklin and Marshall. It's smaller than many suburban high schools.

For me (and plenty of other students), a lecture in Lorch 140 with a discussion was great. I also had 300-level lectures with 20-30 people and 400-level classes ranging from 10s-100. Professors weren't available to hold hands 20-hours per week, but they also weren't as elusive as me being excited to walk to office hours in January. I don't need a former nobel prize winner teaching me Calc 2 and Anthro 101 (even though I really liked my Anthro professor).

Additionally, insert "standard other Michigan arguments like all the awesome student organizations, culture, opportunities that you can't get at a small liberal arts school with 1200 students" here.

I've had terrible GSI experiences, but that's more the exception than the rule, and seems limited to certain departments. The biggest block to teaching quality, IMO, is that some instructional staff (especially with Ivy League or SLAC backgrounds) don't take students very seriously. My students this term haven't been holding up their end of the bargain, and the reactions of some of the professors and grad students I've talked to have just been to disparage Michigan undergrads and, in effect, suggest that I respond by teaching them like they're in high school. But that kind of cynicism is absolutely deadly for educational effectiveness.

Anyway, in general, graduate students are almost as well-qualified as professors to teach intro courses. Graduate students in later stages are frequently better instructors than professors, insofar as there hasn't been as much radical weeding out for not being a specialized researcher, but we know more than enough to start undergraduates down the path. Further, it's not like most professors at research universities spend a lot of time learning about pedagogy between graduate school and the end of their careers. In fact, that's part of what makes it a research university, whose primary mission is--you guessed it--research.

Not to pile on, but just a quick response to this part:

In this country, we've basically decided that it's more important for a professor to be good at conducting research (and attracting grants) than it is to be good at teaching.

If you choose to attend a large research university, you're making the decision to be taught by world class researchers. The professor teaching your chemistry class might not be great at teaching, but he/she wil more than likely be pretty great at chemistry. The point is that they will be a world class chemist, but maybe not a world class educator.

Also, grants are a big reason universities like Michigan can be big. I don't think a lot of people realize how much of large universities funding comes from research v. tuition.

From the perspective of 30 years later than my undergraduate years, many of my clearest memories from the classroom were the massive 700+ lecture halls, simply because of the brilliance and eminence of the professor.  

I did not see any in the top 100.

Were

The military academies do no, or almost no, research.  That would seem to knock one out of this list.

As was said above, this list puts a lot of emphasis on grad school compared to undergrad, which does not play to either of those schools' strengths.