Yesterday’s post on how colleges are failing Generation Y explored the collapse of our education system. There were so many good comments from that post, I incorporated several into today’s post which explores some ideas on how to re-build:
1. Get rid of most tenured full-time professors.
This is already the reality. The New York Times reports that in 1960, 75 percent of college instructors were full-time tenured or on the tenure-track. Today, a mere 27 percent are.
Talented faculty employed purely on a per-course or yearly contract basis don’t receive any benefits, earn a third or less of their tenured colleagues, and are “treated as second-class citizens on most campuses,” the Times aruges. So, we need to create a system that rewards – and grants tenure – to those instructors who aren’t working full-time.
Why? Consider that “professoring part-time is already a hobby for overachieving architects, graphic designers, lawyers and entrepreneurs, all of whom can share insights from real-world experiences that full-time academics haven’t had.” Professors who solely exist in the academic vacuum will never contribute to an educational system that keeps up with today’s frenetic pace.
Instructors could divide their time between 20% research, 30% teaching and 50% real-world experience. Those same instructors would be awarded tenure to garner the respect, input and weight as a resident professor does today. What a luxurious and significant appointment that would be!
2. Create cross-curricular programs focused on foundational skills, not breadth of topic.
Carol Phillips teaches marketing at the University of Notre Dame and noted, “I work very hard to make the class relevant, but reality is that what I teach is likely to be old hat by the time my students graduate… Five years ago I was talking about BMW Films, now it’s Twitter. Five years from now it will be something else. It doesn’t really matter, the principles endure. Relevance is overrated.”
It’s quite possible that the field you work in today won’t exist in five years, or will be unrecognizable in its current form. Today’s jobs aren’t representative of a factory line, but instead require employees to make connections between fields and ideas, and be responsive and flexible to change.
No longer is your career a set of skills applicable to a single position. Colleges need to concentrate less on checking on the latest trends in their syllabi and more on foundational skill sets that will transfer from job to job, and moreover how to apply those skills in a myriad of areas.
3. Build continuing education, not grad school.
“I’m supposed to learn everything I need to know for the rest of my life in 4 years between the ages of 18 and 22? Give me a break,” says Sam Davidson.
When education fails, so too do the businesses and innovations built upon its foundation. Graduates move into real-world jobs that leave them confined to cubicles, engaging in little professional development, and otherwise left to reading books, and in some cases, writing blogs for further intellectual development.
Conferences aren’t built for learning, but networking. Grad school isn’t much better. You could turn to your alma mater’s continuing education program, but the classes offered are based more on a person’s hobbies than scholarly achievement. Like, I love taking the adult dance classes, but I really wish UW offered some history classes. Maybe philosophy. The exact courses many colleges are cutting, let alone offering as a continuation after your graduate.
An educational system that views learning as continual and ongoing would go a long way towards alleviating the fears students have of picking a major, picking a career, a life path, and trying to squeeze all of their erudition into four to six years. It’s a tragic disappointment that we look at education as something to be finished. It takes the fun and curiosity out of learning, and it’s why a great number of students don’t enjoy school or are just plain bored.
Students will always have a choice of how hard to push themselves. A university’s job is to serve up the challenges when you do. This list is only the beginning; I’d love to hear your thoughts.
What do you think? Are these realistic? What are your ideas to improve education? Do you expect change to happen any time soon?
32 replies on “3 Ways to Upgrade College”
Very sharp points. Some of those ideas are in the beginning of revision at the college that I’m attend now, but there’s still a lot of flaws with them. I was planning to blog about something along the lines of your entries today and yesterday for my next entry.
Hi Rebecca,
Very thought-provoking post! I think you draw some reasonable conclusions– Maybe I’m too big of a nerd (probably true), but I cannot help but think: maybe it’s not a problem with the system, maybe it’s a problem with us?
“Professors who solely exist in the academic vacuum will never contribute to an educational system that keeps up with today’s frenetic pace.” I disagree. Tenured professors know a LOT of great people and they are, in my experience, the most fabulous resources. Also, school is–by nature– academic, and the “real word” is often very different than academia– but we are in the academic sphere for 4 years. (If we wanted real-word focus, we’d have skipped college). In my undergrad institution, we really looked up to tenured professors. They had often *already* made a name for themselves and knew how to do it better than anyone else. They were the ultimate resource.
For #2- ARE colleges focusing on the latest trend and leaving it at that, or using current examples to explore ways of thinking?
Also, I totally agree with the line, “It’s a tragic disappointment that we look at education as something to be finished.” That is very well said. I like your end-thoughts, too! Great post (as always!) Education issues always get-my-goat because I think we often have a sense of entitlement when it comes to college-level education and folks sometimes expect not to have to think for themselves– which ties back to your point that it’s a shame that education is often thought of as something to be finished.
End novel. Thanks for the terrific thought-food, Rebecca!!
@ Stanley – That’s great to hear. I hope you do blog about your thoughts and what’s going on – I’d love to hear an extended perspective.
@ Colleen – You’re right. I had put that tenured professors were still needed and extremely valuable (I had my favorites too!), but cut it out for space. I see now it doesn’t make as much sense without it.
Re: #2, I was referencing the trend that colleges are cutting majors and trying to add new ones that reflect today’s society. This is common practice, and surely we do need that, but we also need a focus on the core knowledge that colleges could do a better time spreading and explaining how to use. Thanks for the comment!
Thanks again for raising discussion on this very relevant topic.
Can you please explain your position on tenured professors though? I’m not clear on what you are advocating to change — are you looking to cut tenureship altogether or keep it going, but in a modified form (with the %s you note)?
I used to work as a part-time professor (in addition to my full-time job), but found the pay so meagre and the time commitment so great that I quit. But it pained me to quit because I did really love it. So, it’s a topic that’s of real interest to me.
Rebecca, you know I love you and what you do, and I sincerely appreciate the spirit in which you write this post, but you are missing the mark on this for several reasons.
Your point one, your own statistics don’t support your point. If only 27 percent of faculty are tenured, then tenure cannot be a big systemic problem. I agree with you that it has a big downside in that it leads too many to get comfortable and complacent, but it also exists for a reason.
You also don’t understand what it is we are TRAINED to do. My Ph.D. trained me to be a scientist, NOT a teacher. I spent 5 years of my life as an adult living in poverty as a student to that I could retool myself to conduct scientific research on the discipline I love – management. So to think that only 20% of my time should be spent practing the primary thing I was trained to do is not realistic.
And the reason I do research is so that I can be a better teacher. Scientists create new knowledge, new understanding. As a student, you are primarily a consumer of knowledge. You don’t want another consumer of knowledge teaching you. My children study Tae Kwon Do. For the 3-4 years it takes to prepare to become a black belt, they take classes from a variety of other black belts at the school. But for the final year long class to black belt, only the master teaches that class.
You don’t understand me and my world, which if I hear you correctly, is exactly your complaint about folks like me and the system we represent.
Love what you are doing, Rebecca. Keep up the good work. Bret
This is very good. I’m very interested in the future of education as well, and I love to see other young people in the same situation.
I will be going through these last two posts thoroughly on the next few days and write my follow up in OwlSparks as soon as things settle down a little bit. You’ve inspired many, congratulations Rebecca.
I have to echo that tenured professors need to stay. It is these “academics” that chair committees. Someone needs to stay around the university, accessible to the department, students, and other faculty. However, professors who are not tenured should not be looked down upon. Unfortunately some people become arrogant when they have letters after their name.
@coffeewithjulie @Bret @JohnO- So I didn’t do a good job explaining the tenure bit. It’s not tenure I have a problem with, but rather the full-time nature and full-time academic bit that I would love to see changed. Partly the mindset needs to change, and partly the structure. As I mentioned to Colleen above, I don’t want to get rid of full-time professors all-together – heck, I wanted to be a professor for a good portion of my life – (though I don’t think that would be a tragedy), but rather encourage professors to have more partnerships with the real-world. A good portion of my favorite professors in college were those who were teaching part-time and also had a job, or had just come from the real-world. Here’s the major point. We need to RESPECT those adjunct faculty as having just as much value as someone like you, Bret. The attitude that the real-world has value in an academic setting is what I’m after. I changed that point to get rid of “most” to help clarify, but hopefully this comment does more in elucidating the main point.
@ Carlos – Can’t wait to see your follow-up post. I have several more in my head as well, but I’ll try to spread them out a bit over the next couple months.
I agree with your point that colleges should be focused on building foundational skills rather than keeping up with the latest trends, but in my experience, most professors try to use current or timely case studies to illustrate fundamental skills and concepts.
Though instructors who have real world experience may be able to provide better examples of the application of concepts they’re teaching, I found that many were far less successful as teachers than they were as businessmen/women. Your suggestion of dividing their time between research/teaching/work seems great in theory, but do the people who simply “moonlight” as professors have any real interest in doing scholarly research? I’ve looked into completing both my MBA and my PhD, and from what my professors told me, the educational requirements of each degree are totally different.
Your last point is terrific. I can’t imagine feeling like my education was complete just because I’d received my diploma and made the obligatory trek across the stage. But I am a little confused about your feelings on grad school – do you think that going back and completing an advanced degree in a set time frame is less desirable than completing education on an on-going basis? Do you think we should scrap the traditional grad school model all together and instead move to an a la carte based model?
Great post! Definitely a lot of food for thought.
Rebecca,
Instructors could divide their time between 20% research, 30% teaching and 50% real-world experience. Those same instructors would be awarded tenure to garner the respect, input and weight as a resident professor does today.
This point above is truly profound. If this could be implemented across college campuses the students would be able to contribute to their first job instead of a learning experience.
With the comment about development I completely agree especially in this tougher time. So many employees are seeking professional development on their own. This perhaps is not a bad thing for the person maybe not so good for the company. What it will do is have the employee start their own trends and have them start thinking about something more. This could be bad for the company though because if the employee feels they have outgrown the position they will not stay in it.
Love the topic have a great day!
Scott
I think I’m going to echo some of the other comments. I have to disagree with your first point. While I agree that in some programs, have a professor that has had real world experience. In fact, I know that my graduate program was enriched by the “prac-ademics”; those professors that worked in the trenches before mounting the ivory tower.
But my undergraduate experience, where I studied Religion and Philosophy was dominated by people who had worked in academic their entire career. And it was amazing to work with professors who, literally, spend their lives thinking about and discussing the most basic problems of human existence.
In regards to your other points, there are schools that do what you are proposing. They are called vocational schools- the Kaplans and Devrys and University of Phoenixes- of the world. And no one really likes those schools.
In terms of schools teaching foundational topics, they do. And that creates “generalists” and in my job search I’ve found that people want people who have specialized in something.
It is a tragedy that schools don’t view learning as continual and life-long, maybe that’s why so many of my friends (and myself) are serial graduate schoolers. We’ve taken it upon ourselves to learn all we can.
Rebecca,
I think the drop in tenured professors is similar to shortened tenures in many careers. Engineers will change careers ten times on average. We are moving to an age where people view their work as contract work for a given organization.
Regarding continued education, I think part of the experience and growth students gain comes from the activity of “learning” outside of the traditional educational environment. I view continued education as the knowledge and skills you develop after graduation.
Thanks!
Kevin
@ Ellen – See my comment to everyone above; I’m talking more about the mindset. <http://modite.com/blog/2010/01/07/2007/07/23/skip-grad-school-life-is-better-with-experience/“>Here are my thoughts on grad school. In some instances, especially for professional degrees like law, medicine, etc. you need extra schooling, but I would love to see a model that creates ongoing educational opportunities that don’t have a defined time and that can be done in conjunction with your everyday work. Thanks for the comment!
@ Scott – I’m with you that professional development is a joke. It’d be great to see schools and employers working together to put together meaningful PD activities – that would be a great partnership!
@ Monica – Yes, please see my reply to the other folks. I don’t know what you’re talking about that the vocational schools already do this stuff. But the vocational/tech schools I know of – MATC in Madison, for instance, are thriving. Finally, this whole generalist/specialist argument is really getting to me! I’ll have to write a whole post on it, but it is extremely rare that you would need to be a specialist. Employers are looking for you to be able to use your skills to build results for their company. It’s about results, not experience.
@ Kevin – Yes, the research shows you’re right on in terms of how people view work. Interesting thoughts on continuing education. For me, I would love more opportunities to learn in the fields I’m interested in. For instance, I work in PR now, but I have no PR or marketing experience. I’m doing a good job (knock on wood), but it would be great to supplement the skills I’m applying from past jobs with education in this new field. If that makes sense ; )
These are brilliant suggestions, but I do not think that we will see them implemented anytime soon.
Which is unfortunate, because I believe that they could also be applied to the political ruling class as well. Perhaps the results of the 2010 election cycle will drive some much-needed change into the political and academic cultures.
These are such good topics, Rebecca and I think your points are largely realistic.
I came from a small college (under 5,000 students) and their approach, is extremely unique. I can honestly say that my four years at Champlain College prepared me (shot putted me) above my peers for the real-world, realistic experience I gained there.
Every professor at Champlain comes from their profession. This covers your second point. My business professor owned his own business. My public relations professor worked at Cohn&Wolfe for 20 years (and still did freelance PR as she taught). We always worked directly with real businesses or clients and that goes for the education students, the criminal justice students and graphic designers, etc.. It was all applicable and since I was a sophomore–on, I was getting feedback from real businesses about the projects I created for them. That’s very real life, especially for a 19-year old. They also encouraged and usually required 2+ internships.
Lastly, to the continuing education point, they broke down education in three components: professional, academic and life experience/action dimension. This means every incoming student engages in each. The life experience/action dimension focuses on practical aspects like balancing your checkbook, learning your finances, creating a blog, etc. They give you skills you need to be a lifelong learner. This piece is pretty unique.
So it is possible and those points you bring up are extremely enriching. I felt part of a community (granted, it’s a smaller college, but all reasons why I wanted to be part of a smaller college). I’m curious to see what other people think…great post, got me thinking :)
This is one of my favorite series of posts you’ve done.
And, as you can see, it’s inspired and provoked many.
As someone who has a longer-term goal to teach at the university level, if that happens, I hope to be able to bring to bear on my students a lot of what you hit on. How can I (like Carol says) teach them not just facts and concepts, but how to learn? How to gather and synthesize information and then make conclusions?
Decision making – that’s what colleges should be teaching. It’s not a sexy (or easily identifiable) major, though.
When it comes time for me to teach, I’ll do so out of my experience (nonprofit management and social entrepreneurship). It’s an emerging field – one where theory is formed out of lived experience. This is something that energizes me, and is the only thing I could stomach to teach.
You could very well start writing just about university education today and develop quite a following. This topic isn’t (shouldn’t be) going away anytime soon.
1. Tenured Faculty: I had several adjuncts in both undergrad and grad school (which I attended mostly because of a lack of job prospects), some were great, as in I took anything they taught because of how amazing they are, and others were almost worthless. The same goes for tenured, full time faculty, but with more of the good and ok variety in the middle.
Two of my best professors in graduate school were both full time faculty (1 tenured, the other tenure track). One professor was over the graduate program, a grad and undergrad professor and a city manager (I went to a public administration program, with nonprofit emphasis), the other was a full time professor (grad and undergrad) who liked to work with local nonprofit and governmental agencies doing work for them as part of his research. These two combined your suggested research and real world categories into one quite nicely. While I do recognize that they are the exception, and perhaps in other fields their combination isn’t as easy, but this is a way that tenured/full time professors might work towards something beyond straight research to incorporate that real-world aspect without having to do a complete overhaul on the system.
2. Foundational skills: YES! Some of my courses did this, others did not. I use the foundational skills constantly at work and would have a hard time remembering what the others are at this point.
3. Continuing Education, not grad school: One reason I went to grad school is because I couldn’t find a job with my major (admittedly, this was not surprising to me). I’m very glad I did, but continuing education would still be amazing. I’d love to learn new tricks and see what the current buzzwords are without having to spend hours online wading through the newest field journals. Even something along the lines of a newsletter would be helpful.
Change: The changes will start with people and trickle down. It’ll take years, decades probably. I graduated (both times) from a department with older professors (1 under 50, aside from adjuncts who were mostly under 40), and with that came a particular mindset which the younger professor all but ignored. He was very certain to give us a “tool box” that we could use when we left school and went out into the “real world.” He did not teach us to use the fancy statistical software that the university paid who knows how much for, instead he taught us how to do those same things in Excel. Why not use the fancy expensive stuff? For the vast majority of us, our potential employers would not dream of spending the money on that, but they’d buy Microsoft Office. So, we learned to use what we’d have, not the fancy stuff that my boss has never heard of, and wouldn’t dream of giving me the money to buy with all the other budgetary constraints.
I love the idea of this, I think you’re totally on track. We just have to wait for the change to start and then for it to go through. Oh, and I did spend 6 years in school, 7 if you count the year I took to write my masters paper. 7 years, 4 summers in class, 2 degrees and about a year of extra undergrad credits.
“An educational system that views learning as continual and ongoing would go a long way towards alleviating the fears students have of picking a major, picking a career, a life path, and trying to squeeze all of their erudition into four to six years. It’s a tragic disappointment that we look at education as something to be finished.” This is my favorite part of your post here. I know that both Carlos Miceli at OwlSparks and I wrote about “The End of Education” on our blogs last month, and so it’s certainly something that a lot of people here are concerned with.
I do think that the system on continuing education will change quickly–but that could be a good thing or a bad thing depending how which guidelines are shaping its new formation. When things happen too quickly, not enough thought is put into the new programs. But then again if continuing education doesn’t shape up sooner rather than later I won’t be able to reap the benefits of CE. Post-bachelor’s degree certificate programs really are not given enough credit these days and one thing I’d like to see are more options for smaller, long-term (or short-term) continuing education programs for working adults interested in expanding their horizons.
You forgot one last thing, MONEY! Schools are given federal funds, without any link to their performance. Most families are appalled when they find out their college’s 4-year graduation rate. UW-Oshkosh 14%! Many private colleges blow publics out of the water in this category. I say give more funding to the schools that do the best at graduating students and placing them in careers. Now, most of the Pell grants, wind up going to for profit online colleges U. Phoenix, Kaplan, etc. Most of these have lower than 10% graduation rates.
I see no problem with going to grad. school for the networking opportunities. To be frank, they can be much better than the networking opportunities you find blogging, if you go to the right school. Having done both, I definitely disagree that blogging can in any way make up for the face-to-face project interaction and hands-on experience you get from grad. school.
I wholeheartedly agree that we should cut tenured professors – I always learn more from professors who work in the field rather than work in research and theory.
For #2, I would go a step further even, and say maybe we consider two years of curriculum and two years of rotational internship experience to earn a bachelor’s degree, instead of the typical four years of curriculum. Many professional schools do this and the students seem far more prepared to enter the workforce afterward.
Thanks for the interesting post series.
Rebecca,
I’ve seen at least 10 job ads that say specifically, degrees from U of P, Devry are not excepted. Tech schools are thriving, they are full of people who have lost jobs and want to increase their skill set. Unfortunately, when those people compete against folks with 4-year degrees, they are lifely going to fail (unless they have something else to back them up).
And your comment about results not experience has not proven true for me. It’s hard to talk about how one has or can bring results when your resume is discarded because you lack the specialized experience that the job requires or you lack a predetermined number of years of experience.
I’m sure your argument is sound in regards to some fields or jobs, but I have not found it so.
Rebecca:
Thanks for the shout out in your blog today. I am fascinated and gratified by the support for the value of adjunct faculty in the comments. The people I know who teach part-time do it for the intrinsic rewards and side benefits – interacting with students, staying up on your field, access to world-class library and librarians, the additional credibility — not the money. So I don’t know what purpose tenure for adjunct faculty would serve?
The university could never afford to pay what the time I invest is really worth. I generally spend my entire earnings in the university bookstore.
The ‘prestige’ of tenure is not necessary; the opportunity to be associated with a world-class organization like University of Notre Dame is prestigious enough.
As for security, the best security is simply being good at what you do so you will be invited to teach again.
Rebecca:
First, let me say that I agree wholeheartedly that college needs a lot of fixing. I am also a UW grad and think that we sort of got lucky in our school pick but that again there could have been some things done better.
Are these suggestions focused on a particular field or general school of study?
I was a computer science and mathematics major, so let me come at your suggestions from that view point.
1. Get rid of full-time tenured professors – I have to partly disagree with you here. My best advisors and experience from college came from interactions with tenured professors, at least in the mathematics field. I think it might be hard to find Mathematics professors that were part time, and it would be hard to advance the field without the math research. Professors in Math put in long hours to do research. The question of who is the best teacher I can’t answer because all of my professors were full-time and some were good teachers, some weren’t. Those that weren’t I just didn’t put extra effort into getting to know them then.
For computer science, I would like to see more real life people be teachers instead of hiring non-tenured track people to teach. The classes that I took that were taught by non-tenure track instructors were horrible. The tenure-track or grad student courses were much better.
I am a current M.B.A. student and my biggest compliant are the tenure professors. Not all of them of course but I have problems with the ones that never have had real life work experience and teach from the same text book and powerpoint for yeras and use the same standardized test every semester.
You realize of course that your post is full of spelling errors/typos, right? Maybe some of those “tenured professors” should focus more on teaching you to write your complaints like a grown woman instead of a seventh grader.
So essentially, go get a liberal arts education instead of one focused on a major designed to train for specific skills. Learn to read, write, and think and it doesn’t really matter what you study or whether its old hat within 6 months.
The problem isn’t that colleges are failing Gen Y, many have failed multiple generations in this way.
Colleges are outdated. I totally agree with Melissa’s points and it is pathetic students are paying such a large sum of money for such poor career and life training.
I learned a ton in spite of the tenured professors, not because of them. I’d say this sentiment from students is accurate, widespread, and needs to be addressed.
And a final note to all those incredible professors out there that are are changing lives through real education. Thank you.
Oh I’m so glad I found this blog! I completely agree with your statements. I’m just about to graduate from a top 10 business school. Here’s my take:
1) All of the professors that are full-time and run most of the integrated programs (Information Systems, Accounting, etc) are very surprisingly out of touch with the real world. On the other hand, the professors that I have had that are only part-time teach with much more passion, they teach with many more real world examples, they are hands down better teachers overall.
2) I have never understood this! We don’t need to memorize so many specific facts! Everything is so readily accessible that gone are the days when you had to be able to pull up everything from memory (unless you’re a doctor, etc). You said, “Today’s jobs aren’t representative of a factory line, but instead require employees to make connections between fields and ideas, and be responsive and flexible to change.”
I just heard Seth Godin speak about his new book Linchpin. I love how he talks about this concept of how are schools are still producing factory workers.
3) I’ve found it sad how much students have to do outside of class to REALLY stand out these days.
Great points, I’ll definitely be following your blog from now on.
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Since no one has mentioned this proposal…
I am a fan of Philip Greenspun’s constructivist / project based approach to university undergraduate education. While it is mainly aimed at technical (principally CS) degrees, it could be adapted to other areas as well.
http://philip.greenspun.com/teaching/universities-and-economic-growth
I believe this model is in use at Neumont University in Utah, according to Greenspun, and the students complete an undergrad degree in 2.5 years with extensive near-“real world” project experience.
-jack
Rebecca – You make some excellent suggestions. Personally some of my best college professors had careers outside of academia and taught to satisfy their passion for passing knowledge on to others. They usually provided a great mix of textbook knowledge and practical, real-world experience – in essence they knew when to use the book and when not to. In my experience it was painfully obvious which instructors were purely academics and had not stepped foot in industry.
Concerning lifelong learning – I agree that we need to reduce or eliminate finite gates. Early on in life I was really bored in school – I just really had no interest. It wasn’t until later in life when I discovered professors with real-world experience who would guide my learning based upon interest and correlate it to usefulness that I really began to take notice.
Johns Hopkins is a great example of this philosophy – as a research university there is less emphasis on competition and grades and a great emphasis on learning and practical application. In my experience with the engineering and business schools their programs really embody the philosophy of lifelong learning.
Great article and we can only hope that more people become aware of the need for this change!
@Rebecca: Part of the challenge is incentives — what are faculty members expected to do in order to get tenure or to get their contract renewed?
Outside of teaching schools (which pay lower salaries than balanced or research-oriented schools), full-time professors are evaluated primarily on their research productivity (“publish or perish” may be 70-99% of their career). For grad students working as TA’s, teaching may be an annoying part of their workload that’s keeping them from the research that will get them their doctorate or masters degree. Career adjunct professors are busy driving from college to college, supporting themselves through 2-4 part-time teaching jobs, which doesn’t leave them much time to focus on helping individual students. And yes, once tenure-track professors get tenure after their six-year probationary term, their incentive to help students may fall by the wayside.
This suggests if you’re an 18 year old and you (or your parents) are primarily concerned with teaching quality, you should go to a liberal arts school, because the professors there have already agreed to accept lower pay in return for a focus on helping students. Of course, the high tuition and/or potentially low starting salaries after graduation may give you a poor financial ROI.
My experience at William & Mary in Virginia was a nice balance. As a medium-sized public liberal arts university, full-time professors had the incentive to help undergrads. One of my favorite professors took his students on weekly field trips. We did the reading on our own during the week, and then met on Saturday morning to visit local historic sites and see history for ourselves. That was really cool (and he was already tenured, no less). And the in-state tuition didn’t hurt.
All things being equal, if you want to see whether you’ll be a school’s priority, find out how the faculty gets compensated and promoted, and see if you’ll benefit from — or be penalized by — their incentive system.