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[prof_smartypants]

Some of those schools have excellent reputations in my field (which typically has graduate education only): Rutgers, UCSD, and GIT. Oregon, Iowa State, and UIUC are pretty well-respected, too.

If a university has a region in its name, rather than a particular place, is that still bad? (i.e. University of New England; University of the Pacific)?

[southerntransplant]

Polly_mer is dead wrong, I'm afraid, at the one of these schools that I know about.  There t-t faculty teach one graduate course every second year.  The rest is undergrad, 2/3 of which has to be at the lower division.  There are no faculty who teach only graduate students or who do not teach.

At my massive R1, the teaching load is carefully watched in my STEM department. Each faculty member teaches 1/2 or 2/1, and they generally have to be a mix of grad and undergrad classes. Your teaching load will be considered insufficient if you only teach grad classes. We have one adjunct who teaches the freshman engineering course - one adjunct in a department of 70. We are forbidden (expressly) from having our grad students fill in for us. I almost got in a heap of trouble doing this last spring, and was saved only because this had not yet been codified.

When tenure finally happens, I will have taught 8 new courses while doing the other things someone in an R1 t-t position in a STEM field is supposed to do. While by other measures this may not seem like much, it is twice the new course preps of others in my cohort, and is second to the department record holder, who had 11.

And still our BoR clings to the notion that 90% of the faculty have their grad students teach all their courses. They don't have a basis for this, of course, but it's a nice soundbite.

[octoprof]

In the same vein as the other Huffpost list of disciplines with poor job opportunities (in which mine was listed)
here is a list of schools with the worst professors (in which my alma mater is listed).

Hmmm.

Would anyone like to retort with, "them be fightin' words" or do you find this reasonable. I certainly agree that my school should make the list though there were some real gems on campus. They were good professors because they were beautiful souls though.

Consider the source. Princeton Review? Egad.

[untenured]

Does anyone have a link to the original?  There are lots of reposts about but I can't locate the source.

We may all think the TPR survey is baloney and it just might be baloney.  The problem is the millions of parents and high-school students will read this, uncritically swallow the results, and make life-changing decisions based upon a questionable ranking.

[oldfullprof]

If a university has a region in its name, rather than a particular place, is that still bad? (i.e. University of New England; University of the Pacific)?

Worse!  This is perfect.

[totoro]

University of the West Indies
University of the South Pacific
Central European University

There are two UNE's. University of New England in NSW of course is of a sub-region within a state... These are probably not much better (see University of the Ozarks).

[hegemony]

University of East Anglia -- a good university. 

[prof_smartypants]

What about Appalachian State?

[octoprof]

University of the South?

[oldfullprof]

What about Appalachian State?

Meh... They were willing to interview me in 1997.

[eulerian_ta]

Some high school classmates of mine went to one of the schools on the list for undergrad.  It's easier to arrange a meeting with Barrack Obama than it is with some of those professors.  That may have something to do with the low evaluations there.

It's totally worthless to compare faculty evaluations across institutions.  Different institutions may require different teaching loads, and the policies of evaluations are different.

[polly_mer]

And still our BoR clings to the notion that 90% of the faculty have their grad students teach all their courses. They don't have a basis for this, of course, but it's a nice soundbite.

Well, there's teaching and there's teaching.  My mentor at a top R1 blanched when he heard what I have to do to teach a class all by myself (we don't even have a lab manager) compared to what he does for a similar class with his TA's and graders.