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[polly_mer]

Polly - my point is that you can go to one of these top programs and still get a job at a teaching oriented university and it will increase your general chances of getting a good job. It won't make you a research-only misfit. So if you have a chance to go to a top program, go (if the money is liveable). And the best way of deciding where to go is to check where the people at your dream jobs got their degrees.

Interesting view.  In my fields, getting degrees from those research places generally does make one a terrible fit for places that greatly value teaching as a first job after graduate school.  People from Harvard and MIT are not the ones who end up at the good SLAC's, unless they purposely get extra training in teaching somehow.  This may be a field thing, since generally our researchers are not trained to teach and the occasional stint as a TA is not adequate preparation to be a classroom teacher. 

[ticklemepink]

I agree with Polly.  Good points, totoro.  I've seen young PhDs come out of those tippy-top programs and they were just unable to relate to students. 

What I want to press is the narrow focus of a Top program that would truly expect its students to be professors and prepare them only for that profession.  What happens if there are still very few jobs and these students still don't get them?  Would a student from a Very Good program be better prepared to take a job outside of academe because s/he has that broad skill-set whereas a Top program student doesn't? 

I think I'm just trying to address the fears and complaints of advanced PhD students these days about not being prepared for the job market outside of academe simply because their top programs just haven't done anything and they still can't find TT/VAP jobs.  And given that, how would you advise prospective applicant/students who still have chance to pick up necessary skills?

So these questions brings back to the original point of this post: Are students better off going to a Very Good program with a bit more money and plentiful opportunities for professional development than going to a Top program that only focuses on training their students to be professors, gambling and hoping for available positions for them years down the road?

[polly_mer]

In my fields, the Tippy Top programs aren't the ones that prepare people to be professors.  Indeed, becoming a professor is often considered a third-rate choice.  It's ok, but only if one is basically a research professor in a position comparable to the research professors running the program.  For those folks, classroom teaching is not a primary activity and is seen more as a pesky chore that is a good trade-off for complete research freedom, unlike a national lab or industrial lab where one must work on the "right" projects.

Teaching as most professors know it is not a valued activity and people coming out of those programs definitely will be much better prepared for life as a research scientist or engineer, not a professor.  Professors come from the good programs that see value in teaching.

[totoro]

In my fields, the Tippy Top programs aren't the ones that prepare people to be professors.  Indeed, becoming a professor is often considered a third-rate choice.  It's ok, but only if one is basically a research professor in a position comparable to the research professors running the program.  For those folks, classroom teaching is not a primary activity and is seen more as a pesky chore that is a good trade-off for complete research freedom, unlike a national lab or industrial lab where one must work on the "right" projects.

Teaching as most professors know it is not a valued activity and people coming out of those programs definitely will be much better prepared for life as a research scientist or engineer, not a professor.  Professors come from the good programs that see value in teaching.

Graduates of Harvard or MIT in economics aren't typically going to the Federal Reserve or World Bank as their first pick and there aren't many post-docs either. A SLAC is unlikely to be a first pick either of course, unless people decide they want to teach more, but the good ones (e.g. Williams that I was looking at) are loaded with graduates of these elite programs. I suspect this is a bit closer to what happens in the humanities than in your field.

[ticklemepink]

In my fields, the Tippy Top programs aren't the ones that prepare people to be professors.  Indeed, becoming a professor is often considered a third-rate choice.  It's ok, but only if one is basically a research professor in a position comparable to the research professors running the program.  For those folks, classroom teaching is not a primary activity and is seen more as a pesky chore that is a good trade-off for complete research freedom, unlike a national lab or industrial lab where one must work on the "right" projects.

Teaching as most professors know it is not a valued activity and people coming out of those programs definitely will be much better prepared for life as a research scientist or engineer, not a professor.  Professors come from the good programs that see value in teaching.

Graduates of Harvard or MIT in economics aren't typically going to the Federal Reserve or World Bank as their first pick and there aren't many post-docs either. A SLAC is unlikely to be a first pick either of course, unless people decide they want to teach more, but the good ones (e.g. Williams that I was looking at) are loaded with graduates of these elite programs. I suspect this is a bit closer to what happens in the humanities than in your field.

This is what I was aiming at with my inquiry.