The Princeton Review recently released a new guide entitled The Best 300 Professors. The editors compiled the list from surveys conducted by the Princeton Review and by student evaluations submitted to RateMyProfessors.com.
According to the guide, surveys conducted by the Princeton Review “revealed the colleges at which students highly rated their professors’ teaching ability and accessibility. Data from RateMyProfessors.com identified more than 42,000 professors at those schools that students had rated on its site.”
The editors then came up with an initial list of 1,000 candidates that was later narrowed down to the 300 “best professors.”
The listings will undoubtedly produce controversy. Here are some observations.
- Eleven of the “best 300 professors” teach at James Madison University in Virginia but there are none at the University of Virginia.
- Five of the best professors teach at Loyola University of Chicago but none teach at the University of Chicago.
- Only one of the best professors is at Princeton and there is one at Dartmouth. None of the best 300 are at Columbia University, Williams College, or the University of Pennsylvania.
As to women’s colleges, Mount Holyoke earns the bragging rights. Fourteen Mount Holyoke faculty are among the 300 best professors, the most of any college or university in nation. Five members of Mount Holyoke’s biology department made the list.
In contrast, only one of the best 300 professors teaches at Wellesley College and none of the best 300 professors teaches at Bryn Mawr, Smith, Spelman, or Scripps.