Interesting question over at Incoherently Scattered Ponderings: How do you measure “quality” of education?

Part of it is the assumption that you get a better education at certain schools — the feedback loop of good schools having the ability to be selective in both the faculty and the students it accepts. And that’s probably valid — if the quality of the faculty hired is based on how well they can educate. There are schools that have grad students teaching the classes, and professors who do research and view teaching as an annoyance.

But how to measure this is a different issue. Surveying faculty for where they got their education reinforces the notion that being in academia is “success.” And in a way somewhat related to Chad’s recent discussion on student-athletes, one has to recognize that, in a broader sense, education is not just what you learn in class.