Universities with the Least Accessible Professors

In college lecture halls, lessons move quickly and usually impersonally. Every student knows who their professor is, but in most cases professors will only know a handful of their students’ names.

Some schools are better than others of course. It’s easy to imagine that at a small liberal arts school, a philosophy professor with 10 students will know every one of them and will frequently instruct and entertain them during office hours. Meanwhile, at a public research institution with lecture halls that seat 500, the vast majority of students may pass in and out of a classroom without their teacher ever making eye-contact. These students will do their assignments, receive their grades, and probably never ask for a rec letter.

Every year the Princeton Review ranks the top 20 schools with the least accessible professors. The results are based on students’ answers to the survey question “How accessible are your instructors outside the classroom?”

As might seem predictable, of the 45 schools that have made the list in the past six years, 34 are public universities.

Some of this, of course, can be explained simply in class size.  The rest may be due to the natures of the institutions – professors at public universities may prioritize their research, while research may be a secondary concern to professors at small liberal arts schools, allowing them more time for their students.

Here are the schools with the Least Accessible Professors:

The ‘Least Accessible Professors’ Rankings From 2015 to 2010

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Source: The Princeton Review