I was an English major who took 300-level courses in math (and CS, physics, history, philosophy, and Chinese). For 25 years I've regretted not applying to place

I was an English major who took 300-level courses in math (and CS, physics, history, philosophy, and Chinese). For 25 years I've regretted not applying to places like Princeton and MIT. I'm sure I could have gotten into some of them. My own college was pretty second-tier. But articles like this make me grateful for choosing a teaching-focused place, where professors are promoted for teaching, and there are no grad students outside a few professional programs. I had tons of personal attention everywhere I went. It didn't help my career, but for someone who wished he could study eight years instead of four and major in everything, it was a pretty nice situation. Years later I was doing a Classics Ph.D. at Penn, and I could tell the difference. Actually I think in our department the professors were universally excellent teachers and very accessible, but it's true if you were in first-year Latin, your instructor was a grad student, and if you were in classical literature, you mostly saw the professor in a 300-person lecture hall, with a grad student leading your discussion group. But a 300-level course would have been led by the professor---and I've met Ivy League professors where that would be even worse. :-) EDIT: The article seemed pretty weak to me: I sort of agree with people saying she sounds whiny and entitled. I don't think she made much of a case that there's a systemic problem as hinted by the title. It's just a story about one bad math class. But at the same time I'm very sympathetic to curious students wanting to learn more outside their specialty. Trying to read generously, I think it's mostly an article about how universities that reward research can neglect teaching. I don't know if it's worse in math (or STEM), but certainly those subjects require you to know the fundamentals before you can go on, so being an outsider is tough. And I have never understood why some professors give tests expecting a top score of 50%.