It's really interesting when you look at the UK system. Here we have former polytechnic universities that are equivalent to US community colleges and are more t

It's really interesting when you look at the UK system. Here we have former polytechnic universities that are equivalent to US community colleges and are more teaching focussed. Then you have your red brick and Russell group universities that are research focussed and where the teaching is often a bit shoddy as the academics see it as a distraction. Finally you have Oxford and Cambridge, which are very research focussed, the two most prestigious universities in the country, and also have a very intensive form of 2 or 3 to 1 tutorial teaching that is generally highly regarded, even if it does come perilously close to spoon feeding sometimes. So you can have high quality teaching at research focussed universities, but it certainly doesn't seem to be the norm. I'm more and more convinced that the research and teaching sides of a university should be separated out at this point for most subjects, at least for undergrads.