Thanks for engaging- agree with your point about the link between the individual's perception of their own success and important academic/intellectual/mentoring

Thanks for engaging- agree with your point about the link between the individual's perception of their own success and important academic/intellectual/mentoring relationships (as opposed to administrative). I did have that personally in some cases (and not in others) but am a consultant now who very much recognizes the importance of relationships. I have also done as much as I can to explicitly and implicitly train/encourage that sort of relationship thinking in my kids. Neverthless! I would say: a) one cannot solve for relationships as a basis for picking a specific university. They don't happen overnight, and have to be allowed to develop. And the instincts one has as to which university will be most encouraging of relationships for one's own kid- are only that. They are not reliably predictive. b) Feelings of safety for the student are super important to getting to a place where relationships can develop c) Admins in unis have much much more impact on feelings of safety than faculty. They are in effect the reason people choose a specific uni, and provide their tuition dollars. Whether kids develop relationships with faculty as a result is a downstream effect and to first approximation irrelevant to the business model d) There is an overabundance of excellent, relationship oriented faculty. They are everywhere- from community colleges up to the Stanfords and Harvards. In fact many are out there who cannot get jobs! There are also tons of assholes of course. No university has come anywhere close to solving the "no assholes" problem as it exists in the diverse and disparate minds present in their student bodies, because there are assholes in their student bodies as well! e) The most successful outcome for any given student in any given uni environment- the one you describe- is not deterministic, and complex enough to be difficult to model and guide. University management and administration exists to deliberately provide the safety and comfort contexts for those outcomes to emerge. The importance of any given faculty member in contributing to those outcomes in general is in the noise. f) This productization is not necessarily bad- in fact it is likely the case that uni experience across the whole cohort is broadly more positive than it was decades ago. Is it (much) more expensive? Sure. Could it yet be further cost optimized? Of course. Does it maybe emphasize the mean and reduce higher end outcomes at the margin? Maybe. Even if so, to my eyes, fwiw, that's more democratic. There will always be superstars. They should not be the only success cases. Cheers, thanks again.