Quality of Education

It's hard to quantify the quality of education. I don't necessarily think there is a blanket way to even begin to criticize a college education, and that is probably because the characteristics of each discipline are like apples and oranges. As an architecture student my success in school is largely in part based on my professors subjective opinion. There isn't really a grading scale, and that creates a very broad definition of a good student. For some professors it is primarily about work ethic and production while for others, a good grade relies mostly on final product and review. The opinionated quality of the majority of critiques from your professor and other professors has the ability to either be inspiring and motivating or emotionally draining and demotivating. A design education becomes just as much a political battle as an academic one. An environment is created where you are trying to bring your project to realization, but appeasing your professor ends up taking priority over personal design aspirations. That is not to say that you have to do everything your professor tells you to do. There is definitely a difference between utilizing constructive criticism to make changes and designing something one way because your professor just told you to. It just shows that doing well in class has just as much to do with reading a person as it does with completing your school work. I have a feeling that this can span over multiple disciplines, but then what kind of education is that. An education where someones opinion determines your outcome? Then the question becomes what the standard should be for such an unstructured curriculum? It just seems like my opinion of a strong class environment involves a professor who is excited about the subject matter, inspiring, and open to ideas, but once again those are qualities that mean different things to different people. There are just times when I feel I could be getting a much better education and other times when I am so appreciative of the education I've received. A determination of quality tends to come from a faculties qualifications, but what does it mean to be qualified? I have had professors without a masters that have worked in the field for years, and then I have had professors that have a PhD and zero years experience in the field. There just aren't enough consistencies to find an average level of quality to compare to which leads me to believe that any other place that I would have gone would have been a shockingly similar experience and quality with a different logo on my degree. Then I think in terms of amenities. I think of the Ivy League schools with there exceedingly high amount of resources and consider whether that makes their quality of education higher. I'm don't necessarily think that having the most up to date rapid prototyper makes one education better than the other, but there may be some out there that do. I think the answer to the  question of quality in higher education is subjective and ever varying.