Hurts why? Because research universities do not teach much?
Teaching was definitely hit and miss at the research university I attended. I was lucky that's my freshman math and CS teachers were among the best the university bad.
I assumed that it was the same elsewhere, as it was in high school. Do Harvey Mudd, et al, have excellent teachers across the whole department and school?
Also, at good non-research schools, do students have a chance to learn research? Can students go on to try a Ph.D.?
For industry-bound future engineer/inventors, is publication -quality research important anyway, or does lab/practical work suffice?
Research universities do lots of teaching. But teaching is a secondary task for most of the faculty. That we could say "teaching college" with a straight face is what hurts. It should be redundant - after all, college is a place people go to learn so it should follow that teaching is a focus, but it was not.
Teaching was hit-or-miss at my undergrad university as well. That may also be true at teaching colleges, but professors at teaching colleges are hired primarily to teach. They are expected to spend most of their time teaching or preparing for it.
I really don't have enough experience with teaching colleges to say what opportunities the students have.
I can only speak for mathematics. At Harvey Mudd, students are required to write a senior thesis, which typically involves a lot of looking into the literature and at least a little bit of original research. Professors are selected for their ability to supervise undergraduate research. If you're not outstanding at this, you don't get tenure there.
They don't offer graduate programs, but it's usually considered a good idea to do undergrad/grad/postdoc at different schools anyway. Some of their students do go on to grad school, and they're typically well-prepared for it.
Can't speak to the rest of your questions as I don't know.
Teaching was definitely hit and miss at the research university I attended. I was lucky that's my freshman math and CS teachers were among the best the university bad.
I assumed that it was the same elsewhere, as it was in high school. Do Harvey Mudd, et al, have excellent teachers across the whole department and school?
Also, at good non-research schools, do students have a chance to learn research? Can students go on to try a Ph.D.?
For industry-bound future engineer/inventors, is publication -quality research important anyway, or does lab/practical work suffice?