Gallup and Purdue’s research clearly indicate that the professor’s relationship is central to not just the student’s experience at college, but also life later on. With only 27% of college graduates indicating that they had at least one professor that cared about them, clearly this suggests colleges can do more…and students should demand more. 

While this might sound fundamentally an issue of personality, but I suspect there is more to it, more that a college can do to create structures of caring. The first thing that sprang to mind is the Oxbridge Tutorial System. Oxford details their tutorial system here:

A very in-depth profile of the Oxford tutorial system here. Cambridge calls their approach supervision. 

1. ★This more personal tuition, organized by your College, is one of our greatest strengths and a key advantage of studying at Cambridge – most students find their supervisions the most rewarding and beneficial part of their course.
   

2. ★Supervisions are teaching sessions for one or two students or small groups.
   

3. ★They’re led by supervisors who are specialists in the subject being studied, and could be one of the country’s or world’s leading authorities.
   

4. ★As well as helping you develop independent learning skills, supervisions enable you to explore course material in much greater depth than lectures allow, to gain further insights into your subject, to clarify anything you’re not clear about, to discuss your own work and ideas, and receive regular feedback.
   

5. ★You go to different supervisors (often, though not always, from your College) for different parts of your course, in order to learn from specialists in particular areas of your subject.
   

6. ★Typically, you have one or two hour-long supervisions each week, although the frequency does vary from course to course.
   

7. ★What actually happens during supervisions also varies but generally you’re expected to do some preparatory work for each supervision (eg reading, write an essay, work through some problems), which you then discuss in the sessions.
   

8. ★You receive regular reports from your supervisors but aren’t formally assessed on this work, so you can take advantage of this opportunity to take risks with your own ideas, investigate new approaches, and discuss the set topic as well as other aspects of the course.
   

A few other UK universities (EG King’s College and UCL) also utilize tutorials as an integral part of the the learning experience.

Across the pond, some US colleges also utilize the tutorial approach. Sarah Lawrence College has long used the same approach to their education, but called it donning. Williams embraced the tutorial system after years of exchange students coming back with such favorable experience at Oxford. 

Some public universities have embraced it for their honors colleges:

1. ★New College of Florida. 
   

2. ★Ohio State Tutorial College