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<p>If class sizes are a concern, visiting is likely to be less informative and more expensive than just browsing the school’s on-line schedule of classes.</p>
<p>The evidence that smaller classes are much more effective at the college level is debatable. Now we have lots of classes in-line with nearly unlimited numbers in a “class”. The entire notion of a “class” as 20 people sitting in a room may be up for debate.</p>
<p>^ what isn’t debatable is that an interactive environment is better for learning. This could just be the bias of modern pedagogy, but I don’t think it is. Small classes aren’t necessarily more interactive, so that’s where it becomes debatable, but when any class is interactive, it’s better. And small classes tend to be the most interactive.</p>
<p>@bclintonk, thank you for taking the time to explain the class size percentages and how just looking at them at face value can be deceiving. I think, for my D, an enironment that offers more interaction will be an important factor, and is really a big part of what we would be paying for if she chooses an LAC over big state U, and we’d want to be sure we (and she) would be getting just that.<br>
I appreciate all the posts, opinions and perspectives on this topic!</p>
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<p>Yes, when teaching intellectual skills:</p>
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<p>tk,</p>
<p>Your table makes no sense. Sure, you can construct a table of an unrepresentative partial sample of the student body and show that some students are taking only small classes. But if you complete the table for the entire student body, you’d need to have some students taking multiple large classes, or even all large classes, because otherwise there just aren’t enough bodies to fill up those 50±person classes. </p>
<p>The argument you’re making leads me to believe you really are still missing the basic mathematical point. This is not just “significant from the the registrar’s perspective.” It just can’t be the case that if 10% of the classes are 50+, that means on average each student “is still spending only 1 class per year (1 in 10 classes) with 49 or more other students” as you claim.</p>
<p>Look, you need at least 50 students to fill a class with 50 students. Suppose we have a school with exactly 50 students, each taking 5 classes per semester, or 10 per year, for a total of 500 registrations annually. Suppose further that the school offers exactly 10 classes, 5 per semester, and (as a starting assumption) 1 of those classes (10%) is a 50-student class. That takes up 50 registrations. That leaves 450 registrations to be parceled out among the other 9 classes, which means . . . the 9 remaining classes would need to average 50 students per class in order to provide enough class space for all the school’s students.</p>
<p>So what happens if we double the number of classes: now 10 classes are offered per semester, or 20 per year, of which (as a starting assumption) 10% or 2 classes are 50-person classes. That takes some of the pressure off. Then we have 2 50-person classes taking up 100 registrations, leaving 400 registrations to be parceled out among 18 other classes, for an average of 22 per class. Better, right? Then we can further hypothesize that some of those 18 classes are <20 students, and some others in the 20-50 range. But notice what’s happened: in order to get that result, every student in our 50-person school now needs to take 2 50-person classes per year, i.e., 20% of their schedule, not 10%. That’s the only way you could fill 2 50-person classes in a year in a school with 50 students.</p>
<p>OK, so suppose we double our student body: 100 students, and now 1,000 registrations per year, keeping the number of classes constant at 20 (10 per semester), with (again as a starting assumption) 2 50-person classes (10% of the total). Fine, but that takes up only 100 registrations, and now we’ve got to find space for 900 additional registrations in the remaining 18 classes, which means . . . well, we’re right back where we started, the remaining 18 classes need to average 50 students per class in order to provide enough classes for all 100 students.</p>
<p>These relationships will hold no matter how big we make the student body, and no matter how much we fiddle with the curriculum. Large classes aren’t large just because of abstract “registration units” of interest only to the registrar, they’re large by virtue of being filled by real live students who are actually spending real live class time in them. And if 10% of the classes are large classes, that means substantially more than 10% of the average student’s classes will be large classes. How much more depends on how large the large classes are.</p>
<p>I agree, the CDS data don’t provide a lot of fine-grained detail concerning actual class sizes in the 50-99 and 100+ size ranges, and this can make a big difference. But as a rough rule of thumb, you can pretty well assume that at any school where 10% or more of the classes are 50+, students will on average spend more time in 50+ student classes than in <20 student classes. And that’s true of quite a few private research universities, contrary to popular belief on CC. It is not true of LACs.</p>
<p>Just for fun, I did a web search on largest classes at Harvard. Some are gargantuan. According to the Crimson, in the Spring of 2008 the largest classes were:
Ec 10 Principles of Economics: 648 students
Psych 1504, Positive Psychology: 587
Lits & Art C-70, The Bible: 433
Life sciences 1b, Genetics: 378
Music 1b, Intro to Western Music: 333
History of Art 10, Intro: 276</p>
<p>That’s 2,655 students sitting in just 6 classes. In a typical semester, according to Harvard’s Common Data Set, there are 33 additional classes with 100 or more students. Harvard only has about 6640 undergraduates, which means on average each Harvard undergraduate was taking 1 100±person class that semester (actually the average is 0.9, but close enough). In addition, 64 classes per semester are in the 50-100 student range, so it’s probable the average Harvard undergrad was taking 1.5 classes of 50+ that semester. And this at a school where only 7.8% of the classes are 50+. Of course, some students avoid big classes like the plague and in many semesters don’t take any; but in order to fill that many big classes, it must then be the case that some students are taking 2, or 3, or 4 in a semester.</p>
<p>I took a quick look at my Northwestern transcript over lunch…</p>
<p>Of my 42 classes, approximately 18 had more than 100 people, most at least 150.
Only about 6 - 8 were true seminar classes with less than 15 and discussion based. 2 of those were freshman seminars.</p>
<p>The rest were around 25-75 but pure lecture.</p>
<p>I don’t think this is unusual at private research schools especially with a popular major.</p>
<p>When we toured at one small LAC (about 2000 kids) last summer, I asked the tour guide - a rising senior - what was the largest class she had been in.</p>
<p>Twenty-eight.</p>
<p>And how many classes/majors did they offer?</p>
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<p>Yes, I agree.
So let’s show a similar table that I think illustrates the basic point you’ve been making.</p>
<p>Suppose (for simplicity) your cohort of 50 students each must be registered in 5 classes. One lecture hall and 5 small classrooms are available to accomodate them in 1-hour classes between 9AM and 2PM. They all start the day at 9 AM in the same “big” (50-student) class, then split up into smaller, concurrently-held classes, as follows (where “0” means no students occupy that room at that time):</p>
<p>…9AM…10AM…11AM…12:00…1PM
Hall1…50…0…0…0…0
Rm101…0…25…10…10…10
Rm102…0…25…10…10…10
Rm103…0…0…10…10…10
Rm104…0…0…10…10 …10
Rm105…0…0…10…10 …10</p>
<p>This represents a distribution of 50 students across 18 classes, in a way that offers each student a complete 5-course schedule. Only ~6% of those classes (1/18) are “big” (50-student) classes; 83% are small (just 10 students). Yet, each student is spending 20% of his or her time in Hall 1 (the big class) and only 60% of the time in small classes. If you collapsed the two 10AM classes to 1 50-student class, this would make “big” classes comprise 12% of all classes (2 in 17), but 40% of each student’s time. Each student would still be spending more time in < 20 classes, though, in this case.</p>
<p>And what difference does it make how many classes or majors they offer as long as they have your major with an adequate number of classes therein - and a reasonable number of alternatives should you change your mind?</p>
<p>Hmmm, Annasdad, it DOES matter if they offer your major (cough, cough.)</p>
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<p>What kind of argument is that? Adequacy in variety is what they should strive for? Anything beyond adequacy is pointless?</p>
<p>I’m with Annasdad - why go to a school with a billion dollar science center if you’re into social sciences?</p>
<p>^ but that’s not his whole argument, which also included the assertion that having an adequate variety of classes is all that matters. Going to a school with strength in a variety of fields matters to those whose majors/interests aren’t set - which is to say, most students. Of course, if you absolutely won’t major in the sciences, then having a billion dollar science center doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>Either way, the argument that having breadth and depth in departments and classes isn’t worthwhile (even for the individual student) makes no sense.</p>
<p>Why–kids change their minds–pretty often. Also would have more interesting electives.</p>
<p>An adequate supply of classes is a necessity. More is a luxury. Balance that against the research that shows that interactive learning activities - possible though, sadly, often not taken advantage of - made feasible by small class sizes are clearly better than lectures when it comes to skill development and values development. And a school of 2000 has enough variety of possible majors to satisfy all but the most adventurous student.</p>
<p>The smallest classes at a university tend to be the ones that LACs don’t have - all the classes that focus on subfields and subtopics. I’d say these are more than a luxury, as they form a significant portion of undergrads’ education. I wouldn’t have been able to find more than 1 course offered in my area of study at most LACs (most of which don’t have even 1 course in it).</p>
<p>If you want to hone in on a specific interest and develop depth in it, LACs are usually not the answer.</p>
<p>Arguing that public research U’s are better than LACs because they offer a greater variety and number of courses is like arguing that Sears is better than Henri Bendel because it offers a much greater variety and quantity of merchandise. </p>
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<p>Not true; depends on what the student is looking for. I don’t know how narrowly you are defining “specific” and “depth,” but the place for those things is graduate school. And every LAC has special topics courses and independent studies at the upper levels of the major that may not be printed in the catalog because they are not offered on a regular basis. They don’t need to be; but that doesn’t mean they are not available. At larger universities, full-time faculty are often unavailable to work one-on-one with undergraduates, so these options don’t exist.</p>
<p>There may be undergraduate students who are very focused on some arcane area of study, but they hardly represent the norm.</p>
<p>I have looked at curriculum charts in my field at a variety of institutions–large, small, private, public–and they’re pretty much the same.</p>
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<p>This is a very broad and sweeping generalization, and mostly wrong. LACs tend stick to core academic disciplines, so you won’t find the broad variety of departments and majors that you’ll see at a research university. But the best of them do what they do very, very well, and in many fields are actually a better place to go deep into a specialized subject because you’ll do so with more individual mentoring by faculty with whom you’ll be on a first-name basis and in daily interaction. They won’t have as many classes per se; but if you really want to hone in on a particular topic or subspecialty in the field, you have your entire senior year and your senior thesis to do that. Fewer pre-packaged classes, perhaps, but more individual tailoring and mentoring. </p>
<p>I’ve been around academic institutions pretty much all my life, as a student and as a faculty member, including some of the very best, public and private. I’m convinced my D1 is getting as deep and as rigorous an education in her chosen field of study at her LAC as she could get anywhere, bar none. To be honest, better than most, because she’s gotten individual attention and tailoring of her academic program from day 1 from some truly committed, caring, and extraordinarily talented teachers and scholars who put their undergraduate students first. If she elects to pursue a Ph.D. in her chosen field, I have no doubt that she’ll be competitive for the very best programs in her field, and as well prepared as anyone once she actually lands there. If she elects to do something else, I’ll be satisfied that she’s gotten out of her undergraduate experience a ton of skills in writing, critical thinking, oral argument, and “learning how to learn,” along with both in-depth substantive knowledge in her field and broad exposure to knowledge and thinking across the spectrum of intellectual endeavor. In the end, though, I think it’s the skills that are the most important part, and she’s being closely mentored by some of the very best.</p>
<p>I was never a particularly big fan of LACs and I certainly didn’t push my D1 in that direction. But having seen it up close, I actually think her undergraduate education is more coherent, more focused, more demanding, and more rigorous than that experienced by many people at research universities who tend to float through a bunch of big lecture classes as pretty passive learners for a couple of years before they settle on a major—and even then, many tend to pad their class schedule with the occasional bit of frivolous fluff or the low-demands course that has the reputation for the easy A. I’m not saying everyone at research universities does that; no doubt some are as focused and as hard-working as my D. But I think there is a difference when you’re someplace that you just can’t hide behind the anonymity of a large lecture hall, when you and your educational progress are in the spotlight every waking moment. We’re paying a lot to send her there, but from an educational standpoint, I think it’s been worth every penny.</p>