It took over 35 years to eradicate polio worldwide. I won’t be around then, but maybe you will be. Good luck.
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That long? Well might as well not try then. 
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UCLA’s largest lecture hall seats about 420. They just don’t have the number of huge lecture halls that Cal has. Even decades ago I had an Anthropology class at Berkeley with 800 students, so big classes there aren’t new. I did not hear of any classes bigger than the 420 in Moore Hall at UCLA during my son’s years there. UCSB is about half the size of UCLA but has many classes bigger and has larger lecture halls.
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The consequences of so many students who think that they want to become CS majors…
Introduction to CS for CS majors can be large elsewhere, such as over 700 at Stanford and Harvard.
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Biggest lecture hall at UCB is 700-something. CS 61A for years has needed some type of hybrid lecture where one could go to the in person lecture or view the recorded lecture, because there were no rooms large enough to handle the enrollment demand.
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Big CS classes are new compared to when I went. We didn’t have any over about 200 students, but that was when we used terminals to connect to Unix A/B/C/D and dinosaurs still roamed the campus.
Newsflash- there are plenty of schools with comp science programs with way smaller intro classes. Some where you even know the prof and actually talk to her!
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Of course, that does not help if they are so full that interested students cannot enroll in them.
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That’d be a poor use of CS teaching resources honestly. Huge intro CS classes are common even at the best schools and it works pretty well. Not a lot of class discussion needed in CS and there are various resources from TAs, sections, piazza, etc for support. Increasing use of technology, online video at a lot of programs even before Covid. Harvard’s CS 50 is a good example. Outcomes are good and students like it.
One of the missed opportunities early in the pandemic from my perspective was the failure to leverage these existing technologies and content both at the college and secondary level to introduce a wider range of students to the field. It’s one of the few subjects in which online learning is as good or better than in person.
Or these schools don’t have the same proportion of students who are interested in majoring in CS, which means that they generally don’t need or can’t offer many advanced CS courses (other than a few courses surveying/introducing some advanced topics in CS).
Let’s move on from general discussion of CS class sizes or how it was back in the day.
To be fair my son is a double CS/Math major, and all his math classes have been relatively small. But CS is very underfunded and some, but not all, the courses are very large. Also hard to get into if you are not a CS major. Has worked out very well for my older son, but would not have worked for my younger son. You need to know your kid.
Oops, sorry…
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Just wanted to report that several colleges in the Boston area have pretty much dropped all restrictions (Harvard, Northeastern, others). Testing is optional, quarantining in dorms, masks to be dropped in classrooms if they haven’t been already.
There was recently a large “outbreak” (asymptomatic positives found during surveillance testing) at a local College, and as predicted they had no idea what to do with all of this information. They were not going to shut down the campus, they were not going to quarantine close contacts, so they realized it was useless and cancelled surveillance testing. Which was 100% the right thing to do.
The food takeaway, close contact quarantining, etc. was all theater they implemented at the start of this semester. With an R0 of 8+ there is no restriction, other then a complete shutdown, that will delay spread. Everyone is going to get this sooner or later.
Hopefully colleges that that continue to impose useless restrictions will get punished by current students making decisions now, and perhaps they will do better for their students next time.
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As of today, Harvard still has indoor making requirement and mandatory testing.
https://hms.harvard.edu/returning-campus/frequently-asked-questions#Masks-and-Face-Coverings
Cambridge and Harvard still require masks to be worn indoors. Harvard Health Services Director Says University is Moving in the Right Direction Post-Omicron Surge | News | The Harvard Crimson
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Boston still has an indoor mask mandate so any college in the city limits still will need to require masks in classrooms. Many surrounding cities also still have mandates.
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Colgate dropped mask mandate entirely but professors can request that kids wear masks in class. D has two classes without masks and two with. One professor has small unvaccinated kids and, in the other, the professor had the kids vote anonymously and they voted to keep wearing them which really surprised D. Prof said she’ll take a vote every couple of weeks.
Masks gone at Bowdoin now except for class.
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Purdue relaxed masking but it’s still required in all classrooms and academic spaces. They’ve had no hospitalizations this semester and the vast majority of cases were asymptotic or mild.
They are considering reducing testing requirements next month as the positivity rate has thankfully nose dived.
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Penn just removed its requirement that your mask be a double mask or N95/KN95/KF94. My D (Penn grad student) just tested positive this morning. She lives off campus and is certain she got it from her fiance. He went to a going away party for someone in his office on Friday and that event seems to have been a bit of a superspreader. Last I heard, 8 people who went to that party tested positive as of Tuesday morning.
The fiance tested positive on Monday night. D was negative until this morning (Wednesday) when she tested positive. He has a sore throat, runny nose and briefly had a fever yesterday. So far D just has a stuffy nose. What’s interesting to me is that under Penn’s rules, D still had a “green pass” on Tuesday despite being a close contact of someone sick, because she was vaxxed and boosted. So theoretically she could’ve gone to her two classes on Tuesday, one of which is a small seminar. She emailed her professor saying “I don’t think I should come” and he emailed back “Please don’t. I have two kids who are too young to be vaccinated.”
D was due to give a presentation to the seminar and she was able to do it via Zoom. She was planning on using a PowerPoint anyway so she was able to make her presentation remotely. Most of her classes are very math intensive and the ability to participate remotely or watch a recorded lecture is a huge blessing.
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