Exactly. Also, much greater diversity of ideas and thoughts occurs when more discussants are present. And all you need to do is invite the professor to lunch and engage intellectually. Why do you need only 20 kids in the class to do that…!
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Also, an irony to put out here: small class sizes appear to be important to CC people. However, it seems that the schools that matter most to CC people are the top national universities. If small class sizes are a must, why not focus more on the LACs? There’s clearly a reason for that, but I still cannot help but point out the irony here…
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Because it’s pretty special and enlightening to learn from your peers and not just your prof. Our S took an African Americans in Art class and he was one of three white kids. The other dozen were black. It was amazing. He wouldn’t have learned half of what he learned in there if it was a lecture class even if he met with his prof outside of class.
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My alma mater has a program to fund and encourage this. I chose my majors at Duke carefully to avoid having any large classes (30+ students), but it was nice engaging with faculty outside of the classroom as well.
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The real “learning” does not occur in the classrooms, but rather in the dining halls and colleges late at night… So, I’m not convinced that there is any disadvantage to large classrooms per se…
Wow completely disagree. Tons of learning from peers in our kids’ experiences. Of course they also learn outside of the classroom as well but that’s different. That’s typically with students they are friends with. When in class, they are introduced to kids outside their circle of friends.
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Instructors benefit from this as well, though many students and parents don’t realize that. I’ve taught my fair share of large lecture courses as well as small seminars and always prefer the latter. So often we get stuck in a particular way of thinking, and engaging with students can open up new and interesting avenues of inquiry thanks to their fresh perspectives. A couple of my conference talks were inspired by offhand comments and questions from students.
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I think that’s the point of this thread–Many top national universities provide the small classes too, not just LACs. I had a class with 3 kids (French)and two classes with under 10 kids (calc3 and poetry)when I was in undergrad, and the only over-150 classes I took were Orgo , intro-Bio , and physics (my frosh/soph classes as a Bio major/chem minor). I had some amazing professors in the big and the small classes, and definitely learned from peer-discussions in the majority of my classes.
Fastforward almost 30 yrs and my D21 has two upper-level classes with 12 and 28 kids and two intro classes with 30ish and 80ish kids, and has had lots of opportunities to talk with professors. Next semester she will have two under 20 and two under 50, which may relate to being a humanities major, as the premed intro courses are still >150 there.
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This comports with the criteria often listed by OPs on CC, which commonly include a preference for name recognition, proximity to urban areas, or an association with prominent spectator sports. Relatively few OPs state they seek the best education available. Nevertheless, when applicants “vote” in the real world, they do so with sufficient enthusiasm to drive down the acceptance rates of some liberal arts to below 15%.
Pre-Covid: Almost all of the top 30 ranked National Universities reported an acceptance rate of 15% or less, while about 8 LACs reported an acceptance rate of 15% or less.
Regarding the benefit of smaller classes, that varies based on both the subject and the student.
Regarding the value of smaller classes in the context of the tradeoffs (a given number of instructors can be used to make lower level class sizes smaller, but at a cost of being able to offer fewer upper level classes, or offer them less frequently), that also varies based on both the subject and the student.
I just looked up my daughter’s state school, which is mentioned here. They report that a little under 50% of classes have under 20 students. My D majored in the sciences and that was not her experience at all, however I do know that her classes got smaller as she went through her major (40 students) and she did have some very small classes outside of her major (15-20 students in a Spanish literature class, etc).
As far as lecture halls with 150 (sometimes more) students in the intro classes, her profs all took attendance and called on people by name. These classes were also discussion based (not suggesting it’s the same as a class of 25) and were modeled on current research as to how to create discussions in lecture hall classes. They used a teaching model that led to small group discussions (again, not suggesting this is exactly the same as sitting in a class of 20).
I agree 100% that there are some schools out there with large classes that are easy to skip, and some students may choose such schools. That was not my D’s experience or the experience of her peers.
I am a firm believer that learning takes place both in and out of class. That was true in kindergarten, and it was true in college. My D had close friends in college who often lost electricity due to lack of money, yet managed to graduate at the top of their class while studying in the dark. That was a learning experience for her.
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At the elite private LAC where I work the tradeoff for small class sizes is that there are courses that are too competitive for everyone to get in. The students who get those opportunities are the ones who know how to actively advocate for themselves. First generation college students, women, and minorities don’t always have the knowledge or experience for that. The students who can’t get into the first course in a series are effectively shut off from that track.
Larger class sizes provide more opportunities for more students. One of my children majored in CS at a public university. They were really interested in data science. Fortunately, their university had enough seats to meet the demand. They now work as a data scientist and are happy with their choice. I wonder if their career would have been different if the only upper division elective sequences available to them were computer networks, security, or graphics. They’re all worthy concentrations but not the area of the industry they wanted.
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Regarding the value of smaller classes in the context of the tradeoffs (a given number of instructors can be used to make lower level class sizes smaller, but at a cost of being able to offer fewer upper level classes, or offer them less frequently), that also varies based on both the subject and the student.
This is an unintended consequence of small class sizes at our LAC and it’s not one that’s obvious to most parents. You don’t see the exciting courses that are discussed and reluctantly tabled so another lower level section can be added to keep class sizes small. And you don’t see the tentative 4 year plans that lay out the one or two times the most popular upper division courses will be taught (subject to appropriate staffing levels and lower division courses). Upper division courses take a back seat to the lower division pipeline that gets kids into the major.
When my kids were applying to college they read the previous 4 years of each college’s catalogs and made tentative 4 year plans for the major(s) they were most interested in. If they had a difficult time finding enough courses of interest to fill the slots the school came off the table. If the courses they were interested in were offered infrequently (only every other year or, worse, only one semester every other year) or had extremely limited sections or seats when they were offered then that school came off the table too. My kids always seemed to have more exciting courses available than they could fit on their schedules, and none of the classes were very large. I think the average was 30 students and the high end for a couple was ~50. But people like different things, so if 4-19 students is their preferred size they can probably find a college that offers that.
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I think one thing that seems to create unnecessary smoke in the room on these discussions are the categories. I’m sure US News has great reasons for how it defines its “National University” category; but it winds up grouping very disparate schools on at least this one point, if not others.
NW, Duke, Brown, Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale and Stanford - a good representation of that Top 30 national list, have UG populations ranging from 4,170 to 8,194, with a range of 5 to 6 thousand students capturing many.
When I think of this issue, I compare my own UG experience at a well respected flagship and research powerhouse (36,000). I do not think about Dartmouth or Brown. Brown, where I have a kid, looks and feels more like a large LAC than it does a large research institution of the sort I attended. I live in the West, and we do “big school U” out here, and Dartmouth is going to seem small to a lot of us who grew up out this way.
I’m not sure I’ve read anybody say here that LACs are the only means to small class sizes, or that you’ll never sit in a small class at a large state flagship. As a parent with 2 who attended LACs, small classes were one important factor. There were other factors, including the size of the entire school and corresponding sense of community, which is another discussion.
As to the relative importance of small classes, I’ll just leave it to whatever floats your boat. To me, it’s important, and if it’s not to you then we probably don’t have much to talk about on this point. I can’t make you appreciate the benefits any more than you’re going to convince me that I wasted my money for a good student to teacher ratio.
This really doesn’t need to be an argument. LACs do offer small classes, among other benefits. If none of those benefits matter to you, then go elsewhere. Everybody rationalizes their own platform. In my years hovering around here, I’ve yet to read the first person write, “I should not have sent my kid to this or that type of school.”
There have been HUNDREDS of these threads.
Not “type” of school- but specific school. Parent posts that kid graduated from Penn State with a degree in Psychology, can’t get a job, is working for minimum wage at the old HS job. It takes us “trying to be helpful” long time posters hundreds of threads to learn that the kid lives in a depressed industrial town in Northwest PA and is not willing to look at Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Cincinnati, etc. where a kid with a BA in Psych can get a corporate, entry level job (and the company doesn’t care what the major was). Many of you may remember this poster. We literally posted hundreds of suggestions of how a kid can launch with a psych degree. But if you live in a town with no public transportation, no industry, and where property values are plummeting, the problem isn’t Penn State or the psych degree.
There have been parents who have paid full boat for Wake, Bates, Muhlenberg who regret not taking the full ride at “name a college a tier down where the kid got merit aid”. And of course the parents who regret Columbia or Cornell because “everyone knows” that you can’t get a good job with a BS in biology and the kid’s MCAT scores aren’t good enough for med school.
Stick around!
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These are more the kinds of posts to which I was referring, and yep, I guess I’ve missed those. The bullseye of what I was getting at would be, “I regret sending my kid to our state flagship because I think he would have received a better education at a small private college.” Or, “I regret sending my kid to a small private college because I’m not convinced the extra cost was worth it.” That kind of thing. Those I’ve stumbled across always involve a friend’s or relative’s kid. “My niece attends Bowdoin and is miserable,” and “My neighbor sent their kid to an Ivy League school and she says her Head Start classes at the local CC were more rigorous.” And, given space this particular school takes up on CC, I’d pay a bounty for a legitimate post (which is another problem) from a parent saying, “I really regret sending my kid to the University of Alabama.” Had to throw that one in.
As to the “type of major” variety you pointed out, even those don’t seem very common unless, again, it’s the neighbor, niece or nephew, or I’ve just simply missed them. And I’ve surely never seen one where the non-professional degree was obtained at a school like Columbia or Cornell. As a side note, you’ve participated in threads where that topic has been hotly debated, and I’ve found your expressed views to be almost identical to something I’d write.
When I was an undergrad, the most popular prof on campus taught in the largest lecture hall. And I never managed to take one of his classes – always filled! He was a legend because he was, in many ways, a great performer. And fwiw, his most popular class was Yiddish Literature, so hardly a case of a popular major!
When I return to my graduate institution, a compelling prof often presents research is an engaging way to hundreds of alums. It’s exciting and memorable. I would not need to have the experience in a small group to get a lot out of it.
At the same time, small classes offer more time to get to know profs personally and get direction on projects and research. DS is still in touch with profs both in and out of his major. He learned better when he could engage and liked the personal connections. For him, small classes were really important to his experience.
Neither is intrinsically better. Some profs might be able to deliver content in a very exciting way for a 1000. And who wants to hear what students have to say in that case anyway? Some students learn better when they can participate more in class. I think this kind of data is informative but it shouldn’t necessarily be used to determine “better”. That’s in the eye of the beholder!
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I agree with pretty much all of that.
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Cquin- I will ping you the next time I stumble across one of those threads, and we can agree with each other (except where we differ!)
Re: the state flagship debate vs. the small private college and regrets- we also see (very frequently) the “My kid was an A student in HS and he’s flunking out of our state flagship, what next?” The unstated part of these posts (and of course the unknowable) is what would have happened to the kid at a small college? I don’t know enough kids IRL to be able to say that you cannot get to finals at a small college without ever having turned in a problem set because the kid is up all night gaming or partying.
I DO know that at MIT there was something called “A Fail Mail” and it happened pretty early in the semester, as an early warning sign from professors that All Is Not Right and the student needs to come in to office hours and figure out a correction plan ASAP. Does this happen at smaller colleges? Probably. Does it happen at big state flagships? At some I’m sure it does.
The parents of kids who are circling the drain are usually too frantic to wonder if the problem was the college (since there’s always the contributing factor of an advisor who has checked out, the wrong major, weak prep in a certain area, substance abuse, pick your poison). But I do think we can tease out a lot of regret on CC overall.
What about all the transfer threads? Yikes.
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