Do colleges exist with ALL small classes?

[juillet]

<p>My LAC has around 2500 students and there weren’t many classes larger than 50 students. 1% of our classes were larger than 100 students (and when they say larger than, they probably mean like 105) and those were freshman biology and general chemistry - my alma mater had a very strong pre-med program and a lot of students started off pre-med. After freshman and sophomore year many pre-med students dropped it and the pre-med classes got much smaller. I only had one class (biology) that was 50 students; however, there were two lab sections, so our labs were only about 25 students. The rest of my classes were all less than 30 students, and I had two that were only 4-5 students and several that were about 10-15 students. The largest proportion were around 20 students.</p>

<p>I also want to point out that a 100-person lecture class isn’t actually that large, especially if there are smaller lab sections. At very large universities, lecture classes can easily have 200-300+ people. One of my close friends was premed at UCLA and her freshman bio classes had 500+ students, with some of them having to sit in overflow rooms and watch the lecture over telecasts. If you have to take one or two lectures that have around 100 students but have smaller lab or recitation sections, you should be fine.</p>

<p>If I become a professor after I finish this PhD, I’d teach at an LAC.</p>

[BobWallace]

<p>

Clearly, colleges exist with all small class sizes but don’t think that is meaningful when searching for a school. The Grinnell/Lindenwood comparison is interesting. On paper they seem the same but in reality, totally different experiences.

</p>

<p>There is no single factor that tells you everything you need to know about a college. This is certainly one worth looking at if you value discussion-based classes and/or attention from the teacher.</p>

<p>Some of the differences that concern you can be illuminated by looking at the composition of the instructors. In the same data section of the CDS as class size, information about the faculty is provided. So how are these different schools achieving small class sizes?</p>

<p>

Grinell</p>

<p>FACULTY AND INSTRUCTION
Full-Time Faculty159
Part-Time Faculty47
Full-Time Faculty with
Ph.D./Terminal Degree98%

</p>

<p>

Lindenwood</p>

<p>FACULTY AND INSTRUCTION
Full-Time Faculty240
Part-Time Faculty496
Full-Time Faculty with
Ph.D./Terminal Degree78%

</p>

<p>So you see a big difference here. At Grinell, about 3/4 of the faculty are full time with terminal degrees, whereas at Lindenwood less than 1/3 are. So Lindenwood is achieving small class sizes by lowering the standard for the instructors, while Grinell (and similar LACs) are maintaining a higher standard for instruction with small class sizes.</p>

[morandi]

<p>Precisely. Lindenwood employs mostly adjuncts and provides little to no support for them, which includes no office space or office hours. The class size may be small but these adjuncts are stretched so thin they have little time or interest in interacting with students outside of class. Also, full time faculty have a huge teaching load plus advising duties, again, with very little support. This is not true at all at Grinnell and other top/decent LAC’s where not only are there small classes, but also available and eager faculty who are well paid and have resources at their fingertips for the good of their students. Night and day! </p>

<p>Yes, numbers must be seen in proper context.</p>

[tk21769]

<p>

There’s a mistaken notion circulating out there (and you see it expressed often on CC) that one of the advantages of a private research university over a public flagship is that the private school will have more small classes. But that’s true only to a limited extent and for some schools.

</p>

<p>Some school websites have course registration pages showing enrollment sizes for each class. Schools that have such pages include Berkeley, Chicago, JHU, Princeton, and Williams. This information allows you to see how the class size distributions play out in specific courses that might interest you. </p>

<p>For instance, at Princeton, 11% of classes have 50+ students. According to their 2012-13 CDS, 37 out of 823 class sections had 100+ students. Let’s round that up to 40 and say “big” classes cover at least 4000 student seats. The actual number in some sections is well over 100, so it’s probably safe to say that the number of “big” class seats averages out to very roughly 1 per Princeton undergrad per year. (Princeton has ~5100 undergrads).</p>

<p>At the other end of the class size scale, for Fall 2013 Princeton offers 40 freshmen seminars usually with maximum enrollments of 15 students. 40 classes X 15 students X 2 semesters works out to 1200 students, a number approaching 1 “small” class per Princeton freshman per year.</p>

<p>How are Princeton’s “big” classes distributed across departments and levels?
For Spring 2013, Princeton listed 282 100-level courses. 10 (~3.5%) showed actual enrollments of 100 or more; these included courses in history, computer science, economics (intros to micro & macro), music, physics, psychology. At the 200 level, 15 of 219 courses (~7%) have 100+ students; these included courses in art, architecture, archaeology, biology, chemistry, computer science, economics, engineering, history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and statistics. At the 300-level, 10 0f 359 courses (~3%) have 100+ students; these included courses in chemistry (organic), math-in-economics, math-in-engineering, English (1 course on American bestsellers), Italian (?), sociology. At the 400 level, the largest class had 80 students.</p>

<p>“Big” classes do not touch every Princeton department and level. The largest 100-level math class had 31 students. The largest linguistics course at any level in Spring 2013 had 62; the others had 8-21 students. 1 of 53 English courses had 100+ students; 4 had 50 or more. “Big” classes (100+) appear at 100-level through 300-level … in over a dozen departments … but appear to be concentrated among pre-med courses and in core/gateway courses for popular majors. Many very small classes are available at all levels and apparently in most/all departments.</p>

[BeanTownGirl]

<p>I really think that people sometimes over-analyze the class size factor. I don’t see the problem with having the core introductory courses (Bio 1, Psych 1 etc.) taught as large lectures as long as: the professor is excellent, the class is broken down into small recitation groups, and the professor is accessible to students outside of class. And that would be the case at any really good school.</p>

[amtc]

<p>BeanTownGirl - you think that because you don’t mind the class situation you have described. There are many students who cringe at the idea of having a large, impersonal introductory course with a TA running a small recitation group. And many really good schools also think that is not the best introduction to a topic. Class size is very important if it matters to you, if it doesn’t matter to you then it’s not important at all.</p>

<p>Class size is but one criteria, of course there are other important factors including quality of teachers.</p>