"… the admissions office assures prospective students that UChicago offers the same small class sizes as its peers on the other U.S. News & World Report list …
… At best, the language used by Admissions misrepresents the reality of class sizes at the College. The Admissions Office uses ‘The Core’ to refer only to non-STEM requirements in statements about class size, despite the fact that the Admissions Office elsewhere uses the title as a catchall for both STEM and humanistic sequences. At worst, it’s a willful obfuscation of the status quo of undergraduate education at UChicago. The Office of Admissions should honestly and responsibly represent UChicago’s undergraduate offerings to prospective students, because large class sizes and other necessary aspects of a research institution have a serious impact on the undergraduate experience." …
This is a complaint in search of an issue. Looking at Harvard’s enrollment for fall 2019 (as just one example of a “peer”), the Gen Ed courses are packed with 100 - 200 students easily. “Tech Ed” has over 600! Org. Chem, one of the huge sections mentioned by the author, was similarly packed at Harvard (around 225 vs. 300 at UChicago). That’s a function of the wild popularity of certain majors and subjects. For instance, my D’s Econ 100 section had over 200 enrollees; however Ec. 10 at Harvard has over 600! One remedy: sit towards the front of the class during the lecture, and attend the tutorials, problem sessions and office hours.
Looking over UChicago’s fall lineup, it looks like Calculus enrolls fewer than 30 students in each section. My son’s calculus section includes a LOT of opportunity for problem sessions, office hours etc. Core stats will draw in 40 - 50; CS is closer to 100 but that’s hardly surprising given the subject’s wild popularity (Harvard’s CS 50 draws in around 600). Core Bio sections draw in about 50 students in each section; topics will have fewer. Metabolism and Exercise has fewer than 60 kids this fall. Core Phy Sci will vary depending on the popularity of the course: Climate Change or Physics for Presidents might draw 100, less popular sections will draw something in the 40’s. Does anyone really think these are unreasonably sized courses?
The only truly “packed” courses are the science prereqs such as Comprehensive General Chem, General Physics or Mechanics. Gen. Chem draws in well over 200 per section which is probably not good; however, Harvard’s intro STEM courses - including the Calc. sequence! - are similarly packed with 100 - 300 students.
@JBStillFlying - the author isn’t really complaining about class size at Chicago. Rather, the author takes issue with the way Admissions advertises the academic experience at Chicago. The author does not agree with Admissions descriptions of Chicago undergrad resembling a LAC.
You brought up Harvard as a comparator, but their Admissions pages seem to characterize Harvard college very differently.
If Chicago is indeed marketing its College as having a small LAC feel, as the author asserts, that’s pretty laughable. I went to Chicago when it was much smaller, and it certainly didn’t feel like a LAC when I was there. There were plenty of large (100+ person) classes and classes taught by grad students. I didn’t mind that at all - some of my best teachers were grad students - but LAC it ain’t.
But if describing a LAC within a research U gets more apps in the door, I wouldn’t put it past Nondorf and crew to try it! We have invested millions in finding every last ounce of “talent” possible, even if such expenditures probably are overkill, and we are far more broke than our peers.
“the author isn’t really complaining about class size at Chicago. Rather, the author takes issue with the way Admissions advertises the academic experience at Chicago. The author does not agree with Admissions descriptions of Chicago undergrad resembling a LAC.”
Chicago is very much like an LAC. I can say that, having attended an LAC, having attended UChicago as a grad student and observed the College structure at the time, having discussed UChicago in dept with many others who have attended and/or have their kids attending, and having observed the sections and sequences that my own kids have been taking. It's not laughable in the least - the school has always felt that way to a good number of people. Perhaps, @Cue7, it's a simple question of good fit.
Edit to add: as a research uni, there will be differences from an LAC. Access to PhD grad students, other divisions outside the liberal arts side, etc. It’s also significantly larger than an LAC now. But I always thought it was very liberal-artsy for a top ranked research uni.
When I was at my very small LAC, we didn’t have an intro course under 70. That’s the way popular intro courses are. The majority of my courses had fewer than 20, and my freshman lit seminar had about 10. Econ, Calc, CS etc. - much larger.
“You brought up Harvard as a comparator, but their Admissions pages seem to characterize Harvard college very differently.”
What does Harvard College say that is a different characterization? I just went off the actual course enrollment numbers which are readily available. Because the author made the following statement: "And yet, the admissions office assures prospective students that UChicago offers the same small class sizes as its peers on the other U.S. News & World Report list" it seems relevant to bring up peers. What peers do you perceive it is similar to, and what are those course enrollment numbers?
The author is simply wrong about the size of the Metabolism course (my son is there currently and the size is fine), and the remaining complaints are nit pickin.’ A proper science course is taught precisely as UChicago is presenting the subject. The Core IS distinctive for having three of seven required sequences in the Socratic style, and offering students that option even at the introductory level within several majors. That is quite unusual indeed.
Anyone interested in the school is welcome to look into it in more detail. Chicago makes the curriculum readily available to anyone who wants to check it out.
At your small LAC, @JBStillFlying - how many courses were taught by grad students? How many tenured professors were clearly more interested in their own research, and left the bulk of the grading and lecturing to TAs? How many classes could you take with graduate students?
In terms of size, how many students attended your LAC? Was it small enough - as many are - that you felt like you could know a good chunk of your peers? How involved could you get with high end, big market research on campus? Did your lac have a research hospital or law school attached?
I never went to Chicago bc I felt it would be like a LAC - I went entirely because it was a decent sized (about 4000 students at the time) college within a major research U. Calling Chicago a LAC is laughable bc the only similarity the places share is that many Chicago class sizes (at least in hum and sosc) are small. Besides that, they seem entirely different.
Also, scroll through the Harvard Admissions pages - outside of noting that they too have small class sizes, they emphasize research opportunities, the biggest athletic program in the country, and a wide range of extra curricular options a lac could not match.
There’s a lot more to a LAC than small class sizes and a good student to teacher ratio.
“At your small LAC, @JBStillFlying - how many courses were taught by grad students? How many tenured professors were clearly more interested in their own research, and left the bulk of the grading and lecturing to TAs? How many classes could you take with graduate students?”
Chicago's faculty has always prioritized research and grad student teaching over the undergraduates, as we know; however, the College has provided an increasing number of teaching faculty to accommodate the needs of the undergraduates lately (not sure how it was in your day). Only calculus is taught by PhD students currently I believe. Very few research uni's get their PhD students through without some teaching.
Haven’t looked into this closely with other top uni’s but am a bit familiar with Harvard due to family connections. Intro courses are taught by faculty but can be quite large (not all but several of them) and the real learning in this case tends to happen during the tutorials with the TA (grad student). Whether this is replicated at Princeton or Yale - not sure.
BTW, my LAC instructors were primarily (not always) T/TT faculty, and the latter were subject to “publish or perish” rules as well. To handle their teaching load, many traded down in scholarship. Not all journals are the same. To answer your other questions about my LAC, I’d say that my experience is similar but slower paced compared to what my kids are experiencing at UChicago currently. I did, indeed, have the opportunity to take courses with grad students; however, the grad programs were obviously very limited in scope. My LAC also didn’t have access to professional programs at the time (though within the Econ major specifically we did have the opportunity for a few pre-professional courses, and later on the college expanded access to a business curriculum).
“Also, scroll through the Harvard Admissions pages - outside of noting that they too have small class sizes, they emphasize research opportunities, the biggest athletic program in the country, and a wide range of extra curricular options a lac could not match.”
Have no doubt that Harvard lists more EC’s (or would have more research opportunties) than even a top LAC! What does that have to do with course size? Or are you saying that Harvard isn’t a peer with UChicago? BTW, here is UChicago’s admissions website and you can see that the main focus is academics: https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/academics
“There’s a lot more to a LAC than small class sizes and a good student to teacher ratio.”
The best research uni's that focus on liberal arts for the undergraduate program will emulate an LAC "feel" while supplementing with the opportunities available given the larger and more researched-focused institution.
@JBStillFlying - I have to hand it to you, perhaps your kids ans your experience can be fodder for uchicago admissions advertisements - you really should be interviewed by the adcomm!
I didn’t go to a lac (hah! Or maybe I did - my college of 4000, or, according to you, Chicago’s college of 7000 - feels like a lac!), but visited (and applied) to some, and had many friends who attended them.
I always thought the biggest component to their distinctiveness was, well, literally their size. Going to school qith 1200 or 1600 students seems intuitively different to me than 4k or 7k.
Also, what are “teaching faculty”? Do you mean adjuncts? I thought another traditional component of lacs was minimal use of adjuncts.
Again, your endurance for spotlighting chicago in light that even current students (like the author of this article) would question knows no bounds.
I’ll start telling people I went to this intimate liberal arts college at the university of Chicago. Ever heard of it? They might get up to 8k undergrads living in massive dorms and scattered across apartments, but they keep a nice cozy liberal arts feel!
Sorry, writing rhat out, I don’t think I could say it with a straight face. Not sure how the adcomm can, either.
UChicago may have upsides of LAC’s without the downside of excessive smallness, which can be claustrophobic. For example, one of my children rejected Swarthmore because, “it was too much like high school”.
Class sizes and quality and intensity and intimacy of teaching is a key aspect of the quality LAC. Does UChicago have this quality? I believe that is what we should be arguing.
Gotta disagree. I think the issue is real, but jut not well supported with facts. (Anecdotes <> anec-data.)
The author shoulda done so more digging and asking the College for real numbers of average class sizes, (eg, those <20 students, those >50 students, etc.) to compare with the type of numbers reported on the Common Data Set (which Chicago doesn’t publish?). And then asking for what % of classes are actually taught by ‘PhD students’? (That is certainly not something that happens at a LAC or even some major R1 public Unis, where grad students will generally run discussion sections only; in such cases, a real Prof gives the lecture and holds office hours.)
To better make the case that Chicago is a non-LAC, the author could have also compared the ratio of grads/undergrads at Chicago vs. is peer group and a few top LAC’s. (obviously the latter have few/zero grad students by definition, but even Pton and Dartmouth are much-more undergrad focused than Chicago.)
@Kaukana - yep. The Maroon article serves as an excellent catalyst for that.
@Cue7 seems to have an issue with a perceived lack of access to TT (ie ‘real’?) faculty and/or bad teaching. Perhaps he can recover enough from his full-onset UCDS to provide some actual details of his Core and intro course experience so that we can better understand what it was like.
In order for the “research LAC” model to apply, you need both top teaching AND top research to be going on. The question is whether you need the same set of PhD-professionals doing both. Some will, of course, at UChicago, and it will also vary by department/division or intro vs. non-intro course. UChicago has a good number of fellows available to help keep seminar courses small (btw Cue, to answer your question about “teaching faculty” see an example here: https://societyoffellows.uchicago.edu/ ). On the other hand, you really can’t use the Socratic method for a methods-heavy subject such as chemistry or econ, so a lecture complete with blackboard, tutorials, labs or problem sessions is going to work better. Those will naturally be able to accommodate more students. The calc sequence seems to be so theoretical that the math department has chosen to form a larger number of smaller sections run by experienced PhD students, rather than fewer, larger lecturers headed by a TT faculty member. Would the latter actually work better? The math department is in a better position to know that than the rest of us. Would also add that having more sections of Math available means everyone can take the course (as everyone is expected to). This is not always true at other universities (although Harvard has just introduced a “math/quant” requirement with this year’s incoming class).
A major fail this quarter, IMHO, has been the 200+ Econ 100 (principles of Micro) course. My D was horrified. And in the first few weeks she esimtated that about 100 additional kids were sitting on the floor hoping to pink slip in - that’s how bad the overflow was. Econ 100 (the old Econ 198) was always a large lecture class. However, whereas in prior years they typically offered two sections (one with Sanderson, another a bit more math’y) and it served as a non-required “get your feet wet” sort of intro course for the subject, this quarter they only offered only one section - Sanderson - and made it a pre-req for the business economics major. Right now there might well be 50 or so first years who are no longer considering business econ because they had to switch to pass/no pass. That first years were allowed in the course at all is another major fail. Sanderson runs it assuming the class has the study skills and discipline of an upper div or graduate student. No TA, no tutorials, no p-sets; entire grade based on the best three of four exams, and you use his prior year exam questions as your study guide. That is NOT an appropriate course for a first quarter-first year student. This isn’t Sanderson’s fault - he’s always taught it this way. This is a goof-up of the College. They shouldn’t allow any pre-req courses unless it satisfies the Core or the language requirement. If the social science hopefuls want to jump-start their major, they should take Sosc in their first year just like they used to in the olden days.
I have descriptions of the Core from Wayback that are prior to the Nondorf years. I’ll post if necessary but hoping it’s not. In a nutshell, over the recent years the college admissions website has summarized and shortened what was a long and comprehensive description of the “Common Core,” moving much of the detail over to the relevant sections of the College Catalog. Links are provided so they aren’t hiding information, they probably just thought it was a tad too “much” for most looking into the school for the first time. I think the resulting language is a tad sloppy but there doesn’t seem to be an intent to mislead. It’s still fairly detailed! (much more so than the information provided on other admissions sites).
The author’s point was basically that the college admissions site was misleading because class sizes are sub-par. There are clearly a few instances where the latter is an accurate statement (I just posted one of them) but IMHO it’s not a pervasive issue with the College.
@JBStillFlying - I have no problem with grad students or non-tenure faculty teaching college courses. Exposure (especially to grad students) was one of the reasons I wanted to go to Chicago. And the academic experience was excellent. I’ve always described it as a mid-sized college within an expansive research university.
Anyway, grad students and non-TT professors definitely teach chicago undergrads. Doesn’t this in and of itself distinguish chicago from almost all LACs? How many PHD students are at most lacs?
JB you have more info here on this, but for a student at Amherst or Swarthmore or Haverford, what grad students are on campus and teaching the undergrads?
I hesitate to wade into the increasingly petty waters here, but . . .
Just to be clear, the Admissions statement the Maroon writer complained about was that Chicago's class sizes were comparable to those of peer LACs (presumably Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, et al.), not peer institutions like Harvard. Of course, Harvard also makes certain its first year students get some super-small seminar classes, too.
Also, just to be clear, I don't think Chicago has a lot of classes taught by graduate students other than Math 130s and 150s (and maybe the pre-calculus math, too). There are a few ABD graduate students teaching in the Core, but most of the Core courses are taught by non-adjunct, but non-tenure-track, PhD holders. They are full-time employees, usually with a two-section teaching load that presumably leaves them time for scholarship as well. Generally, they are people who are in the market for tenure track jobs but haven't gotten one, or people who want to be in Chicago for personal reasons that outweigh their desire for a tenure-track job anywhere else. Some of them are great teachers, some not so much. It's one of the better non-tenure-track jobs out there for recent PhDs, so I think they get good people. Harvard has a similar program, too, but smaller.
As at other institutions, it is also common for graduate students who have essentially completed their dissertations to offer elective seminar courses that more or less track their dissertation topic, with a somewhat wider focus. No one is forced to take those. One of the best courses I had in college was a course like that, and each of my kids had a similar experience at Chicago. For me, it’s a weakness of LACs that they have fewer such courses. (They do have some – it’s not that uncommon for LACs to hire people who have not yet defended their theses on a probationary basis.)
Has anyone looked to see how large the intro General Chemistry or Economics course at Swarthmore or Williams is? Wesleyan (with about 800 students per class, not much smaller than Cue7's University of Chicago)? I think all of those schools have some lecture classes with triple-digit rosters. Once you get past 50-60 people in a class, I am not certain there's a big difference in the quality of the experience until you get to the 300-400 level.
It appears that others on this thread may agree with you, Cue. But the rankings gurus do not. USNews give points for full time faculty, and faculty with highest degree in field (so ABD’s are a decrement).
Can’t answer for specific courses but both Williams and Swat report on their CDS only 2 courses offered that have more than 100 students (<0.5%), and 10 courses with student counts of 50-99. More than a third of each college’s courses have less than 10 students.
(This is the type of comparison that could have been performed by the author, with some numbers for Northwestern and HYP thrown in for fun!)
fwiw: my son attended an Ivy and had zero courses led by TA’s, ABD’s, or any other non-faculty. In fact, he only had a few courses with a TA at all, and they just ran discussion sections. (Heck, that was my experience attending a major R1 public Uni back in the dark ages.) So, the Chicago teaching model appears to be decidedly different, IMO.
Right, but I bet those 5 classes include the classes the Maroon writer was complaining about (i.e., intro basic sciences necessary for medical school application as well as prerequisite for any science major).
Chem 151 Introductory Chemistry
Format: lecture/laboratory; lecture, three times per week and laboratory, four hours per week
Limit: 16/lab
Expected: 48
Chem 153 Concepts of Chemistry (for students who have taken HS chemistry)
Format: lecture/laboratory; lecture, three hours per week and laboratory, four hours per week
Limit: 16/lab
Expected: 70
Econ 110 Principles of Microeconomics
Format: lecture; discussion
Limit: 40
Expected: 40
(6 classes taught by different profs at different times)
Econ 101, Principles of Macroeconomics
The Class:
Format: lecture; discussion
Limit: 40
Expected: 40
(4 classes taught by different profs at different times)
Swarthmore:
CHEM01001 Foundations of Chemical Principles
ENR LIM: 28 CUR ENR: 31
CHEM01002 Foundations of Chemical Principles
ENR LIM: 28 CUR ENR: 34
CHEM01003 Foundations of Chemical Principles
ENR LIM: 60 CUR ENR: 42
For each of the 3 Chem 0100 courses students must sign up for one of 7 labs (107 students over 7 labs = roughly 16/lab)
ECON 101 Introduction to economics
3 classes, each with an enrollment cap of 30.
Theses are all fall 2019 enrollments, which tend to be higher than spring for intro/prerequisite courses.
Hilarious. UChicago wants to lure students by claiming it offers a LAC experience? Meanwhile, everyone here knows that professors send their own kids to LACs a lot of the time.
If kids want the LAC experience, they should consider applying to LACs. The biggest class my kid has had at her LAC had 60 students, for an intro level course. Now she’s a senior, and I think the only other “large” class she had had about 25 students.
As far as research, etc…most people here probably also know that it’s pretty easy for undergrads at LACs to get research opportunities. My own D did one at a big state U this summer. A good friend of hers did research at an Ivy school. As far as the “rich faculty-student exchange in and out of the classroom,” I think my D would unequivocally say she has had that in spades, right from her first semester. I doubt most students at a university could say the same.
Guidance counselors could do a better job of making their students aware of LACs. So many kids don’t know of them, or think that LACs just offer basket weaving and anthropology. And a lot of parents refuse to consider them, because they think the same thing. The grads from my D’s school are getting great jobs, getting accepted to graduate programs, and winning prestigious scholarships. Seems to me that UChicago is just saying whatever they think might get people to apply.
“Meanwhile, everyone here knows that professors send their own kids to LACs a lot of the time.”
That might vary by field or by region of the country. We know lot of academic social scientists at various research institutions (including top ones) and their kids tend to go to research uni’s themselves. Not always the top ones but we know maybe kid of academic parents who went to an LAC (Carleton). LAC’s are a great experience, but my kids found them too small, too boring, and - for a good number, anyway - too rural.
Sure, @JBStillFlying , but isn’t U Chicago the place where fun goes to die?
In al honesty, at least for my kid, she has never once said her college is boring. Very high retention rates prove that, and of course, Chicago must be doing something right, even if it is boring. Maybe being boring isn’t such a bad thing.
