The ability to succeed in a larger classroom/lecture hall depends on the student and professor.
My daughter had a few large classes for intro courses. The professors were engaged, knew her name, answered questions within the class, set up discussion groups within the larger class, etc. One prof in particular was involved in research exploring how to teach most effectively when class size is large.
I am not suggesting that large classes are just as personal as smaller classes. They are not.
I am suggesting that talented professors do know how to teach larger classes effectively.
So I reviewed the articles, and he is indeed supporting the common view that national publics AND privates are benefitting at the expense of regional/local privates AND publics. He does not suggest there is a specific problem involving just national publics and regional/local privates, it cuts across all schools.
He and others are also finding that regional/local schools under 1000 in enrollment are more vulnerable, but that regional/local privates are generally more resilient than public peers.
In general, though, the smaller the class size, the better. I have issues with a school that is in the top 30, yet it has large class sizes and many classes online. I know multiple students at UF, and they are always complaining about very large classes and online classes. Most all 1st and 2nd year business classes are taught online. You can’t tell me that a student is getting the same education with an online course as in person course.
Mix this with the common practice of grade inflation, we are pushing students through so they can get a degree that has been watered down
And how many truly talented professors you had in college? I hardly can recall any truly talented. Some were better than others. But talented in teaching? Nope.
I bet we have difference in defenition of truly taleneted. To me those are the ones that can egage the whole auditorium and make sure that everyone understand the material (including usually sleeping students who only took the class because it is required…)
Funny you say that - solid perhaps but I had one that was memorable. Dr. Scott Strickland in history.
They aren’t necessarily teachers - at many schools that’s not their job. Well it’s their job but it’s not what their career arc is based on. They’re not trained to be teachers.
And even here, I read - ratings should be based on research, % terminal degrees. OK - but neither necessarily impacts teaching quality.
Speaking with my S24 generally, a lot of the things about certain universities and LACs that appeal to him are basically next-step/college versions of the things he has valued about his private HS. Makes sense to me–overall he has had a great experience that served him well, and we are an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” sort of family.
And the US News changes devalued the sorts of things he values, and replaced them with things he doesn’t personally value for school choice purposes, in a way that probably would more or less apply to his high school versus a variety of public high schools too.
Which kinda makes sense because as we have frequently discussed, most kids do not get to have this sort of educational experience, not even most of the ones in good school districts. And while that isn’t his fault, and we obviously don’t think he should refuse to participate, at a societal level it is certainly an issue worth discussing.
Of course all this is easy for us to say because we never saw these rankings as a factor in his college choice anyway. Nor really do we think anyone should use them that way. And so to the extent this is inviting a broader discussion about which colleges are working for which people in what ways–that seems fine.
Many classes featuring large lectures also have much smaller discussion sections weekly – about 20 students and a TA working on their PhD – that are perfect for Q&A, discussing assignments and upcoming exams, etc. (Anecdotal… based on UW-Madison. But I imagine large lectures at other schools offer similar discussion sections)
I totally get it. But imagine that you are in some Physics or Math class with 200 students. You can’t follow explanation. You can’t ask question (you are told to keep questions untill recitation.) You are then redused to a monkey copying info presented to you into your notebook… Benefit of sitting in the class is that you get notes that you do not understand…
I’ve been that TA leading discussion (and writing) sections, and I think it certainly CAN work quite well. But I do think there can be a significant quality control problem. This depends on the university and program, but in programs where TA slots are a significant, maybe dominant, part of PhD student funding, I think these TAs often get minimal training, minimal supervision, and not a lot of evaluation that could actually cause them to lose their funding.
Now I think most of us in such a system try to do a good job anyway. But I knew cases where I did not think the grad student was really taking it seriously, or maybe just was not cut out for teaching generally. But that was their funding, so it just continued anyway.
It’s the class size issue that makes me think public and private schools should be ranked separated with different criteria. Berkeley is no question a tip top public but it also has some classes with more than 1000 students. I can see the argument that class sizes matter less in a public than private since as a group, class sizes are larger in this category as schools. Nearly all the test blind schools are public and perhaps there is a better substitute for test scores than just increasing the weight of graduation rates.
On the other hand, with private colleges, class sizes and terminal degree of the professor teaching the class is an integral part of the product people are paying a premium for. These factors absolutely should be included. I also think 4 year graduation rates are more relevant given how much tuition is per year.
I have totally been there. So I took notes as best as I could, highlighted them, and brought them to the discussion for clarification.
Or I would read and re-read the text that covered that particular item until I understood it.
In the large lecture, the lecturer is trying to cover X, Y, and Z topics for each lecture. If they were bombarded with questions, it would derail the progress of the course.
Large classes aren’t limited to public schools. I had a 1000+ person psych lecture at Cornell, and plenty of intro classes had 200+. (That 1000 person class was one of my very favorite classes in all of undergrad.)
Agree again. That is why when I learned about intro Bio classes for BME at CWRU have 400 students, a told DD I do not see the point to pay premium for that college…
Have you seen how those 1000 person classes are run? There is literally only 1 class at Berkeley that has that many students but it’s also one of the best CS classes in the world and is run so ridiculously well that you never feel the size. The discussions are the dominant part of the class and they are limited to 35 kids at most. But the course staff is huge and that diversity in the course staff leads to some of the best teaching - through HW, problem sets, office hours, discussions, and very creative projects.
I get the general point about large classes but size creates critical mass and that creates greater depth in academic offerings for upper division classes which then end up having much smaller class sizes.