Another issue with raw ratio data is it doesn’t take into account the number of classes taught by each faculty member each semester, whch can be very variable.
Honestly these days I would worry more about the ratio of faculty staff member to adjuncts. Adjuncts don’t have to have the office hours that regular faculty do, and don’t always adhere to the teaching/homework grading norms of the college.
It also matters how adjuncts are used. Adjuncts from industry teaching specialty courses where an industry perspective is desired is one thing. Adjuncts filling in for various core courses for the major because the department is understaffed relative to student demand for the courses is another thing.
And to add to UCB’s fine post- Adjuncts who are currently teaching at three different institutions in order to approximate a full time job- even worse. These are often fine teachers and academics who put heart and soul into their classes.
But a professor running out the door to drive to the next college, or juggling the exam schedules of three different places which have overlapping calendars (so the review sessions get cancelled, or students are told “email me with questions”) is a professor who is very severely taxed in terms of time.
Doesn’t matter HOW low the faculty/student ratio is if the professor is just not available.
Or maybe they never attended a LAC or LAC-like university where small classes are the norm and even star faculty teach them. The main benefit isn’t that the professor learns your name (a cranky “You there, number 21769” works for me). It’s more in the classroom response to half-baked opinions, fallacies, and showing-off. Nearly every first-year student is prone to those mistakes, which are hard to expose without meaningful discussion. Small classes also present an opportunity for professors to address what students aren’t seeing in lab or field specimens, a writer’s argument, or a data collection. They create opportunities to draw out diverse viewpoints on questions that don’t have simple answers.
However, smaller classes require higher rates of instructional spending per student, which few colleges can sustain if they also want to offer high salaries to attract top faculty. To reach the greatest number of students, big lectures are the way to go. If the discussion section only amounts to basic Q&A or problem set reviews, it makes sense to use graduate teaching assistants to free up professors’ time for research or advanced seminars. Virtually every college needs to strike a balance; there is no single, right format for all populations or course content.
Evaluation of students will be different too. Exams - multiple choice or blue book written? Are there research or other papers? Who will grade your problem sets and give you feedback? Etc.
Totally depends the expertise of the prof and staff and logistical support. Andrew Ng’s Machine Learning class (CS229) at Stanford this quarter has 1040 students enrolled including post doc, doc, masters, seniors, juniors, a couple hundred sophomores, and a single (brave) freshman. Class is uncapped to give students a chance to learn from an AI rock-star.
With colleges costing $30-70K per year these days, it is fascinating to see people defend large class sizes.
As an undergrad, I transferred from a school of 50K where I wasn’t doing well, to one of 3K where I thrived. The main difference was class size and direct access to professors. At the larger school, I routinely had classes of 300-500 students, and if you had questions, the protocol was to ask a TA (many of whom could barely speak English) before you asked a professor. That didn’t work for me. At the smaller school, my largest class was about 60 people, most classes were in the 20-30 student range, and my professors and I knew each other by name. The only time we had TAs was for a few intro-level biology class labs, and the TAs spoke English.
That doesn’t mean class size is an issue for everyone, or even the majority, but it’s ridiculous to proclaim outright that class size doesn’t matter, or that relationships with professors don’t matter.
Average class size. Gen eds are usually the largest classes while major and upper level classes are smaller. Small classes can be good since you get to know the prof and they you. I’ve known of profs who have invited a class over for dinner. Now if you like to sleep in instead of going to class, the prof knows that you are not there. Some profs include class attendance as part of their grade. One of my kids went to class sick. The prof looked at her and sent her back to the dorm and told her to rest and not go to class unless she felt better.
I asked my D, a PhD student at a state flagship univ., and she told me that it was not necessarily correct. This is what she said, “Compare the class I taught last summer, with about 300 students, 10 TAs, and 20 readers, with XXX class taught by Dr. YYY this semester, with 1500 students, 55 TAs, and hundreds of readers. Dr. YYY is so busy managing the army of TAs and readers that he doesn’t even have time for office hours. When I was teaching, every office session (twice a week, each 1.5 hours), I had 15 - 20 students needing to talk to me, and I had time for them. I don’t think Dr. YYY has time for 100 students each session.”
There are definitely some good TAs, but noone knows the materials as profoundly as the instructor, who is responsible for developing the materials.
Not saying you can’t manage just fine with large classes (I had them back in the 80s at state U and have done just fine in life). However, can’t understand the argument that it’s not necessarily better to have smaller classes taught by a professor (who might be a leader in his/her field depending on the university). Why wouldn’t it be better to have smaller classes, opportunity for discussion (learn to express and defend opinion in a civil manner) , opportunity to build relationship with professor, etc? In what circumstance would that be worse? The whole idea of anonymity in large lectures is odd. Why is it good to be anonymous? I get the whole deal with missing a class because you stayed out to late or couldn’t focus because you were hungover. Been there done that. When kids talk about missing classes like it’s a badge of honor, I have to ask myself why are they there? That happens less when there is a small intimate setting involved. People actually care if you show up. That’s part of the maturing process in college. Making good decisions. Perhaps for the first time in many students lives, their actions actually have consequences.
My S tells me of several occasions professor interaction and approachability has helped him his first semester. Studying for tests or researching papers, he frequently met with profs to resolve some struggle and performed much better for doing so. They also saw the effort and were very willing to help.
Again,not saying one must have that to succeed. I didn’t. But you’re kidding yourself, unless it’s the rarest situation, that you’re better off having large impersonal lectures with virtually no student / prof interaction. What’s the difference between that and taking the class online?
It is not that particular class that may be worse if it is smaller. It is the overall offerings and access. For example, if the instructor is a leader in the field and 300 students want to take his/her class that has a limit of 30, who gets to? Do 270 not get to take the course, or need to take it with less desired instructors?
Another situation is, is it better to offer one large lower level course and ten upper level courses per semester, or six small sections of the lower level course and five upper level courses, using the same number of faculty?
The answers to these tradeoffs are not the same at every college, and what is more desirable can vary by student.
Just because the faculty are there does not necessarily mean they are willing or able to teach. At many elite schools, faculty define themselves as scholars at a research university, not educators. They may teach as a condition of their contract with the university ( or may not even have to) but that is not their primary role nor interest. Low ratios do need necessarily equate to small classes. Princeton has a low ratio but there were 600 in my economics 101 course.
Sometimes small class discussions get dominated by dumb students and you don’t actually end up learning as much from the professor as you’d like. That said, my favorite class in college was a graduate seminar on Sung Dynasty Landscape painting. There were five or six of us who signed up. It met once a week and we had to write a paper for every class based on the reading and the paintings we were looking at that week. Everyone had to do the reading and the subject was obscure enough that no one took the class unless they were interested. My second favorite class were all the architectural history classes I took with a brilliant lecturer. Classes were I’d guess around 60. There was a TA - I think the same one all three years I took classes with this prof. He required students to discuss paper topics with him and I got to know him well enough that I asked him to be one of my senior thesis advisors.
@ucbalumnus, you make a good theoretical argument. I can’t give specifics, but in general, colleges with small student / teacher ratio (let’s say 10:1) are much smaller schools than one that would have 300 kids wanting to take a class from a professor at the same time or in the same semester. Traditional LACs have approx 2k kids. Highly unlikely 15% of the whole student body wants to take a specific class at the same time. Even mid size - (5k - 10K) would be hard pressed to have that demand on a regular basis. Of course it could happen. My hunch is that kids at large schools (20k+) are faced with these classes frequently (at least during first two yrs) and have to deal with it because it is what it is, not because they prefer it to smaller classes. They may view it as a trade off for the other reasons they prefer school X, just as those that want the more intimate experience will have trade offs to deal with.
Stanford and Harvard are mid size schools, but have such high demand for their introductory computer science courses that they enroll 700 students in those courses. Harvey Mudd, a LAC with about 800 students, enrolls 200 in its introductory computer science course.
I believe Stanford only has 1 current course with enrollment on that level – CS 229, which is an advanced undergrad/beginning graduate class called Machine Learning. I suspect that the enrollment is so high because they are counting SCPD professionals who are taking the class remotely from their place of employment.
Among lower level undergrad classes, I believe the most popular one is CS 106a (Programming Methodology) in Java, which has 386 enrolled this quarter. You can also choose CS 106a in Javascript (only in Autumn) or Python, which have smaller enrollments. The class has 55 sections this quarter, suggesting ~7 persons per section, which are generally run by grad student TAs. Having this small sections gives the opportunity to get personalized attention and ask a lot of questions about the lecture, in spite of it being a class size of hundreds. However, you are unlikely to get a lot of personal interaction with the professor.
I’ve taken quite a few large classes like this at Stanford. The big lecture by a well known professor in the field followed by smaller section format with a grad student TA worked well for me. I had few questions and didn’t mind asking those questions to TAs. However, I can see how students who are trying to get to know professors might feel differently. There were generally more opportunities for getting to know professors in higher level within major classes, rather than big intro to … lectures. It was still possible to get to know professors in intro classes, but the few times that happened to me all related to doing something to stand out (in a positive way).
Stanford CS 106A hit 700 in fall 2012, according to https://www.stanforddaily.com/2012/10/04/cs106a-enrollment-reaches-record-high/ . Perhaps splitting it into three variants reduced class sizes somewhat (though 386 is still big).
As I recall, they split the class in to 2 a few years ago. The same professor would give the same lecture at 2 different times. This apparently isn’t necessary any more, with the 3+ versions of the class and perhaps other changes. For example, I expect Mark Zuckerberg’s guest lectures contributed to the high enrollment, and I’m not sure if that still occurs.