<p>quick, random question - are econ undergrads usually as competitive as science undergrads ? (pre-law vs. pre-med)</p>
<p>"Sam88 -- minor correction. Sachs taught a course on sustainable development. Stiglitz co-taught the introductory econ class."</p>
<p>And now tell us how many hundreds were sitting in the auditorium despite the facts correction.</p>
<p>Are you asking if Econ majors are equally attractive to Law schools as Biology or Chemistry majors are to Medical schools? If so, then the answer is yes.</p>
<p>actually i was asking more in terms of, is econ as an undergrad major as difficult/competitive (amongst students) as other science majors, mainly since science majors are renowned to be cutthroat</p>
<p>Depends on the school I guess. But yes, in general, Economics is pretty competitive.</p>
<p>good to know, thanx alexandre</p>
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"Sam88 -- minor correction. Sachs taught a course on sustainable development. Stiglitz co-taught the introductory econ class."
And now tell us how many hundreds were sitting in the auditorium despite the facts correction.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>certainly. 129 in Sachs' Challenges of Sustainable Development, 249 in Principles of Economics, which is the very first intro econ class.</p>
<p>If you're interested, you can look at my earlier post about why I don't believe smaller intro classes are the defining factor in excellence. Lecture classes, whether with 50 students or 150 students, are lecture classes. What you want is a great lecturer. I do think it is worthwhile looking at upper division class size and access to research opportunities, opportunities to do a senior thesis under faculty supervision, etc.</p>
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This is not to say that some LACs aren't excellent places to study econ. (Williams, for one).
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<p>Probably not next year. The number of Econ majors at Williams doubled in a single year from around 12.5% to 25% of next year's senior class. The Econ department is in full thrash mode to accomodate the tidal wave of students with rising seniors being locked out of upper level electives unless they need the course to graduate.</p>
<p>yep and chances are that with close to a 150 students in a class that he doesn't know your name. you may have hard time convinving me that doesn't imply less personal attention or better learning environment. there are a lot of studies about that you may use as a reference point. </p>
<p>strangely these classes that you mention do not appear on columbia's registrar's list of courses offered last semester or this semester but that's a minor point. i'll accept what you say as true since i don't go there and accepting your enrollment number (150 and 250) is actually conducive to my argument (prohibitively large lecture classes to utilize economies of scale). </p>
<p>also, he does teach upperdivision classes but not to undergrads but in SIPA (which you may or may not know) is a graduate IA school school of Columbia. </p>
<p>So, this is all consistent with what I was saying earlier: that if great names (=better grad school reputation) do teach, they actually focus more on graduate students, if not exclusively then primarily, which does not mean better undergrad education by any means.</p>
<p>Interesteddad -- Wow. I hadn't heard that. </p>
<p>stud05 -- I don't know where you looked in the directory of classes. Stiglitz co-taught Principles of Economics with O'Flaherty (an attempt to attract more students because the other section is taught by Sunil Gulati, known as one of the best lecturers on campus.) Sachs' class may not have been listed under the econ department, but its title was as I reported.</p>
<p>No, neither man is likely to know the names of the undergrads in his lecture class. If that's your definition of excellence in education, I concede your point. I also agree with you that you cannot judge an undergraduate experience anywhere based on its graduate program ranking.</p>
<p>Yes, senior faculty also teach graduate students in SIPA or elsewhere. And, many probably prefer it. (Though Sachs went out of his way to design an undergrad course and make sure it was open to first years.) The point was, you made a broad assumption that Sachs and Nobel Prize winners hadn't taught undergrads recently and I simply refuted it with the fact that they did, as recently as last semester. </p>
<p>My view is that intro classes are basically lecture classes, even with fewer people sitting in the seats, and that graduate students are an important resource in these classes. Top programs attract the brightest grad students and, as TAs, they are additional sources of help for students in small groups or individually. Beyond those introductory courses, I think it is certainly worth looking at class size in upper division courses anywhere that you might be considering majoring in econ, especially since the popularity of this major seems to be overwhelming a lot of institutions, LACs as well as universities. </p>
<p>I think the choice of an LAC vs a university is a personal one, based on individual learning style, based on the type of college community and experience you want. They both have their advantages and their drawbacks. OK?</p>
<p>I looked at <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/%5B/url%5D">http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/</a> which is where I got the info. </p>
<p>When one takes classes with 250 students: that's literally and figuratively speaking "factory education" and hardly synonymous with "quality" education. </p>
<p>Your point about graduate students as TAs is interesting. Prevalent in the academic community as well as student evaluations posted on the Columbia University website (but incidentally a point brought up just about everywhere else) is that yes, TAs at top programs are among the brightest students in the world but they are also among the students who have the biggest difficulty with.....the English language?!? </p>
<p>Now, some may argue that it is completely okay to not be able to understand your TAs as long as they are super smart and can optimize utility functions using advanced calculus. I am among those who happen to differ (though as an undergraduate at Ohio Wesleyan University, I am lucky to not have any TAs at all and to be able to have professors, not PhD students, whose English I can actually understand). </p>
<p>I don't wish to shift the discussion to another one of benefits and costs of LACs and Large Universities. </p>
<p>What I was trying to say was that comparing excellence of undergraduate education and excellence of graduate education is comparing apples and oranges and whoever said that was okay is, at the very least, misguided. Are the most, wrong. ;-)</p>
<p>As to your argument about benefits and costs of LACs and Universities, I think we are in complete agreement there so any exchanges along these lines will be basically a waste of space here.</p>
<p>Stud, I think it is you who is misguided. For one thing, nobody here said that the education received at research universities is better than the education received at LACs. At the same time however, your attempts to discredit a top university like Columbia isn't admirable. For one thing, intro level classes in any discipline focus on fundamental principles that are easy to grasp but must be learned. If a student needs direction to learn such easy concepts as Calculus or Macroeconomics, she/he probably doesn't belong in a good university. There may be 101 ways to teach introduction to Macroeconomics, but there is only one way to learn it, and that's by rolling one's sleeves and digging in. Good education comes at the more complex levels, such as intermediate and advanced level courses. You can be sure that any good university will not have more than 60 students in an intermeditate level class or more than 30 students in an advanced class. </p>
<p>The primary difference between LACs and Research universities is not quality of education, which is, as I repeatedly stress, impossible to measure, but rather, the varying natures of those two types of educational insitutions. LACs chose to remain small so as to provide students with an intimate environment. Research university grow large in order to provide their students with unlimited resources. It depends on the individuals' approach to education which of those institutional types suits them best. Personally, I am the type that likes to figure things out on my own and I really wanted to delve deeply into my chosen major and possibly even take graduate level classes as an undergrad. So LACs were not the best fit for me. To you others, who prefer very close interaction with faculty at the introduction level, LACs are the best option.</p>
<p>How is it that I was misguided? (missed the connection between the opening line and the gist of what followed). </p>
<p>If it was my point about the command of the english language for TAs at large universities, it was hardly my point. I have to give credit to the author of an article at probably one of the more reputable (note proper definition here) journals for educators: The Chronicle of Higher Education. I will post the link to that article in a bit...I am running late for class now.</p>
<p>"What I was trying to say was that comparing excellence of undergraduate education and excellence of graduate education is comparing apples and oranges and whoever said that was okay is, at the very least, misguided. Are the most, wrong. ;-)"</p>
<p>You are accusing people who think that there is a correlation between undergraduate education and graduate education of being, at best, misguided. But it is you who is misguided if you think the two aren't related. Whether you like it or not, the quality of the faculty and the wealth of courses and research opportunities for undergraduates availlable at research universities are impossible to ignore. Your attempt to discredit Columbia, or any top rated research university, is not entirely accurate.</p>
<p>And the whole bit about TA's not speaking English well enough is mainly a topic of the past. In the 90s, it is true that many universities gave international graduate students who spoke English poorly TA positions. However, those students are now usually givien research positions only. Sure you have a few universities who do not screen their GSIs, but that's not common anymore.</p>
<p>For econ, it is the University of Chicago all the way.</p>
<p>For Stud05. I guess I had more luck with the online bulletin than you did.
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* Fall 2005 Sustainable Development W3300 section 001CHALLENGES 0F SUSTAINABLE DEV; CHALLENGES OF SUSTAINABLE DEV; 3 points; Instructor: Jeffrey Sachs; Monday Wednesday 8:45am-9:50am 301 Uris Hall; Columbia College Department
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<p>Yes to the University of Chicago as well.</p>
<p>UCHICAGO is definetely the best for the combination of those two.</p>
<p>No doubt.</p>
<p>combination of which two...econ and ?</p>
<p>I am not accusing anyone, babe. I was just summarizing the point of this article here. </p>
<p>And the point is (in case you miss it), that large universities (which Columbia is) run like a business with research becoming more important than teaching. The outcome? For that you'll have to read the article...but here is a little excerpt:</p>
<p>"Mr. Hacker says he has taken several classes where the instructor's accented English was difficult to comprehend. "There were days when I would go home and have to study the material that they had taught, for the simple reason that I couldn't understand the things that came out of their mouth," he says. "It's one thing to go home and study a concept, another not to understand what the professor was saying."</p>
<p>Oh, the date of the article is April 2005 (just like the 90s). Peace bro.</p>
<p>Like I said Stud, most top universities have taken effective steps in weeding out TAs that have heavily accented English. You still have a few scattered around, but it isn't that common. Back when I was at Michigan, from 1992-1996, I took over 40 classes. Of those, 100% were taught by professors and only 9 or 10 were large enough (over 40 students) to warrant a TA. The TAs were usually 3rd or 4th year PhD students, although in two cases, they were adjunct or associate professors. Three of my TAs were international, but only one had an accent that was difficult to understand. But that was in the early to mid 90's. Due to some complaints in the mid 90s, Michigan has taken effective steps to ensure that TAs meet a certain communication standard. Most major research universities have taken similar measures in recent years. I know Cornell and Penn have.</p>
<p>At any rate, I repeat my orginal statement, there are benefits to research universities that cannot be denied. Yes, intro classes are large and do not allow for close, in-class interaction with the professor. But like I said, if a student needs close interaction with a professor for intro to Micro or Calculus II, then chances are, that student doesn't belong at a top university. Most intro classes are very straight forward. The material is essential as it lays the ground work for intermediate and advanced level classes, but it is usually not open for much intepretation. </p>
<p>I would definitely agree that students at LACs, on average, receive better instruction than students at research universities, but only at intro level classes. At the intermediate and higher levels, I don't think LAC students receive better instruction and they certainly do not have the course selection or the access to top professors and research that students at research universities have.</p>