<p>The idea that Harvard, or any other school, is /obligated/ to increase its class size is pretty ridiculous. Being a private institution, Harvard can keep its class size at whatever number it likes. </p>
<p>Beyond that, though, there are many legitimate and good reasons that Harvard and similar institutions might want to keep their class sizes small. Increasing the number of students at a University can have serious impacts on campus culture. Part of what I really like about Harvard is that it’s big enough that you constantly meet new people, but not so big that you ever feel lost, alone, isolated, or like you don’t know anyone. I don’t think I’d have chosen to matriculate here if the undergraduate population were even ~2000 people bigger. </p>
<p>So I think the idea of this is basically ridiculous. There are lots of other fantastic schools that can service American students - the idea that any particular one ‘has’ to let more people in is kind of incoherent.</p>
<p>Harvard does a lot of very selfish and even unethical things. This isn’t one of them.</p>
<p>College education is one of the few services where increasing the amount of people you let in can potentially reduce demand. Part of the demand comes from how exclusive these schools are, so letting more people in makes demand decrease, which means that the school would have to charge less money for education than they would otherwise. Profit decreases this way.
In other words, they actually make more profit from being exclusive.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Harvard and the top colleges do not make any “profit” off tuition and room and board. In fact, the colleges must use their endowments to support financial aid so students can attend. </p>
<p>Harvard’s huge endowment grew from donations from wealthy, successful alumni, not tuition payments.</p>
<p>the reasoning is that these private institutions have different objectives. State schools were created and funded by governments expressly to offer a good quality education for a low price to as many constituents of that government as they could. Elite private universities try and take their enormous resources available and focus them on a class of limited size to maximize the results. Harvard and the others offer education through MOOCs, but they don’t offer degrees through it because of the huge difference in experiences that attended, say, Harvard has over just taking the course. Part of what makes these universities so coveted is the interactions and life that the students can experience, and the universities believe that having more students (in addition to probably being prohibitively costly or inflationary to tuition) would dilute that experience.</p>
<p>One of the main reasons elite schools are elite, is because of their incredibly low acceptance rates. Increasing their enrollment would just defeat the purpose.</p>
<p>Frankly, even I have always wondered why can’t Harvard just start accepting more students. The truth is that it doesn’t need to. The university is doing well just the way it is. And anyways, since it is a private university, it is under no obligation to increase its enrollment either.</p>
<p>It is not in the self-interest of the elite colleges–whoever they are this year–to do great harm to colleges a little further down this year’s pecking order. </p>
<p>Another factor to consider: Looking at various lists, the top 20 will be found mostly on the coasts, and at that, most of the schools will be on the east coast. I do not think it’s in the country’s best interest to drain very able students from the other regions.</p>
<p>I think one could point to the Cornell example as the problem when an Ivy is too large. Cornell clearly has diluted its brand with the large number of college undergrads, ag school and hotel school students etc. They’ve always had trouble breaking into the top tier of the Ivies, and they probably always will so long as they have to continue their land-grant university obligations. But it will be interesting to see what will happen with their expansion into NYC under Mayor Bloomberg’s plan.</p>
<p>Oh, get a grip. The only place where Cornell’s reputation “suffers” is in the eyes of clueless, status-driven, know-nothing high school students who post this nonsense.</p>
Funny as a Cornell grad I’ve always thought one of the great things about Cornell is sharing a University with students from such divergent colleges.</p>
<p>To enroll significantly more people, you would need, at minimum: new buildings with classroom space and labs, new dorms, and more professors to teach all the new students. More students would also lead to overcrowding of student spaces libraries, and cafeterias, so you’d probably need to build more of those, too.</p>
<p>Such an expansion would cost billions of dollars. But even if Harvard could spend the money, it’s not clear where they’d expand. There isn’t much free land in Boston and citizens of Boston would protest if Harvard tried to buy their property. (Look at what happened when Yale, Columbia, and NYU tried to expand.)</p>
<p>Could Harvard admit another 50 students? Maybe (though it would lead to minor overcrowding). But a significant expansion is all but impossible.</p>
<p>Don’t know if anyone read the articles about Yale’s proposed expansion (hoping to build two residential colleges with the goal to add ~450 to the undergraduate population of 5000). Before the bubble burst, the cost estimate placed the project at the most expensive construction project in the history of New England.</p>
<p>“the most expensive construction project in the history of New England” </p>
<p>All so Yale can admit another 150 per year. Nor does this entail the expansion of faculty or other staff needed to serve this new population (where does Yale get these faculty? They recruit them away from other universities). And Yale is likely going to move fwd with this plan, albeit more slowly than originally envisioned.</p>
<p>Cornell is also one of NY State’s land grant schools, they receive funding to run things like the vet school. Ivy League really refers to the football circuit of the last century.</p>
<p>I don’t know why it is “nonsense” to say that Cornell suffers from its size and land-grant university obligations. They have a very, very good undergraduate college that does not get the same recognition for their graduates that Penn and Dartmouth does. Why is that? Why don’t their graduates populate the top law schools, med schools and PhD programs in the same numbers and ratio as their Ivy League peers? Why did Penn leap-frog them in reputation over the last three decades? I attribute it at least in part to their larger size and the fact that they have diluted their “brand” with ag students. Call me an “status-driven” elistist, but isn’t that what this whole thread is about?</p>
<ol>
<li>keep the acceptance % low, go higher in the rankings</li>
<li>maintain good faculty:student ratio without having to hire more professors, go higher in the rankings</li>
<li>maintain adequate class sizes without having to spend money on infrastructure, go higher in the rankings</li>
<li>maintain exclusiveness, play hard to get, go higher in the rankings</li>
</ol>
<p>spectastic: your assumption that HYP et al care about “going up” in the rankings. I beg to differ. I know this is a contentious point – but frankly, from my view of their decisions, they’re above it all and do what they think is in their own best interests – and not what a stupid magazine says. </p>