<p>A friend at dinner speculated that Smith might be increasing the number of tenured positions while eliminating more contracted jobs (if you check the front Smith page, there’s a press release that 19 professors were just tenured or promoted). There are a few overcrowded classes in topics such as children’s lit, which everyone seems to want to take and there wasn’t a cap placed on it. My largest class this semester is about 35 students, but there are two lab sections. This class (statistics) is offered every semester, is required by the bio major and can be used to count as a quantitative class for a few other majors, so the size is pretty typical.</p>