<p>Arguing that public research U’s are better than LACs because they offer a greater variety and number of courses is like arguing that Sears is better than Henri Bendel because it offers a much greater variety and quantity of merchandise. </p>
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<p>Not true; depends on what the student is looking for. I don’t know how narrowly you are defining “specific” and “depth,” but the place for those things is graduate school. And every LAC has special topics courses and independent studies at the upper levels of the major that may not be printed in the catalog because they are not offered on a regular basis. They don’t need to be; but that doesn’t mean they are not available. At larger universities, full-time faculty are often unavailable to work one-on-one with undergraduates, so these options don’t exist.</p>
<p>There may be undergraduate students who are very focused on some arcane area of study, but they hardly represent the norm.</p>
<p>I have looked at curriculum charts in my field at a variety of institutions–large, small, private, public–and they’re pretty much the same.</p>