<p>Ellekay,
While the large lecture classes will often have accompanying breakout groups, a frequent complaint that I hear about this is that many of the TAs either can’t teach worth beans or some have such poor command of English that students have a hard time understanding the material. Unfortunately, great classroom teaching (both at the professorial or TA level) is an underappreciated talent within academia as the recognition within the industry goes to the research “stars” and not to their classroom communication ability. </p>
<p>Ideally, a professor can do both-deliver great classroom teaching (and IMO, preferably in a class size where there can be true interaction and learning as opposed to just straight lecture) and perform significant research. One of the issues that students considering large and/or research-focused colleges with high profile faculty members is what is actually delivered in the classroom. Frequently, the undergraduate academic experience at large, “research-focused” colleges will be quite different from what a student will encounter at a LAC or a more undergrad-focused college, eg, Dartmouth, W&M, etc. </p>
<p>Professors with great renown among academics may boost a college’s Peer Assessment score, but these same professors often don’t have the same incentives to boost the classroom experience of an undergraduate student. Some students might prefer the “famous” professor because that supplies more of a “wow” factor to impress your friends. But I would suggest to students looking for colleges and making college visits to ask the important questions about class size, individual learning, hands-on experience, true and consistent interaction with and access to faculty, etc. There is a difference. </p>
<p>Alexandre,
Your class size comment suggests some type of manipulation going on. I don’t know about the manipulation (and hope you will provide some proof to support your allegations), but I see USNWR as having a positive impact for students by making class sizes a criteria in their annual ranking. In response to comparatively weaker rankings, colleges may respond, as Johns Hopkins, Cornell and UC Berkeley did with a greater commitment of resources and make class sizes smaller. Consider the class size data for % of classes with over 50 students from 5 years ago with the most recent USNWR data. In looking at the 2003 data, it is pretty clear that Cornell and Johns Hopkins lagged almost all of the colleges that they consider peer institutions. Same would be true for UC Berkeley among the publics. I interpret the change not as manipulation, but as an institutional choice to commit more resources and eliminating/reducing this comparative difference.</p>
<pre><code>of classes with >50 students in 2003 , of classes with >50 students in 2008 , Change , School
25% , 16% , 9% , Cornell
16% , 11% , 5% , Johns Hopkins
7% , 4% , 3% , U Chicago
17% , 14% , 3% , UC Berkeley
23% , 20% , 3% , UCLA
13% , 11% , 2% , Brown
13% , 11% , 2% , U North Carolina
12% , 10% , 2% , Stanford
7% , 6% , 1% , Emory
10% , 9% , 1% , Carnegie Mellon
11% , 10% , 1% , Princeton
9% , 8% , 1% , Dartmouth
9% , 8% , 1% , Northwestern
8% , 7% , 1% , Georgetown
13% , 13% , 0% , Harvard
8% , 8% , 0% , Yale
9% , 9% , 0% , Columbia
11% , 11% , 0% , Notre Dame
15% , 15% , 0% , U Virginia
5% , 5% , 0% , Tufts
2% , 2% , 0% , Wake Forest
7% , 8% , -1% , U Penn
7% , 8% , -1% , Caltech
5% , 6% , -1% , Duke
8% , 9% , -1% , Wash U
8% , 9% , -1% , Rice
5% , 6% , -1% , Vanderbilt
11% , 12% , -1% , USC
16% , 17% , -1% , U Michigan
11% , 14% , -3% , MIT
</code></pre>
<p>IMO, the move to reduce the % of large classes is a good thing for students and for undergraduate learning. Colleges with similar levels of financial resources have a choice of how they want to handle this and I believe that the data can be a good indicator of a college’s mission and its willingness to spend resources to promote the undergraduate academic experience. I applaud what Cornell and Johns Hopkins and UC Berkeley and others have done.</p>