My Intro to Social Psychology was actually ~40 students. The class was small enough that the professor was able to replicate many of the classic experiments in social psychology during class. It’s one thing to hear a professor lecture about the Tragedy of the Commons. It’s another thing to have your class demonstrate Tragedy of the Commons dynamics right there in real time with more altruistic class members powerless to stop the behavior of the self-concerned. Truly unforgettable.
2 Likes
I just remember PAF 101. Dr Coplin was renowned. All sorts of awards. Just retired I think. Big impact on kids.
Easy to skip and we often did. Easy A too.
Couldn’t get past the ping pong table in the dorm or the punch Out video game. Glass Joe was the first guy you had to knock out. Wonder whatever happened to that game.
They often have TAs who cover office hours or the discussion groups. My daughter was a TA for Wyoming History, a required course for EVERY student at Wyoming so the lecture classes were 100-150 students. The students had 2 large lectures and 1 discussion group each week, and could get help from any prof or TA during office hours
Other daughter went to a school where I don’t think there was a classroom that held more than 60. The school did have an auditorium (much like an old high school auditorium) that held about 250. Most of the students didn’t care how many other students were in their math class and wished some of the sections (at better times) had been bigger, or that the labs were bigger so they could go to another section, but they were what they were. She never had an issue getting time at office hours even if that prof taught 3 sections of Calc I with 150 total students. Other daughter might have had more trouble getting to a professor who taught 3 history classes with only 24 in each section (the max for upper division at her school) because that 1 professor may have had only 1 or 2 hours of office time per week, and the 3 courses weren’t the same so had different students with different questions looking for help, and no TAs.
Around here, school districts limit class size to 25 in high schools. Except for AP! Those are unlimited, so an AP Lit class can have 40 or 45 students while English 10 can only have 25.
Wow. You don’t think the 50 flagship U’s in this country have superstar professors? Your comment is insulting to the faculty of these institutions…and their provosts who have put together teams of world class scholars, teachers and researchers.
Of course they do. But for every superstar they have probably more than 100 NON-superstars.
And many of those non-superstars are teaching huge classes.
1 Like
Exactly. I’ve experienced gigantic lecture classes at a decently well regarded flagship. Let’s just say these classes were not taught by star faculty generating unrestrainable student enthusiasm. It was big droning lectures and multiple choice tests.
I was also a grad student at another flagship, this one quite well regarded. Our department had a Nobel prize winner (since retired.) We had exactly one undergrad student, and she made coffee and copies. The faculty hid from undergrads who were trying to track them down to beg for research positions. Undergrads were regarded as more trouble than they were worth. Obviously this does not mean every large flagship works this way.
But anyway, this is all very different from my experience as an undergrad at one of the LACs being considered in this thread. The chemistry professors tracked us down for research. We students started to regard them as pests. (And I don’t think it’s just due to my LAC being a highly ranked one. My sister attended a regional LAC with nearly open admissions, and she too was actively pursued for undergrad research opportunities.)
So I think LACs are popular on CC for a reason. And even more popular are places like MIT and Ivys, which CC students and parents often choose even when they could attend a flagship.
4 Likes
This just is not my experience comparing by kids at LACs to their counterparts at top five public universities. The kids at the big publics still got a good education, but never knew their professors well even in the major. Please don’t underestimate the value or small schools with small classes. Even the very best professor cannot give peronalized attention to 100+ people in the class. Cannot provide detailed feedback on papers, etc. It’s a completely different education.
3 Likes
But top 5 universities are just 5 universities.
Now mine went to a 10K school so not huge- and had tight relations with several. I know a Purdue mom has said on here her kid has/had strong relations with profs. In her case though, she was in two cohorts within Honors - so very small groups - perhaps to repicate an LAC. I had one at Syracuse (not mega big) where I had strong relations. Had Thanksgiving at my Spanish teachers house freshman year.
It may not be as often - and the kids may not seek it out - but one can certainly have close relations with professors with large classes.
But the percentage of kids who seek that out is likely far, far less than at a small school.
A family member has made their career in large state flagship. They are an alum of a LAC. Their comment is that a “student entrepreneur”, the kid who is able to identify resources and get them, will have boundless opportunities at a large public. They have also noted that there are students who want to work the system but don’t know how as well as students who really need someone to reach out to them and take the initiative on thinking about and executing on opportunities.
LACs, for the most part, make it possible, even easy, for any student to engage and capitalize on what the school offers.
So the people who talk about their kids thriving at large schools? They’re telling their truth. The people who talk about smaller schools making lots of opportunities available to their students and even encouraging them? They are also telling their truth, and one that might resound with the kids who aren’t student entrepreneurs.
17 Likes
Agree 100%. But I have also seen a different type of student thriving at large flagships- let’s call them the “alert and attentives”. Not so much entrepreneurs- they aren’t seeking out, but they respond. Professor announces “If you have experience coding in R, I’ve got a spot on my research team, so stay after lecture to talk to me”. Student does not have experience in R, but DOES have experience with other statistical packages and has worked with large datasets so student gets the research spot since she’s the only one who stayed after class.
And of course- the students at small colleges who pretty much want their ticket punched. They aren’t seeking extra enrichment. They aren’t seeking to be inspired and have their worldviews expand. They want their A and they want their frat (or their friends) and they want their Spring Break, and since Mom and Dad are happy to pay for it, why upset the apple cart?
I was at a relative’s commencement from a super large state flagship- and yes, the university wide ceremony was at the football stadium with tens of thousands of people and the tiny dots of the graduates on the jumbotron. But the departmental ceremony had faculty jumping up to embrace students, the Dean cheering (loudly) for every award winner, emeritus faculty who insisted on individual photos with students they had taught as freshman. These students were not all the “entrepreneurs” (certainly my relative was not). But these were students who took the ball and ran with it when someone handed it to them, even if they weren’t actually seeking to become stars.
1 Like
I think my relative would include this in the student entrepreneur category, whether exploring an opportunity for which they might have something to offer or simply running with the ball when they got it – accepting the handoff and doing what came next.
3 Likes
This. Thank you. This issue is like a Middle East dispute over a holy site: people are so entrenched in their camps. That’s why I almost never comment on it anymore. But here goes.
I attended and taught at a large public research powerhouse and still spend time there. I loved my undergraduate experience. I majored in Philosophy and had small classes. I have been there and lived it and don’t need it explained to me.
I also think it is helpful in these conversations to distinguish between middle sized privates with multi-billion endowments and large flagships. They are different but nonetheless usually conflated in these discussions. Brown and MIT and their like are just not comparable from an experience standpoint to the University of Washington or Penn State.
With that said, I ask again in hopes someone will answer: why is it that valuing small classes is so often described as if it’s some sort of fetish for those who see the value in it? I just don’t understand it.
The whole freaking world loses its collective **** when class sizes increase by a few kids in middle and high school, and people spend small fortunes sending their kids to independent private grade, middle and high schools in large measure because of class size and student/teacher ratio. Why from one year to the next, does it miraculously not matter?
There is to many a value in attending a college that is designed, built and run on a human scale with a favorable student/teacher ratio. But you give up some things with that model. Why then are the things that you get, or get more of, at large research universities celebrated without challenge but small class sizes are the end of the world?
This is a little rhetorical but I’ll say it anyway: if class size really doesn’t matter, then it stands to reason that what Williams College offers in terms of intimacy of instruction between faculty and student isn’t all that important. And if it’s not all that important, then it almost follows that a Williams education isn’t all that important because Williams won’t be able to offer many of the things that a large research university is able to offer. They just don’t compete with one another. Fish and fowl.
Like, the size of the school and hence the class sizes is almost the LAC model’s stock in trade. If not that, then why go there at all unless it’s to manage enochlophobia?
Look, I don’t think everything needs to be a 7 student Bowdoin seminar and there are certainly courses which benefit to greater and lesser degrees on class size. Is 40 to 60 too big? I don’t think so. Is 500? Yes, I think so. Does a small seminar confer educational advantages that would disappear in a large lecture hall? Yes, I think so.
4 Likes
I agree with everything you’ve written at a theoretical level (despite my insistence that folks on CC tend to overvalue class size as a determinant). But that’s not just because of my experiences (and those of spouse, kids, other family members) at well endowed universities. It’s also because of my “life experience” watching people I know IRL insisting that their kids need the intimacy of small classes, crave the relationships with professors, want the mentoring- and the kid trudges off and clearly would have been better off somewhere else.
Parents sometimes think that a small college (I’ll use Williams since that what you cited) is going to function as the parental scaffolding that they will no longer be able to provide long distance. No, that lovable and loving professor of French Lit is NOT coming to your kids dorm every morning to shake him out of bed like you’ve been doing. Your kid’s physics professor is not going to sit down with him every week to map out “here’s how to navigate the dining hall to make sure that your love of caffeine and sugar doesn’t crowd out your need for vegetables and protein”. And a kid who- to be honest- has been buffeted along, or had the parental snow plow clearing the path of any obstacle, is NOT taking advantage of the intellectual riches at a small college which realistically- you need pretty strong motivation and work ethic to benefit from.
Kid wants seminars and deep intellectual inquiry? Fantastic. Kid wants to sit in the back of a large lecture hall, turn in a blue book at midterms and finals, and log his “B” so he can get back to his frat? And really, really, really can’t stand the idea of sitting through a 12 person seminar on “Kant and Proust”.
Know your kid.
So basically people on CC really idealize small classes because they don’t know their kids?
1 Like
Totally agree with that. I would argue that, since most LACs are not household names that are going to impress one’s unworldly relatives and don’t have big Greek scenes or big-time sports, they tend to attract kids with an intellectual bent (of various levels, of course).
That is to say, I’m not sure they tend to be overflowing with “check the college box” kids. I know those kids in my neck of the woods and I know where they tend to want to go to college, and it ain’t ever Whitman, Puget Sound, Reed, etc.
I also agree that the faculty at these schools are not going to make sure you brush your teeth and get a good night’s sleep. It is definitely not an exercise in being baby sat. Though I will share one story of a work colleague who attended Puget Sound back in the Stone Age. He loves to tell the story of a class he was in when the professor noticed some young woman wasn’t there on the day of an exam or quiz and apparently had a phone in the class room and did in fact ring her up (maybe he asked for phone numbers; IDK) and said, “hey, there. we have a test today and we’re waiting for you.”. I would expect that is far the exception to the rule, though.
Please move on from debating class size and get back to the op’s question. This is not the parent forum.