Can Brandeis house them all?

Sikorsky
Mon, 11 Apr 2011 23:08:46 +0000

I don’t believe that type of class expansion is at all accurate. 800 in a class is more like it, which is a marginal expansion.



Believe it. I was at the Admitted Students Day this morning, where Mark Spencer said, word for word, that he’d been tasked with enrolling a freshman class of 855. That’s an expansion of nearly 15%.



Appproximately one hundred mid years may add to total enrollment on paper, but if they replace Juniors who are away on a year abroad, then, any potential overcrowding is relieved.



I asked the housing people about this. They said the 855 does not count mid-years; it’s 855 for fall 2011. They didn’t seem pleased to be asked the question, really. Not that I blame them; if I were they, I wouldn’t be pleased to be asked, either. The 855 is going to require a lot more lofted triples than they’ve had in previous years.

Honestly, I think Brandeis is deceiving itself a little bit about the effect that expanding freshman class size will have on resources. Either that, or they’re deceiving incoming students and their families. They’re still saying things like, “Freshmen and sophomores are guaranteed on-campus housing, and although we don’t guarantee it, we can accommodate all the juniors and seniors who want to live on campus.” Historically, yes. But what will happen when the Class of 2015 are juniors? And I assume it’s not just this one class that the University plans to enlarge. What will happen when the entire undergraduate population has grown by 15%? Will there be 15% more seats and desks in the library? More square feet in classrooms? More professors? More foodservice capacity? No. (Every session I saw at the Admitted Students Day had more people in attendance than chairs, and people spilling out into the halls. It was crowded!) More bandwidth and server capacity? Maybe.



[T]he total population is still [the] smallest I believe of any major research university with the exception of Cal Tech.



This may be factually true, but I’m inclined to agree that it’s really not relevant if the population is 15% larger than the infrastructure can comfortably support.