I used to teach undergrad classes at a more or less typical public research university, which were a mix of people actually interested in the class, and people taking it because it was filling a requirement. Including in fact engineering and business majors (I was in a humanities field, and also my classes often filled a writing requirement).
I didn’t hold this against them, but for sure a lot of the kids just filling a requirement were less engaged in discussions. Frankly, if they were engaged at all, I scored it as a victory. One of my favorite anonymous comments ever was to the effect, “I thought this class would be really boring but it was actually sometimes interesting.”
My feeling is that happens almost everywhere in a lot of intro level courses. Advanced courses are different, usually almost everyone is there because they want to be, but intro courses that are in some way filling a general requirement–it is what it is.
But I do think part of the hope with at least many LACs is there will be less of that, that at least more of your fellow students right from the start will actually want to be in whatever class you are in too. And understanding that reality is never as perfect as the idealized vision, I believe that at least often there is some truth to that.
Would the actual driver for this be the volume and nature of general education requirements? It does seem that LACs are more likely to have few general education requirements.
For sure at least partly that. The requirement I was referring to earlier basically existed to make sure there were plenty of teaching stipends available for the grad students in our department. Not so likely to happen at an LAC . . . .
But I also think when people pitch the idea of an LAC, often the pitch involves the promise of smaller, more intimate, more discussion-oriented classes in general. I’m sure a variety of kids pick them for other reasons, but I would hope that would skew the population towards kids who actually like that sort of class, even in non-major classes.
Except when those kids do their homework and realize that if they’re majoring in Classics, virtually ALL of their courses, even at a huge U, will be small. And that includes the non-departmental or adjacent classes too- the seminar on political theory which starts with the Roman concept of citizenship, the class on the history of poetry which begins with the Greeks, the “big lecture” with 40 students which examines the architecture of public spaces.
It is a CC trope that ONLY LAC’s provide small classes, in-depth learning, strong relationships with faculty. Except that they don’t have an exclusive on this type of learning- you can get it anywhere depending on what you major in.
Anthropology will have two big lecture courses- and then it’s all small, plus field work closely supervised (also small). Renaissance studies will have ONE big lecture course (an Art History course which is generally very popular) and then you are in your Italian Lit seminar with six students.
So the LAC “I want small classes” kid ends up sitting next to the “I was recruited for my sport” kid, who is sitting next to the “I got merit aid here and my parents said we couldn’t afford our NPC at my state flagship” kid who is sitting next to the " this was the most prestigious school I got into" kid. Sad for the “I want small classes” kids of course- but you can’t control who else chooses your college! Except if you major in something off the beaten track… where your fellow students will be happy to debate-- for days-- whether Homer was a hack and Virgil is the true artist, or what do Shakespeare’s sonnets tell us about love and marriage, or whether Raphael was a genius or just a well trained copyist…
My son wanted to focus on business and chose to go to Bucknell since it was undergraduate focused with smaller classes. There is a strong liberal arts component integrated into the business program plus additional required arts, humanities, social sciences, and sciences classes.
He would also be able to easily minor in an unrelated area, and could double major outside of business. Taking classes outside of your major is encouraged - they even cap the number of business electives to ensure you have more breadth. A double major outside of business would not have been an option at the state schools he was accepted to, and more difficult at the other private schools.
I was happy he chose a LAC over other schools since the quality of candidates I have seen from LACs is significantly better than highly regarded state schools and universities. Since classes are smaller teachers have time to review/grade written (as opposed to all multiple choice) exams - that seems to be a key component missing at many schools. LAC programs are more writing intensive and foster critical thinkers.
I take some umbrage with this characterization. My youngest child is at a high academic LAC who was recruited for her sport(s). I believe she makes a pretty decent contribution in her small classes.
Agreed! My Purdue grad had courses as small as 8 students.
And I don’t remember her talking about any course that had multiple choice exams other than some quizzes freshman year. LACs don’t have a monopoly on writing and critical thinking…not by a long shot.
Clearly I was being facetious. There are student/athletes at every U in America who is every bit as intellectual and academically driven as their classmates. But the idea that ONLY small LAC’s have discussion based classes is a CC fiction. And the idea that the ONLY reason to attend an LAC is to have small discussion based classes is also a CC fiction.
I’m sure your kid is contributing everywhere- inside and outside the classroom!!!
That was certainly not an intended takeaway from my post. I was referring to “the pitch” for LACs, and was not necessarily suggesting that pitch was entirely accurate. But a pitch doesn’t have to be entirely accurate for it to end up influencing the market for the relevant product or service.
If asked, though, I would say the pitch is not entirely INaccurate either. It is complicated and depends on your major, how your college handles its gen eds, and so on. But certainly a large public university can have a significantly higher percentage of large lecture classes than an LAC, including classes of a size category an LAC never has at all. And then of course necessarily a lot of kids are taking those classes for SOME of their classes (otherwise they could not exist at that size).
But I agree that obviously they do not typically ONLY take large lecture classes. And generally the pattern is you tend to take more over your first couple years as you are doing the intro classes in your major (and again this does depend on your major, but for obvious reasons it tends to happen more in the more popular majors) and checking off gen eds. Then as you get to the advanced classes in your major and advanced or otherwise non-required electives, most of those are smaller. Although sometimes some of the popular electives will still be decent-sized lecture classes, if only precisely because people will say, “Oh, you should take X with Y, that is a great class,” and then a bunch of people do.
But again, if anyone was suggesting that ALL the classes you would take during a typical four years at a large public university would be large lecture classes, and NONE would be smaller discussion or otherwise interactive classes, then sure, stated in that way, that would typically be very inaccurate.
There’s no denying that a 1:11 student: faculty ratio and a 1:20 ratio won’t produce the same first year experience. The sense of what is a “small” class also varies - I remember a professor from a LAC who considered a class of 18 “large”, where “small” was 8 and at a university a class with 24 students was considered small, I’ve even seen a class of 30-40 considered small in some majors at a large university!
At the upper level, in many majors except the more popular ones (and even in those), you could well have seminars with 8-12 students regardless of setting, with universities offering way more choice.
The difference would likely be during the first year - a typical freshman schedule at a flagship would include 2-3 small xlasses (24 and under) out of 10 so 1-2 per semester - Freshman English, Foreign Language…- with large lecture halls (200, 300+..) for the rest, when at a LAC the under24 would be the majority of all classes taken, with the large classes being 40 except for that one large science class that meets in a lecture hall planned for 80.
(Finally, some students absolutely don’t care about large lecture hall vs. Seminar room, lecture vs. Discussion, etc. So it’s neither a benefit nor a problem for them. That’s why the US is unique in it’s higher ed landscape, offering so many different models.)
That second model would apply to Bucknell and its 9:1 faculty ratio so in that sense it’s a LAC - even with a School of management and a College of Engineering.
Same for our family member who attended a Big Ten Conference school. Personally, I was concerned that too many of the classes were too small & that the student/professor relationship was too intense in terms of supervision & expectations, but the results were great.
However, some majors–like economics–do have two large weed-out classes (micro & macro) of over 100 students for lectures, but just a handful of students in each break-out section.
Another issue with very small schools is that they can’t offer every class every semester. If only 5 kids want to take a class, they may decide to hold off till the next semester when they might have 9, and that’s too bad for you if that’s your semester abroad.
My daughter went to U of Wyoming (10k students) but was in one of the smallest departments, history. Most classes were limited to 24 that was true for many of the humanities classes, except as Blossom said for the big 101 classes, like Art History, history of Wyoming (a class required for every student, not just history majors), Ancient Civ. My daughter knew every professor in the history department and all were invited to her wedding (and she to the wedding of two professors).
Other daughter was also in the smallest department at her school. I think the biggest classroom there held 50. There was no professor she couldn’t approach for help, a recommendation, a job.
At some point, both wished they’d have a little more space from the their departments, more options for choices of professors and courses.
My son is at Bucknell and I have a daughter at what you might call a more traditional (but also somewhat big) liberal arts college. My son is a Bio major so he is in the more traditional liberal arts part of the school (compared to engineering or business), but Bucknell and the other LAC are much more alike than kids that are Bio majors at larger universities with more graduate students. I think Bucknell is an LAC because of its undergrad focus and student/faculty ratio.