Is the Expansion Good for Yale?

Colleges & Universities Yale University
1

<p>Discuss please. As of now, I’m not too thrilled with the decision (as I really like Yale’s intimate class size). We know the expansion is good for future Yale applicants, but is it good for Yale?</p>

<p>Other Cons:</p>

<p>The Colleges will be divided from campus by a cemetery.</p>

<p>Yale may hire lots of non-ladder faculty and rely on grad students for more teaching. </p>

<p>The increase in class size will be accompanied by a smaller population of graduating high school seniors —> less qualified admits?</p>

<p>Yale’s [admission] standards may go down because of less selectivity.</p>

<p>A decrease in selectivity leads to a drop in USNWR Rankings; I’m not a rankings whore, but the fact of the matter is, rankings (as flawed as they are) DO affect prospective students, and in turn, affect the University itself. </p>

<p>The number 14 is not as nice as the number 12.</p>

<p>Yale should focus its attention more on building its science/engineering programs before making an expansion. </p>

<p>No students outside these two colleges will go to them (aside from science hill students) since all the campus amenities are much closer to the “historic center.” </p>

<p>Feel free to refute these :-).</p>

2

<p>The Colleges will be divided from campus by a cemetery.</p>

<p>**Yale is still one of the most compact campuses around, even including science hill and the new RC sites</p>

<p>Yale may hire lots of non-ladder faculty and rely on grad students for more teaching.</p>

<p>** the departments will push fwd their priorities. Since the expansion includes $ for faculty, one would think that some of this will go to increased tenure-track recruitment. Also see below about West Campus expansion.</p>

<p>The increase in class size will be accompanied by a smaller population of graduating high school seniors —> less qualified admits?</p>

<p>** see Tokenadult’s discourse on demographic trends. There will be increasing applicants as years go by – </p>

<p>Yale’s [admission] standards may go down because of less selectivity.</p>

<p>** won’t happen as app pool continues to increase. And we’re talking about 200 more admittees per year. I’m sure they decline WAY over 200 excellent applicants each year.</p>

<p>A decrease in selectivity leads to a drop in USNWR Rankings; I’m not a rankings whore, but the fact of the matter is, rankings (as flawed as they are) DO affect prospective students, and in turn, affect the University itself.</p>

<p>** don’t read the press. This won’t happen as app pool continues to increase</p>

<p>The number 14 is not as nice as the number 12.</p>

<p>** can’t argue that one! :)</p>

<p>Yale should focus its attention more on building its science/engineering programs before making an expansion.</p>

<p>** such as the multi-billion dollar expansion of the West campus?</p>

<p>No students outside these two colleges will go to them (aside from science hill students) since all the campus amenities are much closer to the “historic center.”</p>

<p>** you don’t visit other colleges unless you’re visiting people anyways. TD and Silliman are “out of the way” but I don’t think many people would say they’re “out of the loop”. With the 2 new colleges, actually the TD & SM people become closer to the center. A few extra hundred folks wouldn’t have altered my time there – maybe more dating prospects!</p>

3

<p>Thanks! Makes me feel a bit better about the decision.</p>

<p>More opinions?</p>

4

<p>For me, the only disadvantages are the location and that they won’t house freshmen on old campus. Although freshmen in SM and TD have an equally good experience, i think. Its just weird that they’re doing two different things with freshman housing. </p>

<p>I think lowering yale’s admission standards/the quality of students is a non issue. Yale has to (somewhat arbitrarily) turn away hundreds of perfectly qualified people. It’s unfair, and the lucky ones who get picked are indeed that, lucky. Yale won’t have to lower its admissions standards and i doubt that you’ll notice any difference in the quality of admitted students because there are so many people who really do deserve to get in. Case-in-point: it’s not as if you can pick out a waitlisted student from an EA admit… in fact, i know several wait listed students who have taken harder course loads and done much more than their EA/RD counterparts.</p>

<p>Yale already is focusing its attention on science/engineering programs. While its allocating about .5 billion to construction of the new colleges, it’s set aside 3 billion for the sciences. As a biology major, i very much feel that Levin has made sciences at yale his top academic priority. </p>

<p>If there are parties going on… people will go. The walk up the hill is long, and one of my chief complaints about the new colleges, but if there’s something going on there, it’s not THAT long of a walk. People do it every day, three or four times between classes if you’re a science major. </p>

<p>And i trust that the administration will hire good faculty to accommodate the influx of new students. Remember, they have five years to expand their faculty by about ten percent… that’s only 60 or 70 faculty members. I have doubts about the new colleges, but not about yale’s ability to attract good professors and expand to keep the student : professor ratio low.</p>

5

<p>Oh cool, I’m a bio major too (premed as well).</p>

6

<p>My major problem with the proposed expansion was the fact that so many of the said university amenities will continue to be the same size despite the larger class size, ie Commons, Bass, SML, and PWG. Has anybody else tried getting a treadmill in PWG? …it’s hard! But Levin somewhat addressed this issue when he said he plans to add exercise facilities, classroom space, “and more.”<br>
I am still a little skeptical, though. I can’t imagine trying to get a study room in Bass after one throws a few hundred extra kids into the mix. </p>

<p>This alleged reduction of annexing is something I am also skeptical about. After all, didn’t they build Stiles and Morse partly for that very reason? It would be wonderful if that were true though: Trumbull annexes a ridiculous number of juniors right now. </p>

<p>But as for the qualified admits thing, it is hardly an issue. As said earlier, Yale has to turn down a plethora of qualified applicants that it may have been able to admit a decade ago. </p>

<p>All in all, I am personally against it, but if Levin follows through with everything he mentioned in the email, it wont be very devastating at all…just different. I have to admit, the idea of 4, 4-year colleges vs 10 3-year ones bothers me slightly. I kind of prefer that they all be one way or another.</p>

7

<p>I agree with the above.</p>

8

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<p>I daresay that with a $23 billion endowment (probably much higher now that the fiscal year has ended), Yale has the resources to expand in multiple directions at once without sacrificing quality of said expansion.</p>

9

<p>Doesn’t the 15% enrollment increase figure seem rather inaccurate? If two new colleges, totaling 800 students are built, and 140 bed are used to reduce annexing, that means 660 new students. 660/5300 = 12.45%. From where is Levin getting this 15% figure? He must just be rounding up to the nearest…five.</p>

10

<p>I pretty much agree with a lot of the commentary against the plan, although I think there will be some real digging into the endowment to make sure that class sizes and quality of professors, etc, doesn’t suffer. The location, though, is awful (people already rarely go to Morse, Stiles, or TD if they aren’t near those colleges or in them). And I’m willing to bet that the architecture sucks compared to the good ole Gothic and colonial stuff, even it won’t be as bad as Morse/Stiles.</p>