<p>“Alexandre, most freshman seminars are intended to be a bridge for 1st year students to transition from high school to college in a more controlled manner. I can only speak about my experience at Duke but most of the freshman seminars there are taught by world-class professors and are capped at 15 students so they are all intimate learning experiences.”</p>
<p>I read this in a brochure somewhere! Propaganda again eh? Seminars can certainly be great. I do not doubt that several serve a purpose. The majority of them, however, are only in existence to lower the student to faculty ratio. If the USNWR dropped class size from its rankings, those private universities will do away with most of their seminars.</p>
<p>“For a school its size, if UMich is not offerings its undergraduates thousands of seminars to choose from, its seriously doing them a disservice. Most freshman classes will be a large and a seminar allows a 1st year to have a small-group learning experience and form a meaningful relationship between his/her professors and peers.”</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong, I think seminars have their purpose. Heck, Michigan is the first US university to have used that method of teaching and still does so today. But universities now are abusing them, offering undergrads gimmick seminars simply to pad their numbers. I was browsing through several seminar topics at several private universities, and the content of many of those seminars was pathetic. Students enrolled in those classes have often questioned the purpose of those seminars. They did not befriend the professors and they did not learn much. As for interacting with peers, that can be done in virtually any class and social setting at university. Most classes offer students smaller discussion groups and copious team projects. Seminars do not facilitate that process.</p>
<p>I guess professors at private elites are Gods! They manage to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for their research, conduct the research, write papers and articles, enhance their reputation to warrant the distinction of being “a world class professor” (as you put it), advise a handful of doctoral students, teach graduate students…and on top of all that, manage to teach undergrads in an intimate atmosphere, taking the time to befriend them and take personal care of them. Oh, and on top of all that, they manage to also teach seminars! Wow, those professors truly are herculean! At Michigan, our professors are admittedly a lot less dynamic…but at least they are world class and take their teaching duties very seriously. Unfortunately, they will not befriend underclassmen by the hundreds as they apparently do at Duke and other private elites; they will typically only befriend upperclassmen who take their advanced undergraduate classes seriously. They will not be asked to teach gimmicky seminars as they already teach legitimate courses. At the end of their education, undergrads will not have befriended dozens of professors, but they will have befriended a handful within their major.</p>