Or maybe they never attended a LAC or LAC-like university where small classes are the norm and even star faculty teach them. The main benefit isn’t that the professor learns your name (a cranky “You there, number 21769” works for me). It’s more in the classroom response to half-baked opinions, fallacies, and showing-off. Nearly every first-year student is prone to those mistakes, which are hard to expose without meaningful discussion. Small classes also present an opportunity for professors to address what students aren’t seeing in lab or field specimens, a writer’s argument, or a data collection. They create opportunities to draw out diverse viewpoints on questions that don’t have simple answers.
However, smaller classes require higher rates of instructional spending per student, which few colleges can sustain if they also want to offer high salaries to attract top faculty. To reach the greatest number of students, big lectures are the way to go. If the discussion section only amounts to basic Q&A or problem set reviews, it makes sense to use graduate teaching assistants to free up professors’ time for research or advanced seminars. Virtually every college needs to strike a balance; there is no single, right format for all populations or course content.