Student to faculty ratio

@ucbalumnus, you make a good theoretical argument. I can’t give specifics, but in general, colleges with small student / teacher ratio (let’s say 10:1) are much smaller schools than one that would have 300 kids wanting to take a class from a professor at the same time or in the same semester. Traditional LACs have approx 2k kids. Highly unlikely 15% of the whole student body wants to take a specific class at the same time. Even mid size - (5k - 10K) would be hard pressed to have that demand on a regular basis. Of course it could happen. My hunch is that kids at large schools (20k+) are faced with these classes frequently (at least during first two yrs) and have to deal with it because it is what it is, not because they prefer it to smaller classes. They may view it as a trade off for the other reasons they prefer school X, just as those that want the more intimate experience will have trade offs to deal with.