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<p>I’m not sure this is an issue that can be addressed entirely by data. Do you believe an important part of a college education is learning to think about, discuss, and write about important, difficult ideas? I don’t know how that can be learned very well in a 300-student lecture. It takes close student-to-student and student-to-teacher engagement in small groups. Moreover, I think it is best done at the introductory stages of higher education, before biases are hardened and before students become habituated to specialized academic jargon. I think the best mentoring in this process often requires a certain level of maturity.</p>
<p>Contact with intelligent young students also can be beneficial to professors. It forces them to expose their own ideas to the perspectives of non-specialists. Look through some of the Princeton FRS course descriptions I cited above. Click through to identify the professors who teach them. Would Princeton offer these seminars year after year if professors considered them a waste of resources?</p>