Would this be mainly courses where student interest is very low (but non-zero)? Of course, if you are the third or fourth student interested in a course with an enrollment limit of two, that might not be so great.
Would this be mainly courses where student interest is very low
No, it is where student interest is high. It is the Oxford model, introduced at Williams by a past president. There appears to be no limit on the number of students who can elect tutorials beyond the fact that there are certain qualifications needed. No limit was mentioned during the presentation when this program was explained to us during the info session prior to our tour.
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That is not my understanding. Williams just makes a point of regularly offering some classes in this format:
https://www.williams.edu/academics/tutorials/
I think in some ways, it is like a directed study, senior thesis, or other such programs which are more common in US colleges. Williams is doing this tutorials program as well, but it is not like it will be most of your classes. As they say, over half take at least one, but that means at least a decent minority take none, and it also implies to me that taking much more than one would be unusual.
Anyway, anything like this does tend to have a higher operating cost than an average class with a higher student to instructor ratio (note, though, the ratio is up to 10 to 1, as the instructor may have up to 5 groups of 2). But my point again is there are experiences broadly like this available at a variety of colleges.
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The web page you linked says that “Tutorials are usually limited to 10 students.” But if they are high demand courses, how would they ration access if (for example) 20 or 30 students wanted to take the course?
If you pop open the Fall tutorials list, you will see some are Open, some are Closed, and some are Cancelled:
https://catalog.williams.edu/tut/list/?strm=1261&subj=NA&cmp=TUT
So I think it is like any other courses with an enrollment cap, although I do not know any details about how enrollment works at Williams.
Edit: Oh, and apparently you also sometimes need Instructor Consent to enroll.
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That is not my understanding. Williams just makes a point of regularly offering some classes in this format.
I didn’t see anything in your link to support that statement. There are literally 63 tutorials offered on that list.
it is like a directed study, senior thesis, or other such programs.
No, it is nothing like those.
it is not like it will be most of your classes
The point was that Williams provides expensive opportunities like this which simply don’t exist or are very rare elsewhere. Emphasis on “opportunity”, which means that not everyone elects it nor that it will be your typical academic experience. Another example of an unusual opportunity is their winter semester at no additional cost where students can experience non-traditional opportunities in things like group problem solving which require them to apply both their academic and non-academic skills. Is is experiential and not a reading or lecture experience.
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so I think it is like any other course with an enrollment cap.
I think not.
These tutorials are set up by arrangements with professors. Hence, some are listed as Closed because the arrangements have already been made. It is a highly individualized process and not what you seem to be inferring.
As you said, you do not have any details about how the enrollment process works at Williams. It sounds like you have some questions which are better put to someone in Admissions at Williams.
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That is consistent with what I pointed out.
They are similar in that in practice, a single faculty member is working with very few, down to just one, student, although the same faculty member may have multiple such relationships at the same time.
The above similarity is then a relevant similarity because it has a similar impact on costs. As noted in the conversation above, a Williams tutorial involves one faculty member and up to five groups of two students each. If that faculy member is doing that instead of teaching, say, a single 15 person seminar, then that tutorial has a higher labor cost per student. But the same is true if the faculty member is doing some small directed study classes, senior thesis advisories, or so on. All those also have a higher labor cost per student than a single 15 person seminar, and indeed might actually have a higher labor cost per student than a Williams tutorial.
I don’t mean to suggest the Williams tutorial model is not cool if you are into that sort of experience. But I do think it is not likely to be much more costly for Williams to offer than any other sort of credits where you have a very low student to faculty ratio.
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The last time I visited Williams was a few years ago. The AO I met with said about 50% of students take a tutorial during their 4 years, and the majority of those students don’t take a second tutorial. The rep is that the tutorials require a lot of work, more than a typical class (and I view Williams as a relatively more rigorous environment than some of its peers.)
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I don’t know how it works at Williams but when my daughter was at Cambridge, it seemed like enrollment was a two part process. First the student submitted a ranked list of the topics they were interacting in, then a professor would have to agree to advise the tutorial.
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Tutorials at Williams are unique. There are only a small handful of colleges in the U.S. offering Oxford-model tutorials. Tutorials at Williams are incredibly popular for those intellectually curious enough to take the plunge. If you want to understand Williams tutorials, watch the video: https://www.williams.edu/academics/tutorials/
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S24 has yet to take a tutorial. They are extremely work intensive since they involve writing a paper or reviewing your partners paper every week. I believe that most have more than one section, so there are enrollment caps of up to 8 students, but each meeting are just two and the professor. It does seem that many students take one but some love the tutorial model and take several. He is a physics and math major and there are many options for senior level classes that I am sure he will take. They are also not all offered every year.
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My D took one tutorial, loved it, but there were too many “regular” classes that appealed to her, so she never took another one. She did have a few friends who took several tutorials over the years. There are even tutorials specifically for first year students.
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