Fri 10 Mar 2006
A Class Size of 855
Posted by eph under Education News at 5:41 am
No, not the entering class size at Williams, but rather the enrollment in the most popular class at Harvard: “Positive Psychology.” As The Boston Globe puts it, it teaches a
new area of psychology that focuses on what makes people feel good rather than the pathologies that can make them feel miserable.
Next in popularity are an economics class (669 students) and a second psychology course (550 students) taught by the same teacher of the first course, a Mr. Ben-Shahar. As the Globe notes, with two courses he’s teaching more than 1,400 students. In Williams terms, that would translate into teaching two-thirds of the student body within one semester.
Damn, why didn’t I go to Harvard? That way, I could fondly remember almost getting run over in Harvard Square, and taking a course with 854 other bodies. As it is, I’m stuck with memories of kicking through the golden leaves in Williamstown and taking a course from a Pulitzer award-winning author with 17 laughing, argumentative friends. Oh, well. Live and learn.
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9 Responses to “A Class Size of 855”
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Richard Dunn says:
There are a series of papers by Eric Hanushek at Rochester that finds, at least in pre-college education, there is no impact of class sizes on outcomes. It is essentially an either/or proposition, either you have a class of students less than about 15 or you can have as many as you want. You reach some threshold over which it doesn’t matter anymore because the style of instruction has changed dramatically.
March 10th, 2006 at 8:52 amAgain, unless you are willing to teach a radically different version of psych, econ or bio 101, there is absolutely no difference in whether you have a Williams style class of 50 or a Harvard style class of 700. You are being lectured to, and that is that.
And thus we return to the previous thread, where many of us who teach college students argued that the lecture is a valuable educational tool, just like the oxford tutorial or coffee with a prof at the snack bar.
frank uible says:
It is not the class enrollment which struck me; it is the subject matter. This class amounts to “Dr. Phil” for an aliquot student expense portion of $40,000 plus per annum per student. How banal, how foolish and how expensive for banal and foolish. One expects a lot better from Harvard and its students.
March 10th, 2006 at 10:15 amGuy Creese '75 says:
Richard, I generally agree, although I still think you have a better chance of picking a prof’s brain after hours if the class size is 50 rather than 700. And the Poli Sci Leadership seminar I referred to was taught via Socratic method — completely different from a lecture.
So if we go with your finding, my question is why even go to a physical college? If I’m going to be lectured to all day, I might as well sit at home watching a videoconference, and save on housing fees. I personally think paying $40K a year to a highly selective college to sit in a lecture is going to go the way of the dodo bird.
I think it will eventually evolve to: (1) you pay a lot of money for small classes and personal attention (Williams), (2) you pay a medium amount to sit in large classes (state university), or (3) you pay a small amount to take college via the Web (University of Phoenix). In short, you end up paying for the socialization, not the teaching.
March 10th, 2006 at 10:22 amGuy Creese '75 says:
Frank, my father had the same reaction when I told him I was taking a course on Juggling during Winter Study (taught by a student at the Free University). “I’m paying $10,000 a year and you’re taking a course on JUGGLING?”
Still, it was that course that got me my first job. I put it down as a skill on my resume, and I found out later from the VP of Underwriting who hired me that, “I figured anyone who had the guts to put ‘juggling’ on their resume had to be a pretty interesting fellow, so that’s why I hired you.”
March 10th, 2006 at 11:24 amRichard Dunn says:
I think this is an argument similar to the ongoing discussion paper books. Sure, one day all books may be replaced by electronic editions, but somehow I think there is something about the real thing that is irreplaceable in the immediate future. There is something different between Prof. Bell on DVD and Prof. Bell in front of a lecture hall.
March 10th, 2006 at 11:25 amI certainly don’t believe every class should be in lecture format and not all introductory classes should be in lecture format but there is something worthwhile about just listening intently for a period of time before injecting your own ideas. Everyday universities are inundated with the mindless bullshit of undergraduates and grad students alike. We are afraid to tell students they are wrong, we let them ramble, we twist their comments into some semblance of reasonable thought.
And I think this is all good, a valuable undertaking, but sometimes maybe we should ask: Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into the ditch?
A good lecture is not a recitation of facts but also a demonstration of the method. A good lecturer presents a result and then describes how the reasoning should take place, what questions they asked themself on the way to the result. A semester of this before letting students stake out on their own might not be a bad thing.
rory says:
such reductionism, Frank! (Note: I wouldn’t expect more from Harvard and its students..:P)
Class size’s role in college is not only the pure pedagological issue of whether or not students learn more in a smaller or larger lecture, but has an important role in presenting a school’s priorities. Williams would not allow a lecture of that size, it has no desire to. It strives for the ideal of a professor who knows student names and learning styles, and while it takes a special type of prof to do that with more than 20 students, that’s the signal being sent when lectures of 50 are deemed “large” and the prof goes out of his/her way to know student names.
It is that environment of desired individuality that supports a student talking with a professor outside of class, even outside of office hours. That’s what classes of hundreds deny. To make it a cliche, students in a class like that are assured of being a number, not a name.
I’ve said nothing about lecture vs. discussion. Last semester I had a 12 person lecture class with Randy Collins, a brilliant theorist. And we all preferred not to speak: we didn’t want to interrupt his brain in action. Of course, we talked to him during breaks and office hours because the class was small and that was reasonable to do, but when class was in session, Randy lecturing and us lowly grad students scribbling notes was the way to go.
March 10th, 2006 at 11:38 amGuy Creese '75 says:
I, for one, don’t think books are going away anytime soon (I’m creating a database of the books I own on my Palm PDA — about half way through, I’ve entered 1,780), but there certainly is some substitution going on. When I travel, I take two paperbacks and then put several eBooks in my PDA and laptop. So eBooks aren’t my first choice, but I prefer them to lugging around five or eight books. Given Microsoft’s Origami announcement this week (ultraportable tablet PC the size of a book), I think this trend will accelerate.
You’re right, a professor on DVD is different from a professor in person. However, my question is, how big is the difference? Is a professor on DVD “good enough” for a whole bunch of people? I would claim a superb teacher on DVD is better than a mediocre teacher in person. For two real world examples, think of Julia Child teaching cooking on PBS, or Sir Kenneth Clark’s “Civilisation” series on PBS a number of years ago.
I agree that in these touchy feely days we forget that knowing the basic facts or the framework for attacking a problem are very important. I witnessed some great lecturers at Williams (Stoddard in Art 101, Waite on Modern Germany). I don’t believe Williams shouldn’t have lectures; but I also believe that small classes and tutorials are invaluable to students who have the ability to take advantage of them.
March 10th, 2006 at 11:53 amfrank uible says:
rory: What you expect from Harvard may be quantitatively and qualitatively quite different from what I expect.
March 10th, 2006 at 12:17 pmKen Thomas '93 says:
You get the experience you choose.
I personally always sat in the second row of 10am PSYC 101 in Bronfman auditorium and treated it as any other discussion class; I didn’t bother any of the profs (that I know of!), but they soon figured out I was there if they wanted to operate in dialogue mode, and if I really wanted to discuss some point, I could.
It helped, of course, that I was taking Saul Kassin’s Ford course at the time, and therefore semi-omnipresent on the second floor.
(I had thought that PSYC 101 would be an easy fifth course to add to my load given that it would overlap with themes of the Ford course; that was not the case…)
If I get another moment free tonight, I’ll recollect visiting Art History at Harvard, the same semester.
March 10th, 2006 at 11:25 pm