I love that Rice is adding 300 new first year student seats next year. Why don't more colleges add seats?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yale did that last year. Middlebury too.

All these schools could add few hundred. More access is good

+1

[Anonymous]

Great idea for Rice to strategically plan a steady increase in class sizes per year. There's certainly enough demand and enough qualified students to educate!

I do think other colleges are doing it more reactively to Trump meddling with their finances, but it's better when done strategically like Rice. They already built a brand new dorm for the new 300 students too.

[Anonymous]

Many are. UNC has been adding more each year and Duke added more.

[Anonymous]

Many have been, and then parents and students and the community complain about over-crowded dorms, the school renting hotels, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If Harvard wants to expand capacity to 100,000 students they can find enough students who are willing to pay full price. But then who would want to go to Harvard in that case?

No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Great school. Too bad it's in Texas...

Texas isn't even the bad part - its in Houston, which I think is centered on the surface of the sun.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If Harvard wants to expand capacity to 100,000 students they can find enough students who are willing to pay full price. But then who would want to go to Harvard in that case?

Harvard can market its degrees by having a 2 tier system - in person and virtual. They can charge the same and droves of people would coke. They can even offer international students this option and get around any visa issues. They are name brand so it all depends on how they want to make money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Many have been, and then parents and students and the community complain about over-crowded dorms, the school renting hotels, etc.

True. But Rice has been slowly expanding from 4000 to 5200 students over a few years. And they've built the infrastructure for it, including a new residential college. There's nothing haphazard about it. No one at Rice is enduring hotels or overcrowded dorms. Some years ago, the school decided it wanted to be a little bigger and planned accordingly. They certainly have the endowment for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would think the biggest issue would be attracting quality and qualified professors.

You don't need more professors.

You do if you want to keep the same quality of instruction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If Harvard wants to expand capacity to 100,000 students they can find enough students who are willing to pay full price. But then who would want to go to Harvard in that case?

Harvard can market its degrees by having a 2 tier system - in person and virtual. They can charge the same and droves of people would coke. They can even offer international students this option and get around any visa issues. They are name brand so it all depends on how they want to make money.

Harvard College, like many of the older schools and universities on the east coast, cannot grow due to lack of physical space. If you want the first-year students to have the "Yard" experience, that is in a set amount of rooms dating back to 1763. https://www.thecrimson.com/column/a-new-day-at-harvard/article/2021/2/12/berger-increase-undergrad-enrollment/

[Anonymous]

Wake is adding 100 students a year for 10 years.

[Anonymous]

Brown reduced by 103 seats this year. They added two new dorms 2 years ago, but with mandatory three years on campus not sure where they could add at moment for undergrads at least.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would think the biggest issue would be attracting quality and qualified professors.

Given the academic job market, they will have zero problems attracting quality and qualified professors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many have been, and then parents and students and the community complain about over-crowded dorms, the school renting hotels, etc.

True. But Rice has been slowly expanding from 4000 to 5200 students over a few years. And they've built the infrastructure for it, including a new residential college. There's nothing haphazard about it. No one at Rice is enduring hotels or overcrowded dorms. Some years ago, the school decided it wanted to be a little bigger and planned accordingly. They certainly have the endowment for it.

This is how you do it. I realize not every university has the space to pull this off, but turning doubles into triples appears to be the new norm but cramming kids into small spaces together isn’t healthy.

[Anonymous]

This is not just a matter of adding a dorm. They would have to raise course enrollment sizes then, build larger classrooms, and/or hire more professors and TAs, build offices for those professors, etc., unless parents are fine with larger classes, crappier grading due to staff shortages, and cramped facilities.