Overcrowding/Overenrollment Issues at top tier schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Too many people on this board see higher education as a trade school. And most are too focused on CS/engineering. As the child of immigrants, this is extreme immigrant mentality. And it will make sure your child gets to middle management - at best - and stays there and goes no further in life.

- signed 1st gen South Asian-American humanities major from T10 school (in the 90s), now with a HHI in the millions (& sometimes it’s an 8-digit HHI) annually. The most successful people in our circle of friends (including two self-made billionaires had a well rounded liberal arts education - with some majoring in philosophy and applied mathematics)….

What I want more than anything this for my two HS aged children (and now one Ivy bound humanities major) to continue to learn how to think critically, to read voraciously, to write and analyze well and to make cohesive well-reasoned arguments in a Socratic setting. All of these skills are still relevant today.

You have weird mentality.
It's usually the kids majoring in hard stuff like STEM who obtain well rounded serious education.
That's why employers prefer them.
Simple facts.

Not really. Your reasoning is myopic.

You are delusional.
Easy majors don't mean well rounded.
They are just easier majors and have lower outcomes on the average. Simple fact.

You can be good at math and not an engineering major.
You can be good at math and a humanities major.
What about double majoring at Williams in a true liberal arts area along with a science?!?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to a public R1, my wife to an LAC. We sent both our kids to an LAC. We felt the in classroom experience is better when classes are small; at our LAC, classes are capped at 35. We also think the out of classroom student-faculty experiences are more meaningful when there aren’t grad students or post docs to compete with. We felt research exposure was important but wanted it to prioritize undergrad involvement, which is the case at an LAC. Both our students have had far more interaction outside of class with profs than we think would’ve occurred at a university, even a private university, for academic research and other career-building opportunities. We also think college represents an important social networking opportunity and appreciated the requirement to live on campus all four years. In both their cases their social experiences picked up significantly in later years, so we're glad they were not limited to one or two years of on-campus housing.

That said, there are obvious name recognition and breadth of offering advantages at universities. There are also of course financial advantages for in-state publics. We would not have hesitated to send our kids to one of any number of amazing public universities if attending the LAC meant incurring significant debt.

In the end, this is a decision that comes down to a student’s specific situation and interests. In some cases a large public will make more sense, other times a private university, and other times an LAC. I think it’s fine for people to want to learn more about the pros/cons of each category or specific school as they research colleges. One need not take personally the fact that in some situations what was best for their family won’t be best for others.

I just don’t think anyone will get more mileage from a Pomona or Wellesley degree than they would have from a UCLA or Berkeley or University of Michigan degree (or one from USC or Notre Dame, etc.). The in-class education, sad to say, is an afterthought to the real purpose of 21st century higher education at the undergraduate level - extended social development and networking. For most kids, the most fertile environments are large public and private universities.

For those interested in graduate school and careers in academia beyond, those large schools with research budgets north of $1B provide a dizzying array of opportunities to get one’s foot in the door and start climbing the publication ladder. They will not find that at Macalester or Amherst College or Scripps College or whatever. And even if they do, the opportunities will be far fewer.

Careers are built AFTER college, not during it. For the vast majority of us, our livelihood is based on what we learned AFTER college. College is the big set-up to that critical phase in our lives. How we position ourselves exiting our undergraduate program is the key … at least in my experience, and the collective experience of most successful people in my orbit.

You’re one of the barbarians destroying higher education for the students who want it gone more than DeVry with a quad.

For some students, a chance to learn and be around bright people has a high value in and of itself. But because people like you and the CS-or-bust parents here have pumped selective colleges full of soulless zombies who’ve pretended to be good students, the serious students have a hard time finding schools suitable for serious students.

What makes you think those large schools are not brimming over with applicants and enrolled students who are at least as intellectually curious as their peers at the smaller schools? That’s bizarre thinking, frankly. The application process gauntlet enables kids to self-select the caliber of intellectual curiosity surrounding them during this critically important phase of life, as it should.

Not CS. Not pretending - DS24’s one-and-done 1600 wasn’t even considered by his eventual college choice, but I think his unbroken string of 5’s on 8 AP tests through junior year speak to his seriousness as a learner.

Combined, we have five degrees (two terminal) in my home, across two adults. We’re hardly ideal targets for your Devry with a quad sniping …

Well, for one, the I s are the only schools remaining test blind and much has been written about grade inflation in CA high schools.

The UCs also have decades of data about each HS in their state and probably can figure out what the GPAs mean in the context of the schools. My dc attends a UC and is a merit scholar several of his peers are either NMSF or commended. I too prefer making standardized tests mandatory but between historic school data, awards like National Merit (you have those for Hispanics and other races as well), AP awards, they have enough information to determine if a kid has the academic credentials.

Our kids went to a high stat (mid 1400s avg SAT) rigorous CA private HS that still gives Bs to good students. The impression the college counseling dept gave us was that the UCs are just too inundated with applications to adjust GPAs based on school history info. Our national merit scholar with a 4.9 avg over 8 APs (not the easy ones based on score distributions) and an unweighted GPA over 3.8 didn’t even bother applying. A friend’s daughter is going to Yale after getting rejected from her preferred UCs. Test blind is very misguided, imo.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The UCs have gotten the most flak but it is pretty easy to find issue with any mega large state school. Take UFlorida. They don’t even guarantee on campus housing to freshman and offer a number of classes, including core business major classes, as online classes. The school actually offers a program to kids not offered regular admission where the entire first year of classes.

The big public classes do a decent job of educating at ton of in state at a relatively low price, Florida schools are often free to students with strong grades. But there are trade offs that often make the oos price unpalatable to some families.

I personally am not aware of similar complaints about Michigan other than it is difficult to be admitted to certain popular majors. Unlike the others, Michigan has a very large percentage oos students so perhaps they have the money and local cost of living that prevents some of these issues.

It's hard to believe OOS parents would opt to pay for this type of 'education' if you can even call it that. We all lived through online schooling during Covid. We all KNOW it is not comparable to being in class with peers. My DC goes to a private and while recorded sessions are an option to view later, Every. Single. Class. has been in person, and taught by a professor, never once in three years has it been a TA.

What is the size of the school where your kid goes? Where do they attend that they don’t have TAs? Name the school.

Some kids need a lot of hand holding and personal attention. Everyone learns differently. Some folks prefer in person, some prefer online, independent book based learning. Some prefer independent research with little instruction to learn. To each his/her own. However, just because you prefer in person, doesn’t mean it’s right for everyone.

That said, it is NOT just an OOS issue. IMO. - It is a large university issue. Large private schools use TAs and large lecture formats too. Johns Hopkins has lecture classes of 400+ students and that typically meet 1x week with TAs for discussion.

Johns Hopkins is not a large school nor does it have lectures with 400 students. That would literally be close to 10 percent of the entire undergrad population at the school.

— Hopkins alum

https://courses.jhu.edu/?terms=Fall+2024&departments=AS+Psychological+%26+Brain+Sciences

Drill into "Introduction to Psychology AS.200.101 (01)"

Enrollment limit -- 460 students.

This is lazy analysis:

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/jhu-2077/academics#:~:text=The%20student%2Dfaculty%20ratio%20at,with%20fewer%20than%2020%20students.

78% of classes under 20 students. 6:1 student to faculty ratio

Compare to Berkeley, Michigan, Maryland:

Berkeley: 50% of classes under 20 students (19:1 student to faculty ratio)
Michigan: 56% (15:1 ratio)
Maryland: 47% (18:1 ratio)

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/university-of-california-berkeley-1312

[Anonymous]

More importantly, 4 year graduation rates:

Hopkins: 89%, Cornell: 89%

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/highest-grad-rate

Michigan: 81%, Berkeley: 82%, Maryland: 74%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:More importantly, 4 year graduation rates:

Hopkins: 89%, Cornell: 89%

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/highest-grad-rate

Michigan: 81%, Berkeley: 82%, Maryland: 74%

6 year is the industry standard for graduation rate with considerations for changing majors, study abroad, hard majors like engineering, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The UCs have gotten the most flak but it is pretty easy to find issue with any mega large state school. Take UFlorida. They don’t even guarantee on campus housing to freshman and offer a number of classes, including core business major classes, as online classes. The school actually offers a program to kids not offered regular admission where the entire first year of classes.

The big public classes do a decent job of educating at ton of in state at a relatively low price, Florida schools are often free to students with strong grades. But there are trade offs that often make the oos price unpalatable to some families.

I personally am not aware of similar complaints about Michigan other than it is difficult to be admitted to certain popular majors. Unlike the others, Michigan has a very large percentage oos students so perhaps they have the money and local cost of living that prevents some of these issues.

It's hard to believe OOS parents would opt to pay for this type of 'education' if you can even call it that. We all lived through online schooling during Covid. We all KNOW it is not comparable to being in class with peers. My DC goes to a private and while recorded sessions are an option to view later, Every. Single. Class. has been in person, and taught by a professor, never once in three years has it been a TA.

What is the size of the school where your kid goes? Where do they attend that they don’t have TAs? Name the school.

Some kids need a lot of hand holding and personal attention. Everyone learns differently. Some folks prefer in person, some prefer online, independent book based learning. Some prefer independent research with little instruction to learn. To each his/her own. However, just because you prefer in person, doesn’t mean it’s right for everyone.

That said, it is NOT just an OOS issue. IMO. - It is a large university issue. Large private schools use TAs and large lecture formats too. Johns Hopkins has lecture classes of 400+ students and that typically meet 1x week with TAs for discussion.

Johns Hopkins is not a large school nor does it have lectures with 400 students. That would literally be close to 10 percent of the entire undergrad population at the school.

— Hopkins alum

https://courses.jhu.edu/?terms=Fall+2024&departments=AS+Psychological+%26+Brain+Sciences

Drill into "Introduction to Psychology AS.200.101 (01)"

Enrollment limit -- 460 students.

This is lazy analysis:

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/jhu-2077/academics#:~:text=The%20student%2Dfaculty%20ratio%20at,with%20fewer%20than%2020%20students.

78% of classes under 20 students. 6:1 student to faculty ratio

Compare to Berkeley, Michigan, Maryland:

Berkeley: 50% of classes under 20 students (19:1 student to faculty ratio)
Michigan: 56% (15:1 ratio)
Maryland: 47% (18:1 ratio)

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/university-of-california-berkeley-1312

The ratios from institutions with grad students are tricky. The CDS specifies that faculty who teach “virtually only grad level students” shouldn’t be counted. So a faculty member who merely *mostly* teaches grad students or mostly spends time with grad students is counted the same as a faculty member at a school with only undergrads. There’s likely some differences across universities on who gets counted (this was one part of the Columbia controversy a few years back), but such differences between universities and LACs will be far more significant.

It’s also easy to misinterpret the class size data. A school with 50% classes under 20 students doesn’t mean a typical student has half their classes under 20, because the larger classes need to be weighted more heavily. To illustrate, consider a highly simplified case where a school offered only two classes in a term, one with 98 students and one with 2. They can report 50% of their classes have 2 or fewer students. That’s true, but in reality 98% of their students were in a 98 student class. So it’s more revealing to look at the percentages of larger class size categories rather than the smaller.

That said, private universities in general do much better at keeping larger classes to a smaller percentage than publics, and within that group JHU does better than many of its famous peers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a public school problem.

Go checkout dorm situation at Northeastern

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More importantly, 4 year graduation rates:

Hopkins: 89%, Cornell: 89%

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/highest-grad-rate

Michigan: 81%, Berkeley: 82%, Maryland: 74%

6 year is the industry standard for graduation rate with considerations for changing majors, study abroad, hard majors like engineering, etc.

Berkeley fields a lot of world-class athletic teams, so a lot of them redshirt before the Olympics which factors into the school's 4-year graduation rate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More importantly, 4 year graduation rates:

Hopkins: 89%, Cornell: 89%

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/highest-grad-rate

Michigan: 81%, Berkeley: 82%, Maryland: 74%

6 year is the industry standard for graduation rate with considerations for changing majors, study abroad, hard majors like engineering, etc.

Ummm. No.
This is called failure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The UCs have gotten the most flak but it is pretty easy to find issue with any mega large state school. Take UFlorida. They don’t even guarantee on campus housing to freshman and offer a number of classes, including core business major classes, as online classes. The school actually offers a program to kids not offered regular admission where the entire first year of classes.

The big public classes do a decent job of educating at ton of in state at a relatively low price, Florida schools are often free to students with strong grades. But there are trade offs that often make the oos price unpalatable to some families.

I personally am not aware of similar complaints about Michigan other than it is difficult to be admitted to certain popular majors. Unlike the others, Michigan has a very large percentage oos students so perhaps they have the money and local cost of living that prevents some of these issues.

It's hard to believe OOS parents would opt to pay for this type of 'education' if you can even call it that. We all lived through online schooling during Covid. We all KNOW it is not comparable to being in class with peers. My DC goes to a private and while recorded sessions are an option to view later, Every. Single. Class. has been in person, and taught by a professor, never once in three years has it been a TA.

What is the size of the school where your kid goes? Where do they attend that they don’t have TAs? Name the school.

Some kids need a lot of hand holding and personal attention. Everyone learns differently. Some folks prefer in person, some prefer online, independent book based learning. Some prefer independent research with little instruction to learn. To each his/her own. However, just because you prefer in person, doesn’t mean it’s right for everyone.

That said, it is NOT just an OOS issue. IMO. - It is a large university issue. Large private schools use TAs and large lecture formats too. Johns Hopkins has lecture classes of 400+ students and that typically meet 1x week with TAs for discussion.

Johns Hopkins is not a large school nor does it have lectures with 400 students. That would literally be close to 10 percent of the entire undergrad population at the school.

— Hopkins alum

https://courses.jhu.edu/?terms=Fall+2024&departments=AS+Psychological+%26+Brain+Sciences

Drill into "Introduction to Psychology AS.200.101 (01)"

Enrollment limit -- 460 students.

This is lazy analysis:

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/jhu-2077/academics#:~:text=The%20student%2Dfaculty%20ratio%20at,with%20fewer%20than%2020%20students.

78% of classes under 20 students. 6:1 student to faculty ratio

Compare to Berkeley, Michigan, Maryland:

Berkeley: 50% of classes under 20 students (19:1 student to faculty ratio)
Michigan: 56% (15:1 ratio)
Maryland: 47% (18:1 ratio)

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/university-of-california-berkeley-1312

The ratios from institutions with grad students are tricky. The CDS specifies that faculty who teach “virtually only grad level students” shouldn’t be counted. So a faculty member who merely *mostly* teaches grad students or mostly spends time with grad students is counted the same as a faculty member at a school with only undergrads. There’s likely some differences across universities on who gets counted (this was one part of the Columbia controversy a few years back), but such differences between universities and LACs will be far more significant.

It’s also easy to misinterpret the class size data. A school with 50% classes under 20 students doesn’t mean a typical student has half their classes under 20, because the larger classes need to be weighted more heavily. To illustrate, consider a highly simplified case where a school offered only two classes in a term, one with 98 students and one with 2. They can report 50% of their classes have 2 or fewer students. That’s true, but in reality 98% of their students were in a 98 student class. So it’s more revealing to look at the percentages of larger class size categories rather than the smaller.

That said, private universities in general do much better at keeping larger classes to a smaller percentage than publics, and within that group JHU does better than many of its famous peers.

Meh, it's not hard to find this info:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CfCS76GVbnoWUkERd-mMtJT2EsIN2eVq/edit#gid=739049415

Berkeley:

"Number of class sections with undergraduates enrolled --
Undergraduate Class Size (provide numbers) " Class Sections
2 - 9 648 (21%)
10 - 19 901 (30%)
20 - 29 415 (14%)
30 - 39 266 (9%)
40 - 49 196 (6%)
50 - 99 281 (9%)
100 + 338 (11%)
Total 3045

Hopkins:

2-9 476 (31%)
10 -19 734 (47%)
20 -29 135 (8%)
30 - 39 75 (5%)
40 - 49 31 (2%)
50- 99 59 (4%)
100+ 41 (3%)
Total 1551

https://oira.jhu.edu/wp-content/uploads/CDS_2022-2023.pdf

JHU far outperforms Berkeley and likely other large publics. Individualized attention becomes diluted above 30 students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The UCs have gotten the most flak but it is pretty easy to find issue with any mega large state school. Take UFlorida. They don’t even guarantee on campus housing to freshman and offer a number of classes, including core business major classes, as online classes. The school actually offers a program to kids not offered regular admission where the entire first year of classes.

The big public classes do a decent job of educating at ton of in state at a relatively low price, Florida schools are often free to students with strong grades. But there are trade offs that often make the oos price unpalatable to some families.

I personally am not aware of similar complaints about Michigan other than it is difficult to be admitted to certain popular majors. Unlike the others, Michigan has a very large percentage oos students so perhaps they have the money and local cost of living that prevents some of these issues.

It's hard to believe OOS parents would opt to pay for this type of 'education' if you can even call it that. We all lived through online schooling during Covid. We all KNOW it is not comparable to being in class with peers. My DC goes to a private and while recorded sessions are an option to view later, Every. Single. Class. has been in person, and taught by a professor, never once in three years has it been a TA.

What is the size of the school where your kid goes? Where do they attend that they don’t have TAs? Name the school.

Some kids need a lot of hand holding and personal attention. Everyone learns differently. Some folks prefer in person, some prefer online, independent book based learning. Some prefer independent research with little instruction to learn. To each his/her own. However, just because you prefer in person, doesn’t mean it’s right for everyone.

That said, it is NOT just an OOS issue. IMO. - It is a large university issue. Large private schools use TAs and large lecture formats too. Johns Hopkins has lecture classes of 400+ students and that typically meet 1x week with TAs for discussion.

Johns Hopkins is not a large school nor does it have lectures with 400 students. That would literally be close to 10 percent of the entire undergrad population at the school.

— Hopkins alum

https://courses.jhu.edu/?terms=Fall+2024&departments=AS+Psychological+%26+Brain+Sciences

Drill into "Introduction to Psychology AS.200.101 (01)"

Enrollment limit -- 460 students.

This is lazy analysis:

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/jhu-2077/academics#:~:text=The%20student%2Dfaculty%20ratio%20at,with%20fewer%20than%2020%20students.

78% of classes under 20 students. 6:1 student to faculty ratio

Compare to Berkeley, Michigan, Maryland:

Berkeley: 50% of classes under 20 students (19:1 student to faculty ratio)
Michigan: 56% (15:1 ratio)
Maryland: 47% (18:1 ratio)

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/university-of-california-berkeley-1312

The ratios from institutions with grad students are tricky. The CDS specifies that faculty who teach “virtually only grad level students” shouldn’t be counted. So a faculty member who merely *mostly* teaches grad students or mostly spends time with grad students is counted the same as a faculty member at a school with only undergrads. There’s likely some differences across universities on who gets counted (this was one part of the Columbia controversy a few years back), but such differences between universities and LACs will be far more significant.

It’s also easy to misinterpret the class size data. A school with 50% classes under 20 students doesn’t mean a typical student has half their classes under 20, because the larger classes need to be weighted more heavily. To illustrate, consider a highly simplified case where a school offered only two classes in a term, one with 98 students and one with 2. They can report 50% of their classes have 2 or fewer students. That’s true, but in reality 98% of their students were in a 98 student class. So it’s more revealing to look at the percentages of larger class size categories rather than the smaller.

That said, private universities in general do much better at keeping larger classes to a smaller percentage than publics, and within that group JHU does better than many of its famous peers.

Meh, it's not hard to find this info:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CfCS76GVbnoWUkERd-mMtJT2EsIN2eVq/edit#gid=739049415

Berkeley:

"Number of class sections with undergraduates enrolled --
Undergraduate Class Size (provide numbers) " Class Sections
2 - 9 648 (21%)
10 - 19 901 (30%)
20 - 29 415 (14%)
30 - 39 266 (9%)
40 - 49 196 (6%)
50 - 99 281 (9%)
100 + 338 (11%)
Total 3045

Hopkins:

2-9 476 (31%)
10 -19 734 (47%)
20 -29 135 (8%)
30 - 39 75 (5%)
40 - 49 31 (2%)
50- 99 59 (4%)
100+ 41 (3%)
Total 1551

https://oira.jhu.edu/wp-content/uploads/CDS_2022-2023.pdf

JHU far outperforms Berkeley and likely other large publics. Individualized attention becomes diluted above 30 students.

Yes, as I noted before, JHU does well even relative to its private peers. Penn’s % over 40 for instance, is almost the same as Berkeley at 25% (though Berkeley has about double over 100.)

Some LACs have 0% over 40.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More importantly, 4 year graduation rates:

Hopkins: 89%, Cornell: 89%

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/highest-grad-rate

Michigan: 81%, Berkeley: 82%, Maryland: 74%

6 year is the industry standard for graduation rate with considerations for changing majors, study abroad, hard majors like engineering, etc.

It shouldn’t be, most families are budgeting for four years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More importantly, 4 year graduation rates:

Hopkins: 89%, Cornell: 89%

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/highest-grad-rate

Michigan: 81%, Berkeley: 82%, Maryland: 74%

6 year is the industry standard for graduation rate with considerations for changing majors, study abroad, hard majors like engineering, etc.

Berkeley fields a lot of world-class athletic teams, so a lot of them redshirt before the Olympics which factors into the school's 4-year graduation rate.

You are statistically challenged. Does not even move the needle.