Classes: How big is too big?
It’s a ritual repeated every year: thousands of college freshmen leave the comfort of home and family for the world of the undergraduate, only to find a strenuous schedule of general education courses.
Some students find themselves in classes bigger than their graduating class.
This leaves many of them asking the questions, “How big is too big? What are the benefits and drawbacks of sitting in an auditorium with five, six or even eight hundred other students?”
Like the words of an old song, the large classes at Utah State University have left some students feeling like they’re just another brick in the wall. However, according to Michael Ballam, a music professor with approximately 600 students in his USU 1330 course, the advantages of large classes definitely outweigh the shortcomings.
“The larger classes allow some of USU’s most prestigious instructors to influence thousands of students in a few years, as opposed to dozens,” Ballam said. “Most of the very large courses are broad courses [not major courses], which makes it possible for the major courses to be taught in manageable sizes. But most important, it allows the university to afford to offer classes of intimate size. Do the math. If all USU classes had 25 students in each class, tuition would have to quadruple.”
Ballam acknowledged that with the large course comes the challenge of testing and monitoring students, but added, “With the advent of the Internet, it is more possible to interface with students today than it ever was before.”
Emily Burr, a freshman majoring in interior design, is enrolled in a USU 1330 course, which has about 800 students in it.
“At first, the large classes were kind of intimidating,” she said. “But once we got into it, it was great.”
Jessica Johnson, a freshman majoring in elementary education, and a student in the same course, said she didn’t mind the class size because her instructor tried to help everyone get involved by walking up and down the aisles asking questions. She said she was also excited the he was helping the students get involved in the community by having them go to plays, operas, and musicals.
But not everyone agrees.
Kurt Oborn, a junior majoring in phychology believes the problem with education as a freshman is that students are forced into classes with 500 other students.
“I think that’s half the reason why most people don’t finish off their four-year degree,” he said. “There’s no individualized learning. An education is to learn how to learn, it’s not a memorization of facts. Our education should be an exploration, not just a regurgitation of information.”
While it’s admitted that the optimum situation would be to have smaller classes all the time, Ballam also pointed out that “in order to make an education possible with a student/professor ratio in the 20s, it becomes necessary to have some very large classes to make up the difference. Even as it is now, the differential between tuition and real costs of USU are getting further and further apart. With less and less support coming from taxation, it is becoming more and more important for universities to figure out how to make tuition money go as far as possible. Large classes in some courses helps make that possible.”
The large courses, then, are a child of compromise of right or wrong, and optimum or not, they’re here to stay.
-mattgo@cc.usu.edu