Re:Why Top Colleges Squeeze You Dry
by ericd on Thursday April 15, 2010 @06:24PM
(#1269120)
I went to a top school pretty recently, and many courses in the first two years had 200-300 people in them. There were also courses higher up in the course foodchain that had fewer than ten. I would say 25 is a reasonable average figure.
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Re:Why Top Colleges Squeeze You Dry
by tokenadult on Thursday April 15, 2010 @09:10PM
(#1269449)
Yeah, that seems to back up what I was talking about for undergrad courses. I'm sure this course I'm looking at with 680 enrollment brings up the average a bit... 772, 480, 280, 330, 248, 260, 223... and there are a good number in the 50-100 range.
The grad courses of course have smaller class sizes since they're the long tail of education, but that's not what we're talking about here. If you remove the courses with 0 undergrads, the average is probably not below 25.
For our analysis, it's the mean and not the median that matters, since we're talking about the sum of money brought in by professor teaching divided by the number of professors.
From first glance, it looks like the median is quite possibly below 25, but the mean isn't, if you only look at undergraduate courses.
Also, professional schools have huge class sizes and charge tuition at the same or an even higher level.