Bigger Can Be Better

In choosing a college, many students see the issue of class size as one of the most important in their search for a fulfilling education. Most high schoolers and their parents assume that smaller classes necessarily translates into better teaching.

And despite its undeniable prestige, Harvard has come under fire from outside observers, who charge the College with an excess of large, impersonal lecture classes and inaccessible professors.

But according to Harvard faculty members, the anonymity of large classes is offset by the teaching ability of the engaging and charismatic big name professors who generally preside over big lecture courses. Because these professors are both talented and well-known, they draw more students each time the class is offered. Many faculty members feel that it is unfair to bar students from benefiting from such classes.

"I hate it when anything is limited at Harvard," Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 wrote in an e-mail message. "It is so hard to get in to this place, all students should have access to everything without a further selection process, except of course by prerequisites and the knowledge needed to participate usefully."

"Some courses are large," says Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles. "I'm not going to legislate to say that a large number of students can't enjoy a charismatic lecturer."

But how big is too big? The key to enjoying the most beneficial education at Harvard lies in finding the correct balance between large and small classes. Large classes may be better known--and therefore tempting to students--but a full load of courses taught in Sanders Theatre may leave some students feeling lost in the crowd. On the other hand, students who scrupulously avoid large lecture classes may never have the chance to be in a course taught by one of Harvard's academic superstars.

The College offers classes at both extremes, and in general the most satisfied students take advantage of both large and small classes.

Does Size Really Matter?

According to Harvard administrators, class size is not by any stretch the determining factor of what students can get out of a class. "I personally have never considered class size terribly important," Lewis says.

"I may be a bit unusual in that regard. When I was a student I had unforgettably wonderful classes of 400, where the effort involved in preparing lectures and course materials could not have been invested for a dozen students," he said.

Dean of Undergraduate Education William M. Todd III says that there is no "one size fits all" answer to the question of class size.

"Classes in which students can feel they actively participate better seize their attention and engage their minds," Todd wrote in an e-mail message. "But some of our professors have the rare talent to conduct a class of 1,000 as if it were a seminar of 15."

And it is not necessarily true, he added, that enrolling in a small course would ensure a stimulating classroom experience. Poor teachers are poor teachers regardless of class size.

For dedicated professors, the thought of facing an audience of hundreds two or three times a week can actually make them work harder.

Because professors often feel that they need to put on a 'performance' in class in order to keep students interested, presentations often come out more polished than they would in a small class setting.

Professor Everett I. Mendelsohn, who taught Historical A-18, "Science and Society in the 20th Century," told The Crimson last spring that he spends time before every lecture preparing to give a first class show.

Though other professors deny being nervous before class, Mendelsohn sees the preparation ritual as crucial. "I always take a half an hour before to get hyped up and get the adrenaline pumping," he said.

Lewis says that the bottom line on class size is that a Harvard education is what you make of it and does not hinge on whether a given class has 10 people or 1,000.

"The point of an education is to become intimately familiar with the subject, not with the teacher," Lewis says.

He says that in many cases, larger classes can be beneficial for students who may be less than chipper at 10 a.m. on a Monday morning.

"I had a small, intimate seminar with a senior faculty member that was so boring and incomprehensible that I wish it had been bigger so I and my ignorance would not have been noticed so much," Lewis says. " I don't believe that class size makes as much difference to the quality of the education as other parameters do."

Knowles says he agrees that very large classes in no way hinder students' ability to benefit from a productive learning environment. He says that instead of isolation, a large class can provide a great way for students to have a common learning experience.

"Once the audience has risen above about 100 or so, I don't think that the students' ability to learn is affected," Knowles told The Crimson last year. "It can become, instead, a vivid, shared experience. There is surely nothing intrinsically wrong with very popular lecturers."

One Track Mind

The one danger, Knowles says, is the possibility that certain groups of students may end up with a college career composed entirely of anonymous lecture courses.

Especially for students who are science concentrators, he says, there is a legitimate concern that they will be stuck in larger-than-life classes for their entire time at Harvard.

"I am more worried about individual students taking only large classes," Knowles says.

Because of a phenomenon that Knowles terms 'verticality,' science concentrators must take many more prerequisites before they can advance to smaller classes. Conversely, English and history classes are more likely to be based on a topic for which a student is not required to have any prior knowledge.

Todd says that this can prove to be a disadvantage to students mired in introductory science courses, because they lose out on some of the benefits of the balance between class sizes.

"The great majority of our courses here have enrollments of fewer than 20," Todd says. "The largest courses, however, are concentrated in our most populous concentrations and in the Core, so that students in these concentrations do not benefit from the many opportunities we offer for small-group instruction."

The Joy of Section

One of the ways in which professors can compensate for larger classes and ensure that students can still synthesize the material in a small learning environment is through section discussion.

A disadvantage of large lecture classes is the ease with which students can sleep in, skip class, and choose alternate activities over learning.

Todd says that the mandatory decrease in section size is one way in which the faculty has tried to combat the growing of class size.

"With [class size] in mind we reduced discussion section sizes from 20 to 18 two years ago," Todd says. "And once we have settled into this size we would probably like to make another reduction, perhaps to 15."

Harvard President Neil L. Rudenstine says that the reduction of section size was one goal of the University as a part of the capital campaign.

"We did reduce section size as a result of the capital campaign, and I think that was a good step," Rudenstine says. "But we need to add really considerably to the Faculty to create more seminars."

Knowles expressed concern for the fact that first-years do not have the opportunity to indulge in the world of small classes.

Todd says that the faculty may be in the process of creating alternate programs for first-years, "in order to intensify discussion and interaction," Todd says.

"Also, look for Dean Knowles and the Faculty to design ways of offering small courses to freshmen in far greater numbers than our Freshman Seminar program is now able to do," Todd says.

The Changing Face of FAS

Though the majority of the Faculty denies that classes are too big at present, some say that class size has increased in recent years. More importantly, there is an almost unanimous agreement to shrink class sizes in the future.

Lewis denies that a drastic change in class size has occurred, simply because neither the size of the student body nor the size of the faculty has been dramatically altered.

"I don't have any sense that there has been any change on the average," Lewis says. "I would be surprised if there had. The size of the faculty and the number of students have both been about constant so the average class size can't have changed much.

Knowles says that in the coming years, the goal of the Faculty is to decrease the student-faculty ratio and improve relations between professors and students.

"Over the next decade, we want to increase the size of the faculty while keeping the college the same size," Knowles says.

Knowles and Rudenstine also say that it is the goal of the Faculty to ensure that preeminent professors continue to come to Harvard.

This may be difficult because of the increasing number of qualified applicants, but both Knowles and Rudenstine say that Harvard has no plans to expand the size of the incoming classes.

"We're a whole lot smaller than the really large research universities," Rudenstine says. "We have no plans to expand the student body, though heaven knows a lot of people are beating on us to take more students."