Intrigued by the recent idylls and rants in The Dartmouth concerning our U.S. News ranking (August 24, "Dartmouth ranked ninth -- again"), I decided to peruse a copy of the magazine myself to see what all the fuss was about. I have long been a skeptic of such numeric ratings and dread the damaging incentives they create in the college admissions "game," especially given their frequent political motivations. Nevertheless, in examining the rankings, I noticed that Dartmouth is among the worst of top-notch schools in providing small classes, a category which is rightfully given significant weight in the rankings.
One could certainly offer a laundry list of excuses -- that if their definition of a small class was 35 students rather than 20 then Dartmouth might not fare so poorly -- but the point should not be lost: our proportion of small classes is shy of what one would expect of Dartmouth and relatively low compared to similar elite institutions.
There is little excuse for some of the absurdly large introductory classes in some departments, and it's even reasonable to argue that a 35-student cap is too high for many major courses if the aim is to make them personal. While Dartmouth trounces other Ivy League schools in every other aspect of student experience in my opinion, I do think that class size is one of our weaknesses, and it needs to be addressed. My freshman year, I took a typical first-year load, and six of my nine classes had enrollments over 50 people -- undoubtedly a frustration shared by many students here and one that is all too rarely discussed.
I have little patience with allocation or scheduling excuses for retaining our larger classes rather than splitting them into smaller sections, as offering smaller sections of otherwise large classes would accommodate more students with timing, curtail waitlist drama, and make classes more personal. If 50 students sign up for a class capped at 35 students, then split it into two sections. Of course, some critics might argue that any quantitative measure like class size has no bearing on a course's or professor's quality. While a few of my larger classes have been excellent, this is the exception rather than the rule. It is an irrefutable educational fact that smaller classes foster more meaningful discussion, encourage attendance, and enhance the student-professor interaction. Naturally, students treat lecture halls as they would a movie theater. They come and go as they please, sleep, snore, eat, drink, instant message, blitz, do crosswords and answer the obnoxious ringtone on their cell phone. It's not economically feasible to teach small courses all the time, but it is a reality that this sort atmosphere is not conducive to learning -- a point which I refuse to concede to those who purport that larger introductory courses allow for smaller advanced courses. Furthermore, even in my ninth term in college, I have yet to see any real decrease in the size of my classes since my freshman year. We brag on admissions visits about our large proportion of intimate classes. What is our basis of comparison here? Institutions with over 20,000 students?
No wonder U.S. News might think we have no edge over other great colleges in this category. Thirty years ago, we stepped up to the plate and made the right choice to become coed; however, the College has still failed to commit the necessary resources to accommodate such an expansion in enrollment, leaving smaller classes to be replaced by a thriving non-educational bureaucracy. I love being able to call Dartmouth a liberal arts college; however, so long as the sizes of our classes remain high, it will become increasingly difficult to justify that designation.
While I could care less that U.S. News ranks Duke or Penn ahead of us, there is at least one lesson that we can glean from these rankings that is too important to ignore: smaller classes would benefit the College.
