Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!csri.toronto.edu!clarke
From: clarke@csri.toronto.edu (Jim Clarke)
Newsgroups: ont.general
Subject: Re: Spending for education
Keywords: money
Message-ID: <1989Nov24.122558.9658@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Date: 24 Nov 89 17:25:58 GMT
References: <606@alias.UUCP> <12258@watcgl.waterloo.edu> <7470@cognos.UUCP> <12313@watcgl.waterloo.edu> <7544@heraclitus.UUCP>
Distribution: ont
Lines: 52

rayt@heraclitus.UUCP (R.) writes:

> ...
>Also, at university one generally (from the faculty) hears about the shortage
>of proper (research) equipment, rather than the size of the classes. Taking
>courses with two or three people in attendance (with one or two auditing) is
>not uncommon; in some departments, even some third year level courses have
>well below ten students. Clearly, there are courses at the other extreme where
>_thousands_ of student are enrolled, but these are first and second year
>requirements for _all_ social science, or _all_ engineering and applied
>sciences, etc. Giving an average number for such extremes seems pointless.

>Ray Tigg                          |  Cognos Incorporated

I agree that there are wide variations, and that an average is likely
to mean less than you'd think.  But not all the large classes are required
courses for first-year students in big programs.

In this department (Computer Science at the University of Toronto), a class
of fewer than ten students would be considered tiny even at the fourth-year
level.  Twenty to fifty is more common, and classes of more than fifty are
not a surprise in fourth year.  In second and third year, thirty to sixty
is pretty standard, while 100 would be surprisingly large.  In first year,
120-150 is a common starting size; dropouts will tend to reduce this by up
to 30% by the end of a term.

This is certainly better than seven or eight years ago, when fourth-year
classes were very often 100 or so.  But the present situation is far from
ideal.  A class size of 20 is about the largest you should have in fourth
year, I think; any larger and you're reading some text onto the blackboard.
It's fashionable, as it always has been, to claim that our students can't
read or write, but by third year they are certainly capable of reading that
text on their own.  They deserve something a little more personal in their
classes.

In the bad old days of the early 80's when classes were huge, I used to
try to get students to understand why we limited enrolment in courses --
a process I'm in charge of -- by recollecting the fourth-year courses of
my own student days, which I had thought were too big at 20 to 25 students.
The present-day students I used this reminiscence on didn't just think that
things had once been very different; they simply couldn't imagine the
educational situation I'd been in.  They had never been in a class small
enough to be taught as it should be!

Things are better now, but they're not what they should be.  And this is
at U of T, supposedly significantly better off than most other Canadian
universities.  
-
Jim Clarke -- Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4
              (416) 978-4058
clarke@csri.toronto.edu     or    clarke@csri.utoronto.ca
   or ...!{uunet, pyramid, watmath, ubc-cs}!utai!utcsri!clarke