Why Not Bigger Classes?

In a previous post we noted that reduced funding for classroom instruction is not sustainable. In the short term, some faculty may be willing to over-enroll students in their class, taking on extra work, in order to help those already enrolled graduate. In the long run, however, without adequate funding, there will be fewer classes, and perhaps bigger classes. In essence, quality of instruction will go down even as the time it takes to get a degree goes up.

To understand this equation, we must clear up a misconception. When higher education funding is cut, faculty are constantly asked, "why don't you just raise class sizes?" It is often assumed that faculty are too lazy to raise their class sizes. In reality, faculty are protecting the quality of education, not the quantity of work.

Faculty will work the same amount regardless of class size. They already spend well over forty hours each week on teaching, research, and service to the university and the community-all part of their job description. Think about teaching. A good teacher must not only be up to date in his or her field-which takes time during the school year and over summer-but must design effective courses, evaluate student learning, and offer meaningful feedback on student work. Moreover, we know that students learn better when they are engaged in the learning process-when they can discuss the readings, design their own experiments, write their own research papers. If we want students to learn well, we must invest in each of them.

This simply cannot be done effectively in a large class. Faculty work the same number of hours whether the class is large or small, but students do not get the same quality of instruction. Large classes tend to have more lecturing. Large classes have fewer and inferior assignments. Often, multiple choice tests replace essays. Large classes offer students fewer opportunities to engage with the material. Certainly, large classes rarely allow faculty to cultivate the kinds of relationships with students that research suggests is vital to student learning. Smaller classes, on the other hand, allow faculty to offer detailed feedback on papers and assignments. Faculty can assign more work per student, can evaluate that work better, and give each student more time to ensure that she or he leaves the class comprehending the material. For faculty, the work is the same. For students, larger classes are decidedly inferior.

Reformers and policymakers often accuse faculty of not paying enough attention to teaching and learning. Almost all scientific research on learning suggests that students learn best when they have meaningful relationships with their teachers, have opportunities to be actively involved with the learning process, and can grapple with difficult material in class and in their assignments. Compare this with a large lecture class filled with half-engaged students scribbling notes and taking multiple choice tests that assess their short-term memory rather than their long-term development!

Faculty do not teach small classes because they are lazy. Small classes often take more preparation time because faculty cannot recycle notes from last time and because they must offer more feedback on complicated assignments. If we were lazy, we would just teach large classes straight from the textbook and offer tests that machines could grade. Instead, we want our students to learn.

Large classes are inefficient. Efficiency means doing the same for less. Large classes are, however, decidedly inferior because faculty simply cannot offer the same quality of instruction as they do in smaller classes. For faculty, their workload does not change. For students, however, it makes a big difference.

Johann Neem is Associate Professor of History at Western Washington University and author of Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts.