Class Size & Student to Faculty Ratios: What Research Says?

student to faculty ratios and class size

Student to faculty ratios are statistics that purport to describe the educational quality of a university. A lower ratio seems to indicate smaller class sizes and a more intimate classroom experience. Not so. These ratios are unrelated to average class size, and they do not have anything to do with educational quality. An expert college admissions counselor explains what is behind these statistics and how to get beyond them to understand the truth about the educational environment at a college or university.

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Average Class Sizes at University of Rochester

students sitting in classroom
I just watched a video that was referred to me by a friend on Facebook. I often ignore these links, but this one clearly had a college theme and my friend thought it was hilarious. So I clicked on it.

It was hilarious. And you should watch it for the entertainment value.

But you should also watch it for an inside view of the lecture hall at the University of Rochester for Chemistry 131. This is the introductory course in Chemistry at University of Rochester.

“Average Class Size”

When colleges advertise their “average class size,” they are obscuring a fact. Many of the classes you will take as an undergraduate will be large lecture courses like this one. Just because a university like Harvard or Yale offers a lot of small classes does NOT mean that the average size of the classes an individual student ordinarily would take would be small. Or even that the majority of the classes will be small.

This noise about average class size is a way that colleges and universities inundate you with statistics. To give you the impression that you will have a very personal, very intimate educational experience. At most places, this is malarkey. Most classes an average student will take at a medium-sized (like the University of Rochester). Or large university will be much larger than the average class size at their high school.

And if they continue to insist upon it, ask them to prove it. Ask to see the class schedules for a randomly selected group of students in freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior year. And let’s really see what proportion of the average student’s classes are large and what proportion are small (say under 25 students). Not every college fibs, but many stretch the truth.

Why do they fib (or stretch, as the case may be)? Because this statistic is a proxy for intimacy and personalization and it is a vital statistic used by US News to determine its rankings.

If you want to read more about average class size, you might want to take a look at these links:

Student to Faculty Ratios: A Bogus Statistic You Should Ignore
Adjunct Faculty and Student to Faculty Ratios
Student to Faculty Ratios: Unintended (Negative) Consequences
 
Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant

 

Adjunct Faculty and Student-to-Faculty Ratios: What Universities Don't Know

I recently wrote a post blasting the idea of student-to-faculty ratios as a bogus measure of educational quality.  It turns out that  universities themselves don’t have a solid measure of what the ratios really are, or even keep track of the percentage of students taught by tenure-track professors–as opposed to adjunct, part-timers, or graduate students.

Yesterday Inside Higher Ed‘s Scott Jaschik reviewed a new book entitled Off-Track Profs:  Nontenured Teachers in Higher Education, which documents what we know and don’t know about the impact of adjuncts in higher education.  The authors also explore the reasons for the growth of adjunct faculty at some of the country’s research institutions.

I won’t spend the time to repeat Jaschik’s review…give it a read.  I plan to read the book.

Suffice it to say, however, that college administrators and boards of trustees have little idea about how much teaching is performed by non-tenure track faculty.  Their policies–and enforcement of whatever policies may exist–are fuzzy at best, and these trends do have an impact on the educational experience of undergraduates.

[And if senior university administrators don’t have any idea about the impact of adjuncts at their own institution,  you can jolly well bet that admissions counselors won’t know! If you ask, you’ll just get the party line based on goofy statistics that don’t mean a thing.]

One finding at the University of Michigan bears out what one of my readers commented about with regard to student-to-faculty ratios:  often the non-tenure track faculty have much better teaching evaluations than the tenured faculty.  Adjuncts are often better teachers. This fact does beg the question whether tenure is really a useful institution in the 21st century university.

We  may also inquire as to whether the accepted wisdom that “good research informs teaching” holds any grain of truth.  Research faculty obviously believe in this link.  But to read undergraduate teaching evaluations, it appears that most students do not believe it–or at least to not experience the benefits of that research in the classroom.

What does all this mean for you as you seek the best college for you?  First, treat student-to-faculty ratios with skepticism, and second, make sure you seek out the best teachers you can find once you are on campus–regardless of their job title.

Mark Montgomery
College Consultant



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Student-to-Faculty Ratio and Small Class Sizes: Unintended (Negative) Consequences

Colleges cite their student-to-faculty ratios and average class size as indicators of the intimacy and quality of the educational experience they offer to students. Rankings systems, such as those employed by US News & World Report and Newsweek, include these statistics among their variables. I’ve been writing about these statistics and what they mean (see these links for more about ratios and class sizes). And I mentioned in a video blog post that these statistics have unintended consequences.
So what are the unintended consequences?
The first one is that students can get shut out of courses that they really want to take.
Why? Because administrators want to ensure that they have a low average class size, they limit enrollment in some courses. Which courses are the ones requiring a cap? Why, the popular courses offered by the best or most popular professors are often in high demand. But contrary to the laws of economics, administrators will choke off supply–for the sake of keeping the average class size small.
Students flock to register for popular courses. But administrators do not want these popular courses to become the odious “large lecture courses” eschewed by rankings systems, parents, and college counselors. So they cap the course, and dozens–sometimes hundreds–of students can be denied access to these courses. One result is that the administration then has to devise a fair system of allocating these scarce resources to the students who “deserve” them most. It may be that seniors get preference. Or majors. Or some other system. This problem is compounded at small colleges that have fewer faculty and more limited teaching resources. It is much more difficult for small colleges to add sections and courses, because of the laws of economies of scale: no scale, no economies.
The second unintended consequence is the proliferation of adjunct instructors.
Keeping in mind that keeping class sizes low means that a university needs more instructors to teach more courses, a college administration can blow its budget if it’s not careful. The most expensive instructors are the ones who work full-time, have been around for ages (they have lots of experience), and draw expensive benefits (like health care and retirement plans). The cost of adding a new tenure track professor can easily add $75,000 to $150,000 onto the budget. However, if we ask an adjunct to teach a course or two, an administrator can pay them as little as $1500 to $3000 per course (!), and the budget is not saddled with those pesky benefits. So at some colleges, perhaps 25-30% of all courses are taught by adjuncts.
This is not necessarily horrible; for some adjuncts can be much better teachers than some of the tenured professors. They may teach for the love of teaching, not because it’s a necessary evil in order to fuel their research habits. However, adjuncts are rarely considered wholly a part of the college community. They rarely have their own offices, they are harder for students to reach, and are not generally the professors that invite their students over to their houses for dinner (a modest dinner for 15 hungry students could take a huge bite out of that $1500 paycheck!).
So, while student-to-faculty ratios are important, and while people like me like to guide students toward colleges where the average class size is small, there is no escaping the fact that there is no free lunch. Low ratios and small classes beget their own set of administrative problems that can have a very negative impact on a student’s educational experience.
As a parent or prospective student, then, what questions should you really be asking when you investigate colleges?
In addition to asking about student-to-faculty ratios and the average class size, try these as follow-on questions:
Regarding student-to-faculty ratios: What percentage of students are locked out of courses they want to take? What is the system for allocating slots in popular courses? Is this problem greater in some majors more than others? Which are most affected?
Regarding small class sizes: What percentage of courses are taught by part-time faculty or adjunct professors? What is the ratio of tenure-track faculty to adjuncts? Which departments have the highest percentage of adjuncts?
Choosing a college is a tricky business. While the internet has provided us with access to enormous amounts of information, we may still be unaware of how to interpret all this information.
This is why so many families are turning to people like me to guide them through the college selection process. There is no substitute for expertise. And if you are going to spend $250,000 on a college education, shouldn’t you be asking the right questions to help you spend your money wisely?
Mark Montgomery
College Counselor
GreatCollegeAdvice.com
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Student-to-Faculty Ratios: What Do These Statistics Mean?

teacher and students in a classroom

The other day I received this question from a client:

Hi, Mark. I’ve been reading college profiles, and nearly all of them cite student-to-faculty ratios, all of which fall in to a relatively narrow range of perhaps 12:1 to 20:1. How important is this statistic in choosing a college?

My short answer: not very

The student-to-faculty ratio is supposed to reflect the intimacy of the educational experience. One would assume that the lower the ratio, the more contact a student will have with faculty members. One might also assume that institutions with lower ratios would have smaller class sizes, on average, than one with a higher ratio.

Let’s look first at the view from 30,000 feet. What is the national student-to-faculty ratio? According to the National Center for Educational Statistics’ Digest of Educational Statistics for 2007. There were 18 million college students and 1.3 million college faculty. A quick calculation tells us that nationwide, there are 13.8 students for every faculty member in America.

However, there are only about 700,000 full-time faculty members in higher education, and about 600,000 part-time faculty, or adjuncts. So if we recalculate the ratio, there are 25.7 students per full-time faculty member.
So how do universities report their student-t0-faculty ratios? Because a low ratio is associated with higher quality education. A college administrator has an incentive to keep this ratio as low as possible.

Every major publication and ranking system (e.g., US News, the Princeton Review, the Fiske Guide) slavishly reports these figures and uses them to compare one college against another.

So look behind the ratios!

  • Does this figure include part-time faculty who may be brought in to teach a single course? If so, keep in mind that students have much less access to adjunct faculty (who rarely have their own office or even a place to hang their coats).
  • Does this figure include faculty who teach only graduate courses–or may teach predominantly graduate students? If so, the ratio exaggerates students’ access to some of the most senior faculty–many of whom simply do not like teaching undergraduates.
  • Does this figure include research faculty, who generally do not teach undergraduate courses at all, but may simply guide doctoral candidates or teach in a graduate professional school? If so, the ratio may be inflated.

When I was a college administrator, my colleagues and I always agonized about how to report our student-to-faculty ratios. The recipient of this information usually colored our responses. If we were reporting to the Office of institutional research (which is required to report information to the federal government in standardized formats). We were fairly careful in giving a more nuanced, detailed accounting.

But if the admissions office was asking for figures. We’d drum up every faculty member we could in order to report a low student-to-faculty ratio. So take these ratios with a grain of salt. As my prospective client noticed, the range of ratios does not vary all that much from one institution to another. And the ratio may not tell you all that much about the classroom experience.

You will want to ask other questions that may tell you more about the intimacy of the educational experience.

For more on whether student-to-faculty ratios tell us much about the quality of a college, click here.

Mark Montgomery
Independent College Counselor