Smaller class sizes sounds pretty good! Maybe worth paying for? But I am reminded of the claim that most flights are empty, even though most people find themselves on full flights. Similarly, most person-class-hours might be spent in the biggest classes (cf the inspection paradox).
Can you elaborate on what that claim means? I’m legit confused about what it means. If most flights are empty, and a few are full, then of course people would find themselves on full flights.
It is pointing out that having tons of small classes few people take is a way to drive down the average while keeping the actual experience of students roughly the same. So Harvard might have, say, many, many senior- level small classes, but could still have all of the intro and even sophomore / junior level classes, which are half of each student’s experience, be in huge impersonal classes.
...but that doesn’t match what I’ve heard about the student experience, so IMO it’s unlikely to be the explanation.
Full flights have more people on them. If you have 100 flights with one person and 1 flight with 200 people, most of the people in those flights are on the 200 person flight.
Harvard tells us that their median class size is 12 and over 75% of their courses have fewer than 20 students.
Smaller class sizes sounds pretty good! Maybe worth paying for? But I am reminded of the claim that most flights are empty, even though most people find themselves on full flights. Similarly, most person-class-hours might be spent in the biggest classes (cf the inspection paradox).
Can you elaborate on what that claim means? I’m legit confused about what it means. If most flights are empty, and a few are full, then of course people would find themselves on full flights.
It is pointing out that having tons of small classes few people take is a way to drive down the average while keeping the actual experience of students roughly the same. So Harvard might have, say, many, many senior- level small classes, but could still have all of the intro and even sophomore / junior level classes, which are half of each student’s experience, be in huge impersonal classes.
...but that doesn’t match what I’ve heard about the student experience, so IMO it’s unlikely to be the explanation.
Full flights have more people on them. If you have 100 flights with one person and 1 flight with 200 people, most of the people in those flights are on the 200 person flight.