4 ms·
High-demand classes are bi-modal. The left side of the distribution is the low-level intro and survey courses. I went to a very heavily pre-med undergrad with a
by pc86 2y ago
High-demand classes are bi-modal. The left side of the distribution is the low-level intro and survey courses. I went to a very heavily pre-med undergrad with a total enrollment of about 1,500 where the intro Chemistry course had two 100-150-person survey courses with multiple TAs. Charging more for these is pretty stupid. The answer is to offer more of them if you have the physical space, the professor(s), and the TA(s) to do it, which you don't always have.
The right side is the 5- or 6-person high level classes offered every other year or something. Usually, but not always, these are in demand because professors are not fungible at this level and they're probably taught by a popular or famous professor. I took one of these at my school taught by a former cabinet secretary, just four of us seniors and him talking about politics for 4 hours every week. You can't just offer more of these; if you're teaching one class every other Spring you're unlikely to seriously consider changing that to two Fall and two Spring classes every year.
- 93po 2y agogod forbid schools get more desirable instructors when, in a class of 100 students, they're getting paid close to $200k in revenue if they're charging $600 per credit hour, which is on the low side, and making hundreds of millions per year off of endowment investments
- pc86 2y agoYou'll get no argument from me on higher ed misspending the majority of their funds. You could remove 80% of all US higher ed administration from the workforce forever and I'm convinced there would be no noticeable negative impact on the economy. IMO it's one of the careers with the largest gap between how important the people in it think they are vs. how much of a real impact they actually have. I was just pointing out that there are two competing reasons why classes end up with long waitlists or people who graduate having never had the chance to take them so it's not a simple "Do _________" and it's fixed.