Small class sizes and intimate academic experiences have long been a core tenet of a Middlebury education. The college proudly boasts our 9:1 student-to-faculty ratio and our average class size of 16 on its website and on every tour. But this has not been reflective of our Middlebury experience for years, and the college announced in the spring that it is raising its target enrollment to balance its budget. Maintaining small class sizes may save monetary costs, but at what deeper price?
Our classes that should be small, group-work or discussion-based, like senior seminars, labs and introductory courses, suffer immensely as students crowd themselves uncomfortably into the small classrooms. Some have been asked to bring their own chairs, cramming into rooms not meant to accommodate so many people. This is an especially prevalent issue in increasingly popular departments, and not enough has been done to resolve the issue.
We call on the administration to allow the Educational Affairs Committee (EAC) to create more professor positions and hire more faculty to accommodate the greater number of students on campus.
Small classes and discussions allow students to discuss uncomfortable and personal topics. The success of a creative writing workshop where students are writing about their own lives, for instance, is completely dependent on an intimate group. Difficult conversations and free speech thrive in small classes, and professors engage with students more meaningfully, such as by leaving thoughtful, in-depth comments on papers rather than just a brief blurb at the end. We find ourselves reminiscing about our first year seminars, which included idyllic class sizes and strong connections with our peers and advisor. A class that only lasted our first semester should not be something we feel nostalgic for for the rest of college.
As opportunities for deeper education are lost, so is a critical aspect of our liberal arts education. Students are not pushed to be thoughtful and reflective when they spill out of their classrooms, barely able to speak up in a 35-person class that should have been capped at 20.
Small classes also create accountability. It is much more challenging to skip the readings when there are only nine other people in the room. Small courses push students to meaningfully contribute and engage with material, and in turn students ultimately gain more from the material than they would had they been in a 35 person lecture where half the participants ChatGPT’d the readings. We call on students to be active participants in their classes, engaging with the material and contributing to class discussions.
Professors have done their best to remedy class size issues. Many host extra optional discussions or office hours so that students overwhelmed by their large classes can digest material in a more personal setting. While accommodating the recent increase in the student body is incredibly thoughtful of our professors, it is an unnecessary stressor that neither students nor professors should have to deal with. Most students and faculty can agree that registration cycles are a nightmare, with compromises forced left and right. Departments with consistently long waitlists need to develop better systems for deciding who gets into classes. Professors should not feel pressured to let in extra students at the cost of their own workload and the experience of the students already in the class, but students should not have to feel barred from the courses it is their right to take as a Middlebury student. Each time a professor receives an email from a student begging to be let into their class, the professor, the student sending the email, and every other student in the class are worse off.
The issue of disproportionate class sizes is not only a result of increasing enrollment, but of an increasingly university-style approach to academia that Middlebury has fallen victim to. Middlebury was founded as a liberal arts school famous for its humanities and languages. Perhaps this is why small class sizes are no longer prioritized — the “personal” feel of a small humanities course has become less important than offering pre-professional courses, or funneling students into majors with “better” career prospects and higher salaries. However, that approach could not be less appropriate for Middlebury and its mission. Getting to know your peers and developing a sense of community on our campus is just as important in a lab as it is in a literature class. Shrinking our humanities departments is not a viable solution to a poorly balanced budget.
Therefore, we call on current professors, especially those with the influential position of instructing and advising first year seminars, to remind first year students that generally less popular departments with increasingly smaller class sizes, such as English and Classics, should be embraced, no matter a student’s intended major or long-term goals.
We are hopeful that with the arrival of our new president, Ian Baucom, the administration and Board of Trustees can facilitate the hiring of more faculty and consider what minimal enrollments and small class sizes do for each individual student. This is part of what Middlebury is for.
