One Track Mind

The one danger, Knowles says, is the possibility that certain groups of students may end up with a college career composed entirely of anonymous lecture courses.

Especially for students who are science concentrators, he says, there is a legitimate concern that they will be stuck in larger-than-life classes for their entire time at Harvard.

"I am more worried about individual students taking only large classes," Knowles says.

Because of a phenomenon that Knowles terms 'verticality,' science concentrators must take many more prerequisites before they can advance to smaller classes. Conversely, English and history classes are more likely to be based on a topic for which a student is not required to have any prior knowledge.

Todd says that this can prove to be a disadvantage to students mired in introductory science courses, because they lose out on some of the benefits of the balance between class sizes.

"The great majority of our courses here have enrollments of fewer than 20," Todd says. "The largest courses, however, are concentrated in our most populous concentrations and in the Core, so that students in these concentrations do not benefit from the many opportunities we offer for small-group instruction."

The Joy of Section

One of the ways in which professors can compensate for larger classes and ensure that students can still synthesize the material in a small learning environment is through section discussion.