Universities come in all shapes and sizes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
I attended a small-ish university for my undergraduate studies. I then started my graduate work at a small institution nestled in a small, medieval town. My doctoral and postdoctoral experiences took me to much larger institutions and cities. I then began my professional teaching and research career at a mid-sized university in another ‘university town’, followed by a larger, top-50 institution with nearly 60,000 students, in a large metropolis.
I summarize these locations only to share that I’ve been a student and educator across a variety of places. I can appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of larger and smaller universities, having attended and worked in both over the course of many decades.
A university’s size is a virtue of many factors. Yet, for reasons I’ll unpack, smaller institutions tend to carry an inferiority complex that is both unbecoming and unjustified. It can also be misguided and deeply unhelpful to realizing an organization’s full potential.
I’m currently working at a university that is branded as primarily undergraduate. Its size (physical footprint) and student enrolment are both small. The supporting faculty and staff are proportionally small as well. None of this is inherently bad; it’s simply factual, and in my view one of its greatest strengths. Yet it leads to entrenched feelings of inferiority, which I’d argue are entirely underserving and misplaced. To subscribe to this notion says more about the people who work within the organization than the broader educational system, which has room and need for all institutional sizes.
There are advantages and disadvantages to big and small universities. It’s not one pitted against the other.
As a selling feature to prospective students, small class-size is among the top attraction of smaller institutions. It’s meant to translate as a more intimate learning experience, which is generally true. When there are fewer people in a classroom, there’s a far greater chance for interaction, engagement, and experiential learning opportunities. The opportunity to meet and genuinely know other students and professors is greatly enhanced. The chance to become more woven into the fabric of the institution is also increased. That sense of belonging, of cohort and community, is genuine and widely available.
Smaller universities reflect their surrounding communities, part of the environmental fabric that is analogous to the size of the supporting town or city. It’s neither good nor bad.
Larger universities aren’t devoid of these perceived advantages. They might suffer in the class-size department, unable in certain academic programs to offer intimate learning experiences akin to their smaller brothers and sisters. A power emanates from the intellectual wealth of having more faculty members, better-supported administrative offices, and (sometimes) deeper coffers to enable the implementation of strategic goals and priorities.
Yet larger universities can sometimes appear less familiar, more corporate, and business-like in their revenue-generating and international ranking pursuits. They are brands in their own right, existing – it may seem – as soul-less credential mills. Of course this is only a perception, but one shaped by virtue of size, where institutions tend to appear increasingly faceless and cold the larger they become. Whereas smaller universities might be seen as little engines that could, larger ones can be seen as greedy and exploitative organizations who care more about their profit margin than the individuals – students, faculty, and staff – who make them what they are.
I’ve enjoyed working and being a student in both types of organizations. There’s enough room, and indeed a need for both in the higher-education ecosystem. When I was considering university after high-school, the safest option was the local university. To this day, I maintain this choice as an ingredient to my own personal success, because I simply wasn’t mature enough or ready to attend the big-city, large-institution option. I would have been swallowed alive, one among tens of thousands of other students. I don’t think I would have completed a degree.
The education I received at the small university was exactly what it promised.
Still, the term ‘small’ seems to bother some people. They don’t like hearing it used to describe our current university. It’s falsely equated to ‘less-than’, positioning us in the shadows of the larger – but not necessarily superior – institutions of larger stature, brand name recognition, and wealth. In some ways, the concern is warranted. But for the most part, I’d say, it’s a view without merit.
To each their own.