Aug 6, 2009

Large Campuses

I recently discovered Cool Colleges by Donald Asher, an extremely well researched handbook on schools for “the hyper-intelligent, self-directed, late blooming and just plain different." A long-time career consultant, Mr. Asher makes no apologies for having very well defined and specific opinions on colleges and the college-going experience. For example, one of Asher’s firmly-held beliefs is that large universities are not good places for students as undergraduates:

“…in large universities students are more likely to report being lonely and isolated, more likely to drop out, more likely to be taught by a graduate assistant than a professor, more likely to cheat, more likely to be unable to name even one friend from college ten years after graduation, less likely to go to graduate school, more likely to be unable to get needed classes, more likely to work more than ten hours a week, and more likely to go through all four or five years of their education without really being changed….”(p. 7)

OK, I’ll buy some of that. But to be fair, there are kids who really thrive in the large school atmosphere, and it’s important to go the extra mile to see if those kinds of matches will work for the individual student. As a service to his readers, Asher includes a list of the largest colleges/universities, but it’s a little out of date. Thanks to the eager research arm of Wikipedia and the US Department of Education, however, I am able to provide more current information:

Largest Public University Campuses as of Fall 2008*

Ranking

University

Location

Enrollment

1

The Ohio State University

Columbus, Ohio

53,715

2

Arizona State University

Tempe, Arizona

52,734

3

University of Florida

Gainesville, Florida

51,413

4

University of Minnesota

Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN

51,141

5

University of Central Florida

Orlando, Florida

50,254

6

University of Texas at Austin

Austin, Texas

50,006

7

Texas A&M University

College Station, TX

48,029

8

Michigan State University

East Lansing, MI

46,648

9

University of South Florida

Tampa, Florida

46,174

10

Pennsylvania State University

University Park, PA

44,406

11

University of Washington

Seattle, Washington

42,113

12

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Madison, Wisconsin

42,041

13

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Urbana-Champaign, IL

42,025

14

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, MI

41,028

15

Purdue University

West Lafayette, IN

40,485

Largest Private University Campuses as of Fall 2008*

Ranking

University

Location

Enrollment

1

New York University

New York, NY

38,391

2

Brigham Young University

Provo, Utah

34,126

3

University of Southern California

Los Angeles, California

33,500

4

Boston University

Boston, Massachusetts

32,735

5

Liberty University

Lynchburg, Virginia

32,222

6

Nova Southeastern University

Fort Lauderdale, FL

28,796

7

Columbia University

New York, NY

25,495

8

Northeastern University

Boston, Massachusetts

24,752

9

DePaul University

Chicago, Illinois

24,352

10

Long Island University

Brooklyn, NY

24,170

11

University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, PA

24,107

12

George Washington University

Washington, DC

22,710

13

Harvard University

Cambridge, MA

22,558

14

Cornell University

Ithaca, NY

20,883

15

Syracuse University

Syracuse, NY

19,366

*Note these lists include single 4-year university campuses with a single physical location. Thus the University of Phoenix and other multiple campus post-secondary schools are not counted.

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