Colleges That Offer Small Classes on a Budget
Here are 30 well-regarded and affordable colleges with lots of small classes.
Attending a big, affordable public university doesn't doom a student to huge lecture halls. U.S. News has found dozens of lower-priced colleges in which at least half of all classes have fewer than 20 students. Beware, though: Many times these smaller classes are led by graduate students or part-time professors who may not have office hours or the expertise of a full-time professor.
The chart below lists colleges and universities where in-state tuition and fees were under $10,000 in 2008. The percentage of small classes—those with 19 or fewer students—is in bold.
| Institution Name | % Classes with 19 of Fewer Students | Total Number of Undergraduates | % Faculty Who Are Full-time | Selectivity* | In-State Tuition and Fees | Out-of-State Tuition and Fees |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry | 77 | 1633 | 84 | more selective | $5,793 | $13,693 |
| University of Montana—Western | 73 | 1190 | 70 | less selective | $4,866 | $13,050 |
| New College of Florida | 66 | 785 | 83 | more selective | $4,805 | $26,407 |
| SUNY College—Potsdam | 65 | 3652 | 71 | selective | $6,170 | $14,070 |
| Dakota State University (South Dakota) | 64 | 2296 | 74 | less selective | $6,872 | $8,245 |
| University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma | 62 | 1158 | 60 | selective | $4,440 | $10,560 |
| Concord University (West Virginia) | 62 | 2816 | 56 | selective | $4,976 | $11,052 |
| New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology | 62 | 1344 | 83 | more selective | $4,607 | $13,118 |
| University of California—Berkeley | 60 | 25151 | 74 | most selective | $8,352 | $30,022 |
| Montana Tech of the University of Montana | 60 | 2293 | 66 | selective | $5,833 | $16,109 |
| Bemidji State University (Minnesota) | 57 | 4223 | 76 | selective | $7,262 | $7,262 |
| University of South Carolina—Aiken | 57 | 3078 | 68 | selective | $7,950 | $15,682 |
| University of South Carolina—Upstate | 55 | 4999 | 55 | selective | $8,817 | $17,459 |
| University of California—Los Angeles | 54 | 26536 | 75 | most selective | $8,228 | $29,897 |
| SUNY—Fredonia | 54 | 5178 | 57 | selective | $6,258 | $14,158 |
| Winston-Salem State University (North Carolina) | 54 | 5975 | 82 | less selective | $3,522 | $12,508 |
| Western Washington University | 53 | 13406 | 70 | selective | $6,159 | $17,190 |
| SUNY—Oswego | 52 | 7971 | 62 | selective | $6,651 | $14,551 |
| Keene State College (New Hampshire) | 52 | 5147 | 45 | less selective | $9,314 | $17,484 |
| University of Tennessee—Martin | 51 | 7127 | 50 | selective | $5,510 | $16,790 |
| Lander University (South Carolina) | 51 | 2555 | 62 | less selective | $8,770 | $16,570 |
| Alice Lloyd College (Kentucky) | 51 | 609 | 76 | more selective | $9,000 | $9,000 |
| University of Illinois—Springfield | 51 | 2889 | 59 | selective | $9,168 | $18,318 |
| University of Central Arkansas | 50 | 11048 | 72 | more selective | $6,698 | $12,153 |
| University of Colorado—Boulder | 50 | 26725 | 65 | more selective | $7,932 | $28,186 |
| Murray State University (Kentucky) | 50 | 8171 | 71 | selective | $5,976 | $16,236 |
| SUNY College of Technology—Alfred | 50 | 3282 | N/A | less selective | $6,162 | $14,062 |
| University of Iowa | 50 | 20823 | 95 | more selective | $6,824 | $22,198 |
| University of Montevallo (Alabama) | 50 | 2572 | 67 | selective | $7,010 | $13,550 |
* Schools are designated "most selective," "more selective," "selective," "less selective," or "least selective," based on a formula that accounts for enrollees' test scores and class standing and the school's acceptance rate (the percentage of applicants who are accepted).
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Reader Comments
Montana Western
The University of Montana Western richly deserves the recognition it has received by U.S. News and World Report. After a 15-year struggle, the campus became the first public baccalaureate university in U.S. history to adopt an immersion-learning scheduling system where students take one class at a time for 18 days (yep, we stole it from CC). We have come from nowhere to recently rank as the 18th best baccalaureate campus in a 15-state region of the west, and our efforts were acknowledged by the Carnegie Foundation and CASE with the U.S. Professor of the Year award for baccalaureate campuses, given to one of the original "block heads" on the faculty (me)!
The great story here is that faculty, with the support of a few key administrators changed an entire campus. Faculty relinquished the podium and now work in an aboriginal learning relationship with students on projects that make a difference to society. The environment of this change was most improbable. We are talking about a campus in a highly conservative environment (politically and locally), with little money, little support for change, low salaries for all employees and downright hostility from every direction to change of any kind.
This is a great story in American higher education just waiting to be told and assessed. The learning outcomes and student satisfaction surveys that we have conducted show phenomenal early results (we adopted this in 2005). However, an exhaustive assessment of learning, faculty reaction and leadership processes that allowed this to happen are all just waiting for some bright folks to grab this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for educational research.
To learn more, check us out on the web (http://www.umwestern.edu/) or drop me a line for reprints of a recent paper on this historic transformation. Thanks.....Rob
New College of Florida
Liz in LA asked:
"Do these numbers include graduate seminars, or do they reflect only undergraduate courses?"
Since New College of Florida has no graduate students, all classes at NCF are taught by professors, almost all of whom have terminal degrees in their fields.
I'd attribute NCF's "more selective" rating rather than "most selective" to NCF's relatively high acceptance rate. That acceptance rate is due mostly to the fact that few applicants without the qualifications to gain admission to NCF actually apply to NCF. Florida's big state universities are inundated with unqualified applicants, thus, their lower acceptance rates.
What are the criteria?
Do these numbers include graduate seminars, or do they reflect only undergraduate courses?
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