[Farm93]

This is swell. Glad money is going to these fields of study...

but Stanford is already impossible to get into and I didn't read anything about a concurrent increase in enrollment. So doesn't this just pull students from other fields on campus? It's long past time for the ultra-selective colleges to add undergraduates, especially such a land-rich place like Stanford.

I TOTALLY agree that Stanford's failure to increase class size significantly is a scandal. What I fear is that the new department will require new buildings and a new drone staff to fill up way too much of the "land-rich" space, while not adding any undergraduate students. The population of the USA is 1.6 times what it was when I entered Stanford as a freshman. The undergraduate class size has not increased anywhere near that factor. Why?

I have always thought that ~1700 per class is a good size for the Stanford experience.   Perhaps not coincidentally, many other highly selective schools have similar undergraduate enrollment figures.   

If each class was 1.6X-2X larger then the undergrad experience would run the risk of becoming too big and overwhelming for students to have that sense of a shared community and common experiences most parents and high school students are seeking from a highly selective (and expensive) private university.

FWIW - I do worry about the rapid growth of staff numbers and research buildings relative to the stable undergraduate student population.   Though I realize the money, and prestige has been in award winning research and generally funding and supporting those efforts have very little to do with the undergrad experience.

[Farm93]

This is swell. Glad money is going to these fields of study...

but Stanford is already impossible to get into and I didn't read anything about a concurrent increase in enrollment. So doesn't this just pull students from other fields on campus? It's long past time for the ultra-selective colleges to add undergraduates, especially such a land-rich place like Stanford.

I TOTALLY agree that Stanford's failure to increase class size significantly is a scandal. What I fear is that the new department will require new buildings and a new drone staff to fill up way too much of the "land-rich" space, while not adding any undergraduate students. The population of the USA is 1.6 times what it was when I entered Stanford as a freshman. The undergraduate class size has not increased anywhere near that factor. Why?

I have always thought that ~1700 per class is a good size for the Stanford experience.   Perhaps not coincidentally, many other highly selective schools have similar undergraduate enrollment figures.   

If each class was 1.6X-2X larger then the undergrad experience would run the risk of becoming too big and overwhelming for students to have that sense of a shared community and common experiences most parents and high school students are seeking from a highly selective (and expensive) private university.

FWIW - I do worry about the rapid growth of staff numbers and research buildings relative to the stable undergraduate student population.   Though I realize the money, and prestige has been in award winning research and generally funding and supporting those efforts have very little to do with the undergrad experience.