Changing the Culture of a School: The Effect of Larger Class Size on Instructor and Student Performance

Over time, each school builds its own culture and approach to education. Students, faculty, and alumni become accustomed to the style and pace of their university setting and expect it to continue. Thus, deliberate changes to this culture are not undertaken lightly and the effects of such changes are watched closely. This paper discusses the process and results of a change initiated by the School of Business Administration (SBA) at Loyola University Chicago. The change involved the increase of the maximum class size on the undergraduate level. In the fall of 2006, it was increased by 50 percent. The effect of this change was tracked in two ways: both student results, as measured by the grade point average, and faculty results, as measured by instructor evaluations, were collected and are reported here for a period of three years. This study uses data collected over the three years and includes results from 833 sections representing 23,247 student evaluations. For all terms in this period, data from the traditional and larger sized classes were compared and no significant difference was found either in instructor or student performance.