Comments on: How many American college students are there?

By: eli

eli — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 12:56:29 +0000

David, thanks for your comment. It seems to me that because tuition charges are so low in France, it can make economic sense for people to enroll without attending classes, in a way that would make much less sense in the U.S. where the fees are thousands and thousands of dollars.

By: DM

DM — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 11:40:02 +0000

I used to teach freshman classes, and one surprising thing was that a number of students that were officially on the list never showed up, including at exams.

Their names sounded foreign, so I suppose they simply wanted to have some justification for a student visa.

By: eli

eli — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:55:52 +0000

Yep, there’s definitely a parallel to our other discussion of class. But the difference, just speaking personally, is that it doesn’t really surprise me that the idea of “class” would be complicated, but on the other hand, it did surprise me that getting a student population count could be complicated. I mean it just hadn’t crossed my mind that “how many college students are there?” could be a problematic question that required a special definition of “students.” Does this not come as a surprise to you at all?

By: Michael Bishop

Michael Bishop — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:45:13 +0000

As you point out, the number of students depends on what we mean by students. And how we choose to define that group depends on what questions we’re interested in answering.

Interesting parallel to our discussion of the concept of class, no?
http://permut.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/does-class-exist/#comment-244