Comprehensive universities are generally much larger than baccalaureate colleges, with student populations of about 4,000 to more than 30,000 students. These institutions have in common a need to educate students for local employment, because many of their students are bound to the geographic area for financial and personal reasons. Many comprehensive universities have relatively low tuition and less selective admission requirements, thus providing opportunity for students who could not otherwise attend an institution of higher education. They tend to have large class size, especially in introductory classes, compared with baccalaureate colleges. In many states, their faculty are under pressure from administrators and state legislators to maximize hours in the classroom, and to adopt distance learning, neither of which may be suitable for optimum student learning in SMET fields.
Comprehensive universities have important strengths.
They use their human diversity to advantage in the educational process. Many of their faculty members are dedicated to both teaching and research. They are involved in research projects supported by a full range of funding sources, including NSF, NIH, NASA, and many private agencies such as the W.M. Keck Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Undergraduate research is alive and well at comprehensive universities, many of which have student undergraduate research poster or presentation events. The quality of work exhibited at these events is fully competitive with that at other types of academic institutions.