It was wise for NSF to divide the program by institutional type. Comprehensive universities are academic institutions that offer a full range of baccalaureate programs and that are committed to graduate education through the Master's Degree. Many of these institutions continue a tradition of educating substantial numbers of the nation's K-12 teachers. However, today they have evolved into universities with a variety of constituents and programs. Most of our first generation college students attend comprehensive universities, as do women returning to school after having started families, and persons returning to education after military service.
Many comprehensive universities have a significant commuter population.
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.