Student engagement and larger class enrollments: evidence from a growing mid-sized university

With increasing enrollment and class sizes in many colleges and universities, the potential connection between class size and student engagement has growing relevance for students, faculty, and administrators alike. I examine this potential connection, focusing empirically on a sample that allows for capturing how class size is related to various engagement measures on student evaluations of instructors over a nine-semester period in a College of Business at a growing mid-sized university. Across multiple specifications varying in both functional form and inclusion of fixed effects controlling for differences in instructors and courses, I find a consistently significant negative relationship between the class size and instructor evaluation ratings. This negative relationship is largest when increasing class size at lower enrollment levels, the negativ