UCF Professor Charles Negy is teaches 448 students in his general psychology class this fall, on Thursday, September 6, 2012. With 60,000 students on campus this fall, the University of Central Florida prides itself on being one of the largest colleges in the country. But is that a good thing? While there are plenty of benefits to being a big school – UCF offers more than 200 majors, for example — the rapid growth UCF has seen in recent years has meant larger and larger class sizes. UCF has, by far, the largest student-faculty ratio in the State University System, which means less opportunity for one-on-one interactions with professors and lower quality instruction (think Scantron tests versus exams requiring analysis and essay writing). As UCF keeps growing, two other large state universities – the University of Florida and Florida International University – have capped their enrollments because of their own worries about rising student-faculty ratios. But at UF, the student-faculty ratio is 21 to 1. At UCF, it’s 31 to 1. State University System Chancellor Frank Brogan has voiced his concerns to UCF President John Hitt personally. One scholar who studies higher education nationally compared UCF to Wal-Mart, fulfilling a business plan where more is better. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda / Orlando Sentinel) B582355844Z.1