Though, with that said, I’d be surprised if the scaling were not (asymptotically) linear — ie, kn-o(n). This assumes that eg the number of faculty and generally the resources spent per student were also scaled up linearly, of course!

Although this point is rather absurd, since everything that would make a small program special is contained in the o(n) term.

With that said, I would find it surprising if for any number of students the total impact were to decrease marginally with an increase in students– although the nature of the impact might change significantly.

Students will tend to cluster into smaller groups (eg departments or research areas or the like) at larger institutions, with those groups being small enough to facilitate the first two of the small-size things. Perhaps the largest difference is that any given student will be part of several such groups.

What I was trying to say is that Olin, as an institution, can’t simply assume that its impact on engineering education is primarily dependent – and linearly so – on the number of students it graduates each year.

Does this help clarify? It’s probably hard to read this out of context; this letter was written around the time of a Board of Trustees gathering where several people were championing expansion of enrollment numbers as THE solution to widening Olin’s circle of influence.

I’d question this train of thought, particularly on the topic of engineering education. The college of engineering has (according to its website) 5650 undergraduates, which is only a factor of 18-19 larger.

I’d be surprised if Olin alumni impact were smaller per person than UIUC engineering in coming years, but I’d also be surprised if it were an order of magnitude larger– and I would not be that shocked if it turned out to be smaller.

In other words, I’d keep an open mind on this one.

This train of thought may be more obvious now that you’ve been out for a while.