Hmmh, interesting discussion
Now that I have some experience of the university life too
I can only say, that in our facility the group sizes vary a lot. I mean, we just had a course with more than 300 hundred people there. And then again, we have a lot of really small workgroups, where there are only 5-10 people... But I guess that's just good, so you get a lot of different kinda learning experiments x)
And one of our teachers already invited the whole group (ten people) to her home to have lunch in stead of a lession, so we had OJ-camparis and wine and salad, and some very..krhm.. intelligent discussions :D
Otherwise the uni has started well for me
The first period is almost over, only two exams on monday left and then a week off... which I will spend working thought but still x)