For Princeton students, the program has grown from a patch for a problem to what administrators say is the heart of an undergraduate's education.

"It is one of the bookends. The education peaks early and then again [is] matched by the thesis senior year," Dobin says. All undergraduates at Princeton write a senior thesis.

Even though the seminars are generally a positive experience, according to Dobin, departments must engage in a balancing act to insure that enough faculty remain to teach their introductory courses and the courses aimed at their majors.

Nevertheless, this expenditure of department resources may provide benefits to smaller departments and encourage them to have more faculty teaching in seminars than large departments.

"The small esoteric departments may not have large enrollments or large number majors," Dobin says. "And if they offer wonderful seminars, they may actually be able to do some recruiting."