In the wake of Britain’s education fees controversy, The Guardian has seized on the similarities between the endowments and enrollments of Dartmouth and Oxford to compare Dartmouth favorably to the English institution.

Dartmouth’s stadium, tiny in Ivy terms, comes out as peculiarly impressive in the article because it has enough seats for everyone…

Somehow it is hard to picture American football as seen from an English football terrace (see an image of Arsenal’s new stadium in the UAE, proof that terraces are not a result of budget constraints; terrace stories; terrace songs and chants).

The author of the Guardian piece might be shocked to learn that “enrollment” in the U.S. means total students, not just the entering class. That means that the comparison is even less valid: Dartmouth is less than one-quarter the size of Oxford’s 17,000 “enrollment.” There are dormitory clusters at Dartmouth that are larger than Oxford colleges.

[Update 12.12.2006: Enrollment information added.]