It's one thing to not want to go to class. It's another thing to be unable to.
This past summer, as many students were registering for classes for the fall semester, they planned out strategic schedules that balanced their academic, extracurricular, and social lives. However, many students were forced to rush to find an open spot in other courses, because the original class they hoped to take had been canceled due to under enrollment.
Many classes are canceled every semester – despite there being over 28,000 students from many different academic disciplines – because there is a lack of interest from students in registering for particular courses.
"Decisions about whether or not to not offer a particular course are made on a case by case basis by individual academic [departments] or units," said John DellaContrada, director of media relations. "These decisions vary from one semester to the next."
While many science and general education heavy departments have normal enrollment, many liberal arts and specialized departments face smaller class sizes and class cancellations that are nuisances to both students and teachers. The issues lead to all sorts of problems with workload, and assigning teachers and teaching assistants to classes, according to David E. Johnson, chair of the comparative literature department.
In his past few years as department chair, Johnson has faced several difficult decisions, but relies on the input and feelings of the teachers when determining class cancellations. He attributes the lack of student willingness to enroll in comparative literature classes to a variety of different reasons.
"Comparative literature courses are not required for any major," Johnson said. "In addition we have no courses that are required as ‘general education' courses, as do history and English. I have had to cancel several courses in the last few years, occasionally more than one per semester."
The problem with under enrollment, however, has not been limited to the comparative literature department. Classes from the department of romance languages and literatures, which include many of the Western European languages, have faced low enrollment and cancellation, according to Johnson. The departments of Jewish studies and media studies have also faced these hardships.
Although many students may seem unaffected by these cancellations, the principle alone is seen as troubling.
"I'd be really upset [if it were for my major]," said Dolly Goodman, a freshman anthropology and communication major.
Johnson believes that there are many different routes that can be taken to find ways to figure out some of the issues that result in under enrollment. He suggests a divisional committee between all of the language and literature departments. By creating a literature "think-tank" to share ideas and implement policies, he believes that all of the departments involved would flourish and enable them to create more comprehensive foreign language departments.
"I think there should be more ‘intensive' language courses offered, courses in which a student could complete 10 or more credit hours of French and Spanish or Italian in a single semester," Johnson said, "I think intensive courses of this sort, which have been successful at other, comparable universities, have the potential to attract students and – because their fluency increases more quickly through the increased exposure – retain them for the major, which means retaining them for more advanced courses."
By having departments work more closely together to determine how to fill their programs, the problems related with under enrollment would be alleviated as more students, possibly outside of UB, would become interested in these new programs. The loss of classes and programs is not only difficult on faculty, but the university loses prospective students, according to Johnson.
"We would all welcome stronger class enrollment for our courses. I know I certainly would," said Shaun Irlam, a professor in the comparative literature department.
Email: news@ubspectrum.com
Photo: Breadchastick / Wikimedia Commons
