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`OK, so I was yip-yapping all fall about decisions being made with respect to money and priorities and institutional identity. And yip-yapping, though useful sometimes, only gets you so far. I heard there is a Suggestion Box, a kind of “Well, if you’re so smart, what would YOU do about our financial situation?” depository. Here’s what I’ll put in if I ever find the box.
First, alter student course load to four courses each semester and faculty teaching load to three courses each semester. This means compressing the curriculum to create different sized “chunks” of learning. Instead of an academic major requiring 12 courses, give them 9 or 10. A major that now requires 15 courses gets 12. It can then be up to the faculty in the department to determine how many class hours are involved for the students in each course and to distribute those hours among lectures, tutorials, labs, etc. In other words, decouple Carnegie units and student learning.
What does this get us? Do the math.
Assume that we offer 1000 courses per semester now (using 300 faculty members teaching 12 credits each), that number would be lowered to 800 courses per semester if full–time students needed four courses each. To staff 800 courses at three courses per professor, we would need fewer than 300 faculty members, thus saving money. Call each course “four credits” for purposes of the contract and we’re all set.
Of course, there would be some details to work out. Currently, some forms of student contact (e.g. science labs) are fully recognized contractually while others (art and ITEC labs) are partially recognized and still others (meetings with student PR groups doing professional projects) are not recognized at all. In fact, I’d say that calling each course simply a course, whatever it involves, would go a long way to redressing some of the workload inequities built into our present contract. But more important, it would lower total student load (TSL) for faculty members.
TSL is the one factor that seems to make a difference in the quality of student learning. When faculty members have fewer students overall (that is, lower than 80 students with whom they have regular pedagogical interaction), students flourish and faculty members can think straight.
Now I get that we’re not likely to get the number down to 80 even if we go to three courses for each faculty member. So I combine my 4-3 proposal with another suggestion. Hold departments responsible for identifying some elements of the major curriculum that can be offered en masse on an intermittent basis rather than every semester or even every year. Preserve 80 percent of the major study as a truly personalized educational experience for both faculty and students while recognizing what kinds of competencies can be taught and tested using efficient technological tools. Combine large group impersonal experiences with small group personalized experiences intentionally.
And hold the entire faculty responsible for identifying a general education curriculum that is focused and offers the same kind of combination of the large, impersonal but compelling courses (I think fondly of the impression “Art in the Dark” had on me as an undergraduate as one of 250 in the room) with the close coaching and relationship building needed in a first year inquirty seminar. Our “new” general education program takes care of the interests of various departments but does little to insure a coherent and common background for our students.
And by the way, when we staff large lectures and big number on-line extravaganzas, let’s be sure to recruit and reward people who have a talent for working in these environments, because the simple truth is that not all of us do. Some of us are pretty darn good in intimate settings but would be boooorrrring on a stage with little interaction. Recognizing that is all part of the deal.
Finally, of course, decisions about staffing major courses must be made by department faculty who know what they are teaching and what they are trying to accomplish — but also with an eye toward students’ educational experience and not only faculty convenience. This means that departments should be given the resources available to support their work and given the responsibility of designing a defensible program using those resources. The Japanese taught the auto industry that subsidiarization works. We can learn too. And to be sure that faculty don’t get myopic in their decision-making, I’d appoint a “ombuds(wo)man” (ONE person, not endless committees) whose job it was to review faculty plans and determine whether those plans provided students with a challenging and supportive (and do-able) educational program.
In fact, I’d charge my ombudsperson with the task of determining whether any and all of our programs at the university take good care of the human beings whose lives they impact. We are careful enough to resolve our financial challenges. We are smart enough to uphold educational quality. But neither of these will matter if we don’t take care of ourselves and each other in the process.