The Dean Dad is annoyed with the New York Times, for an article about how the recession is affecting the humanities. The whole piece is worth a read, but he singles out a quote from the former president of my alma mater:
Some large state universities routinely turn away students who want to sign up for courses in the humanities, Francis C. Oakley, president emeritus and a professor of the history of ideas at Williams College, reported. At the University of Washington, for example, in recent years, as many as one-quarter of the students found they were unable to get into a humanities course.
As the Dean Dad notes, this doesn't really fit with the narrative of dropping enrollments. There's another problem with this, though, which is that courses are not uniformly appealing to students. Or, put another way, when they say that 25% of students were unable to get into a humanities course, they may literally mean that 25% of students were unable to get into a humanities course.
This is a problem that shows up locally with general education science. All students are required to take two science classes for graduation, and to better track enrollments, we've moved to a central registration system for "Gen Ed" science classes aimed at non-science majors. And what we've found is that there are huge disparities in the number of students trying to get into various courses. Hundreds of students will attempt to register for Gen Ed biology classes ("Sex and Sexuality" was a perennial favorite), but Gen Ed astronomy will have empty slots on the first day of class.
Some of these same students will then complain, as spring-term seniors, that they tried to meet the requirement, but were unable to get into any Gen Ed science classes. What they really mean is that they were unable to get into any of the sections of the one Gen Ed science class that they wanted to take. There were spots available in Gen Ed astronomy, but it has a reputation of being difficult and requiring some math, so they weren't willing to take it.
(I have zero sympathy for these students, by the way. Until and unless they start offering humanities classes targeted at science majors-- "Poetry for Physicists," in which you only read poems that rhyme, and have really obvious symbolism-- I don't want to hear about how unreasonably difficult it is to force non-science majors to take classes that might challenge them a little bit.)
So, there is a way for both the Times's preferred narrative and Frank Oakley's anecdote to be true. It's entirely possible that large number of students find themselves closed out of particular humanities classes-- "History of Western Europe" aka "History 200: It Looks Like I Took It in High School," for example-- while demand for the humanities in general-- history classes involving Europe, Asia, or Africa-- could be low.
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So the reason there is no "Poetry for Physicists" class is because the humanities classes are generally a lot easier than the sciences. Yes there are always exceptions, but as a general rule technical classes can only go so far in pulling their punches. The humanities become home to lazy, talentless hacks. And yes, many people in the humanities are hardworking and bright students, but that is because they challenged themselves and deliberately sought out the rare challenging courses that are easy for lazy people to avoid. If you are lazy, the humanities (and business school of course) are where you can get a "degree" without doing a damn thing. Everybody knows that freshmen engineering courses are designed to "weed out" people who are unwilling to work. Where do these people go once they have been weeded out? The Communications Dept. By "Poetry for Physicists" you really meant was "Poetry For People Who Don't Give a Damn About Learning Poetry." And they already teach that. It's called Poetry-101.
Neal:
reminded me of one of my favourite quotes:
'Whom are you?' he asked, for he had attended business college.
 â George Ade, "The Steel Box", 1898
Not much has changed in 100+ years.
Hey, wait a minute. In my particular area of the humanities, we also had courses that "weeded out" the unsuitable (Chaucer, Milton). They generally ended up in education (think high school English teachers).
And there are a surprising number of literary scholars who know a thing or two about astronomy and physics. It makes Chaucer's *Treatise on the Astrolabe* so much more interesting.
So the reason there is no "Poetry for Physicists" class is because the humanities classes are generally a lot easier than the sciences. Yes there are always exceptions, but as a general rule technical classes can only go so far in pulling their punches. The humanities become home to lazy, talentless hacks. And yes, many people in the humanities are hardworking and bright students, but that is because they challenged themselves and deliberately sought out the rare challenging courses that are easy for lazy people to avoid. If you are lazy, the humanities (and business school of course) are where you can get a "degree" without doing a damn thing.
I don't entirely agree with this.
I think the two cultures are different not in inherent level of difficulty, but in the sort of mindset that's required to succeed in each. My colleagues in the humanities are every bit as smart as my colleagues in the sciences, they just do their work in a different way. I know that I could not do the job of, say, an English professor, because it's not easy for me to think in the way you have to think to do literary scholarship.
This is the core reason why I have little sympathy for students who insist that it's unreasonable to expect them to take science classes that push their limits a little. Science majors are expected to fulfill their humanities requirements by taking the very same courses that humanities majors think, and are evaluated on their ability to think in the way that humanities scholars have to think, which many science majors find every bit as uncomfortable as an English major finds basic algebra.
I'm not going to insist that English majors learn vector calculus, but I see no reason why they should feel it's their God-given right to graduate without ever taking a class that asks them to think like a scientist.
This is more a response to the first two comments than to the posting: Speaking as someone who satisfied part of my humanities breadth requirements by taking a class -- in the philosophy department -- in symbolic logic, I'd have to say that I don't find the idea of "Poetry for Physicists" absurd. As a college freshman, while I ate up the science and math courses I took, I was a bit frightened of any courses that either required writing long papers about boring books, or large amounts of reading of pre-20th century writing (or anything else that wasn't science fiction, for that matter :-). Looking back on it now, I was probably overestimating the difficulty of these courses for me, but I'm quite sure I wasn't the only one who kept to the classes which offered questions that all had those oh-so-reassuring *correct* answers that could be found with sufficient application of brain power.
In short, I don't think scientists, mathematicians, and engineers can pat themselves on the back *too* hard.
There are actually two different scenarios at work here.
There is the issue of people who cannot get into a particular course that satisfies a distribution requirement, but other courses are available that satisfy the requirement. You are absolutely correct to have no sympathy for the students who complain about their inability to get into their preferred course. (Aside: Your department is doing better than most if math-phobic students actively avoid the gen-ed astronomy course. I have been at universities where such courses have acquired a reputation of being "Stars for the Less-than-Stellar Student".)
Then there is the set of people who end up on the five- (or six- or seven-) year plan simply because they cannot get into a course which is required for their major. This is a problem that budget cuts will make worse: for example, at my present university the English department is already seriously understaffed, and the university is unwilling to fill those slots in the current budget environment because they (reasonably) view that department as not being a profit center. That's a bad situation for the students to be in, and they are well within their rights to complain about it.
Yes, your colleagues in the humanities are just as smart as your colleagues in the sciences. But I'm not talking about your colleagues who earned PhDs, busted their asses for years, and triumphed in the cut-throat competition of academia. I'm talking about your respective students. Ask students at your university which classes somebody would take if they were completely lazy. Just ask them. Your students will names courses in communications, phys ed, business, pop-psychology, women's studies, but never, ever a real course in science, math, or engineering. End of Story.
Now an interesting question is "Why is this?". And I have a hypothesis. The humanities get far less external research money so those departments are more dependent on making money by teaching classes. Furthermore, the humanities can't attract people based on expected salary. Consequently they create some easy classes because that is an economical way to attract students and compete with other degrees.
An analog is how state-level financial regulatory agencies compete with each other. Financial firms, like lazy students, flow to where conditions are most lax. The result is also the same: a classic race to the bottom.
The problem you describe is not with "general education science" at your college (or humanities at Washington, if your hypothesis is true), it is with the college's enrollment tracking and planning process.
Now, granted, you just started using computers to manage student enrollment, but didn't anyone "talk to students" during registration to develop some institutional knowledge of supply and demand? Now that you have data, you can start doing what my college has done for ages: use past data to predict demand and plan courses to meet it.
It really is amazing how statistics manage to capture the average behavior of a population. (Tongue halfway in cheek, but if I hadn't seen our trends over time, I wouldn't believe how predictable our students are at our college.) So if you find an imbalance, you can do one of two things. Teach more sections of the "good" courses, or make the other ones better. Maybe it *is* too difficult! Sit in on one of the lowest level math classes your college offers, and you might be astounded at what students can't do.
BTW, I took a course that could have been called "Literary Criticism for Scientists". We read books ranging from "The First Circle" (absolutely a must read for scientists in any era where you might work for The State) to "Player Piano" and "A Canticle for Leibowitz" (not really great literature, but provided a second set of writing topics similar to those in The First Circle).
The problem you describe is not with "general education science" at your college (or humanities at Washington, if your hypothesis is true), it is with the college's enrollment tracking and planning process.
Now, granted, you just started using computers to manage student enrollment, but didn't anyone "talk to students" during registration to develop some institutional knowledge of supply and demand? Now that you have data, you can start doing what my college has done for ages: use past data to predict demand and plan courses to meet it.
There is a great deal of background to the whole issue that I really can't talk about here. I probably already said more than I really should've to be consistent with my usual standards for what is bloggable and what isn't.
On the big-picture issue, though, I am not comfortable with the implicit "the customer is always right" subtext of what you say. I don't believe that it is our role as educators to just serve up more of whatever students are most comfortable with. A significant part of the process of education is forcing students to stretch themselves a little bit beyond their comfort zone, and that includes taking sciences that they may not think they're interested in.
Sit in on one of the lowest level math classes your college offers, and you might be astounded at what students can't do.
I'm already surprised at what students who have passed two terms of calculus can't do. I only have so much capacity for surprise.
Caltech was one of the last 8 colleges and universities in the USA to require all students to take a course on Shakespeare.
Now Caltech has folded.
"Nothing shall come of nothing."
[King Lear]
I don't believe that it is our role as educators to just serve up more of whatever students are most comfortable with. A significant part of the process of education is forcing students to stretch themselves a little bit beyond their comfort zone, and that includes taking sciences that they may not think they're interested in.
I agree completely. This is the point of distribution requirements: to make sure that students are exposed to areas outside of their major. There have always been, and always will be, students who try to game the requirements--Feynman, in SYJ, admitted to being one of them (though he made up for it in later years with his amateur interests in drumming, drawing, and Mayan history). The usual technique for gaming distribution requirements is to seek out the easiest (from the student's point of view) set of classes that satisfy the requirements, whether or not the student is actually interested in the material. The example course of "Sex and Sexuality" given in the original post is perhaps not the best example of this phenomenon (of course a college student is going to be interested in that subject), but there are undoubtedly other courses that are popular merely because they are thought of as easy, or like the astronomy class Chad mentioned, unpopular for no better reason than their use of--gasp!--ninth grade math. A university should not feel under any obligation to help their students game the system. If anything, the administration should hint to the professor(s) in charge of one of these perennially oversubscribed courses that maybe the course should be a little bit harder than it has been in the past. That will be the test of whether the course is truly popular, or "popular" because the students perceive it as being easy.
Re #12: Agree on Feynman.
Bloom, in "The Closing of the American Mind", argues that giving students a BA in Business Administration on the grounds that it will help them make money is as academically dishonest as it would be to give a BA in Sex and Sexuality on the grounds that it would help them to have better orgasms. That's simply not academic. It may be stretching some organs, but not the brain.
I'm not sure what "customer is right" has to do with enrollment planning. Enrollment planning is about the mere existence of customers, and what you can learn about their tendencies from elementary statistical trends. Is it the case that the number of students wanting to enroll in a group of humanities courses can be predicted from the number passing English? If so, shouldn't you plan to offer those courses in sufficient numbers (and at times) that might produce optimally full sections? I figured a private college would have addressed those issues long before a public CC like ours, given the cost of your empty seats.
I'm SURE there are aspects to the "popular course" topic you cannot blog - probably the same aspects to it that I can't blog about at my college. In some instances (faculty prerogatives regarding grading) it is not even something one can question in the institution itself. (Example: should a flat random m.c. score be curved to 50%? I was appalled, but that is up to the professor.) In other cases, the expected "learning outcomes" for students who have passed 2 quarters of calculus or a trig class are quite legitimate and an on-going topic at our college. I would expect Union faculty would have an objective discussion of what critical thinking "science" skills should be in a gen-ed science class, and examine whether classes identified as such fall within the minimum and maximum range of those standards, particularly where math is concerned.
I agrre with Feyman "Bloom, in "The Closing of the American Mind", argues that giving students a BA in Business Administration on the grounds that it will help them make money is as academically dishonest as it would be to give a BA in Sex and Sexuality on the grounds that it would help them to have better orgasms. That's simply not academic. It may be stretching some organs, but not the brain"