Oh, the joy of teaching in a large State University! I teach in the fastest growing major in my college. Student demand for classes outstrips the supply by a relatively large multiple. Today I spent over an hour talking with two separate students who didn't register for courses when then should and consequently are finding themselves blocked from courses they need to graduate. Last night more than 20 students contacted me, asking to be signed into my Criminal Justice course. I'd let them in if I could, but I only have so many seats in the room. So they storm off, angry at me for not letting them in. If I had a dollar for every student who told me that they need this particular class, right now, I wouldn't need to apply for a research grant this year.
4 comments:
Apparently you should be teaching Cultural Resource Management (whatever that is).
I would expect a sociology professor to have sympathy for everybody and blame their tough childhood or the bad society or the republicans if the students are to stoned to sign up for class. Just a thought.
i feel your pain. i hate the end and beginning of every semester because of the flood of emails asking for overrides. i do feel sad for them, but what can i do?!
To Anonymous (11:23) Are you Glen?
Look, I do have some sympathy. Many of these students were blocked from registration because the institution put a financial hold on their account. Often this was in the student's control (unpaid parking tickets or library fines) but as often it is not (a bureaucratic problem with loan processing).
There are many college students (and I was once such a student) who have been sheltered from the consequences of their decisions. Are they irresponsible? Certainly. Are they alone in their complicity? Absolutely not!
We learn to live within the strictures of an institutional environment. These social conditions create opportunity structures for accomplishment as well as avoidance... accountability and complicity.
Through 12+ years of formal schooling, at least in the United States, students are trained to be passive. Someone tells them what to take, when to take it, how to take it, where to take it, and then calls their parents when they don't take responsibility. When they get to University, it's more of the same. They're shocked when the responsibility smacks them in the face... and they should be as this may be the first time that the institutional structure holds them accountable in a harsh way.
Here, in my program, we have one of the highest student to faculty ratios in the University. I work in a division that lost several lines over the past decade... (retirements where the line was not replaced). Even though the administration is allocating resources for us to increase staffing, we've not caught up with demand.
That means that students have some justification for complaint. They are recruited to an institution based on a promise that they can earn a degree in X. However, more students have been admitted to pursue X than we have seats to accommodate. They were never told that there might be a problem getting the classes they need. (Note I didn't say "classes they need that are convenient for them." I mean, they need a certain class and there is no way they can get into that class this term.
My reply is becoming a post of its own, so I'll stop here. I won't blame the Republicans on this one, because it's the Democrats who believe that everyone should be entitled to a College education.
Post a Comment