Majors are not the only students who fill seats in classrooms. Enrollments inevitably drive department sizes and course offerings, but enrollments are not the same as majors, particularly in introductory classes.
Look at trends and if there’s a definite trend (both at the university and elsewhere in the state)
1° hire one or two tenure-track professor (s)
2° create several graduate instructorships/TAships to work with that professors (easy to decrease if undergaduate demand decreases, easy to increase if undergraduate demand increases)
=> create 1 lecture with as many sections as needed
3° complement with a postdoc, visiting lecturer, etc.
UWashington had to do that - they hired 3 tenure-track professors AND had to hire more in other universities since the students who wanted to major in CS couldn’t and were transferring enmasse to the state’s other public universities (especiallu WWU and Wash State).
However it’s hard to hire CS professors because private-sector pay is SO MUCH better than what universities offer.
In addition, the trend isn’t likely to slow down and there are a lot of demand from employers to get more qualified graduates with computational, CS, CSE… knowledge.
There’s a student who had a choice between UCB potential CS admit vs. named scholar at Georgia Tech wih guaranteed CS… he picked UCB.
To me that makes no sense (both are prestigious and one is safer) but 18 year olds like gambles.
Plan A vs. Plan B: conditions should be spelled out clearly, as well as odds, so that students who are “direct admits” can choose that, and students who aren’t can take a chance with Plan B - and know what’s what.
In addition, for plan B, they should understand if it’s selective or competitive:
*selective = students need to meet a threshold (ie., 3.0) and/or specific conditions (C in X and Z classes) – if they do met the criteria they’re in. What percentage students get those conditions should be specified.
*competitive = students need to meet the threshold and/or the conditions, BUT among those who qualify, only the top-ranked will be admitted to the major. What percentage students meet the conditions and then what percentage among those make the cut should b specified.
For Plan A, if a major’s more selective than the university at large, the program’s stat range or the college’s stat range should be indicated (such as what UMN Twin Cities does:
http://admissions.tc.umn.edu/academics/profile.html )
Wasn’t that student trading off the assured major at GT for the lower price at UCB? Not always an easy choice to make, and one where reasonable people may choose differently, unlike the situation where the assured major happens to be that the school that costs the same or less.
Yes, there was a 16K price difference (I did think both cost the same). I went over the thread again, and it is unclear whether that was a hardship or not for the family. So, gamble and hope you get CS vs. 16K more years but certainty of major :s. Possibly no good choice and yet this is a top student who’s stuck thus.
Depending on the major increasing enrollment can be more complicated than just adding some professors. For nursing the college would need more simulation labs and hospitals willing to host more students for clinical rotations.
@profparent "Interesting that you don’t include the option:
D. Hire more faculty and run more sections of courses so that students can choose (and switch) majors with greater freedom."
I agree, and that is what the private schools often do as demand for majors shifts, but for some reason, the Public Universities seem to generally seem to have a lot of difficulty doing this for some reason.
Unfortunately what many schools do is load up on part-time adjunct faculty. Adjunct faculty often find themselves teaching at multiple schools just to make enough money to survive (especially since part-time adjunct jobs don’t typically offer benefits).
@caroldanvers has a great point about facilities as well. Any classes with lab requirements can be challenging logistically.
The private schools with gigantic endowments can afford to “waste” space in order to provide a more relaxed change-of-major experience and handle short term increases in a major’s popularity. Less well endowed private schools (e.g. CMU with respect to CS) and many of the popular public schools face financial and political pressure to use all available capacity, and may not have the budget to easily add more (or they have to have internal political fights to take funding from an under-enrolled department or other part of the school to expand the capacity at the “full” department).
@ucbalumnus “The private schools with gigantic endowments can afford to “waste” space in order to provide a more relaxed change-of-major experience and handle short term increases in a major’s popularity. Less well endowed private schools (e.g. CMU with respect to CS) and many of the popular public schools face financial and political pressure to use all available capacity, and may not have the budget to easily add more (or they have to have internal political fights to take funding from an under-enrolled department or other part of the school to expand the capacity at the “full” department).”
This issue ended up being a key factor in our decision to send D2 to a private university. I really hate to see the slide of so many flagships because states are not providing adequate funding, but also do not want to give the schools the autonomy they need to admit enough out of state and international students to offset the shortfall.
I fear that B is apt to lead to an extension of, hence increased cost of, college (because of having to take prerequisites - which the gatekeepers might be tempted to expand - for a major that students don’t ultimately do). While I see A as more efficient than B, it doesn’t suit students who, prior to commitment, should have more information about the major than what they’ve acquired through the earlier phases of their lives. Best, I think, is C, to accommodate students who already know what they want and also those who are not sure.
Yes, if there aren’t jobs matching the number of graduates, there will be even more waste and disappointment than if a student goes to college hoping for success in a secondary admission process that isn’t realized. (If there really can be expected to be jobs in the field for the additionally enrolled, as in the case of computer science, it’s a different matter.)
Not that I’m reveling in your daughter’s angst, but it’s gratifying to see how well the English and History departments are doing at UCLA as they graduated over 300 majors each last year.
Instinctively, I prefer option A as there’s usually a good option available if your first choice falls through. However, at UW, Applied Computing and Math Sciences, the I-school, statistics and pure math are also competitive with the same group of kids applying. Risk averse students/weaker students interested in quantitative fields only have access to physics as a sure thing. While I don’t know how many people get shutout, I suspect there are a decent number who do especially if they don’t plan really carefully to intersect prerequisities so they’re eligible for multiple majors. Writing this, I realized that wise advising and a willingness to not close any doors (ala Alex Wissner-Gross’ “Intelligence is a Force that Maximises the Future Freedom of Action”) is critical in this environment.
Listing for UW: http://www.washington.edu/uaa/advising/academic-planning/majors-and-minors/list-of-undergraduate-majors/
I prefer A. My daughter applied to 5 state flagships. At 2 of them, her major (business) was widely available. At 2 others, direct admission to the highly-ranked business school was difficult. At the last, admission to the business school was competitive and direct admission as a freshman was available to only a handful of freshmen. What was more troubling was that there were not definite objective criteria for admission as a sophomore. D got into all the schools, and while the school where she couldn’t get a direct admission to the business school was one of her 2 favorites, she chose to go elsewhere, and the uncertainty of getting into her major certainly weighed heavily in that decision. FWIW, she’s a strong student who most likely would ultimately have been admitted to the program at the school without the direct admit, but without the assurance of a specified GPA or similar objective standard to meet, it wasn’t a risk she wanted to take.
Nursing and engineering are not the flavor-of-the-day. These bread-and-butter majors are not going to go away. If they are DEPENDABLY oversubscribed decade after decade, then the school should resize the departments.
^ I agree with @GMTplus7.
Engineering and nursing won’t go away, but it’s probably best not to get committed to specializations within those (like petroleum engineering, which was the flavor of the day once).
I think it’s also smart to go slowly with newer programs, like NP or PA, as those have only fairly recently become popular and though they probably will grow, they’re not quite as established yet. Then again NP and PA are postgrad programs and maybe those are more…nimble?
“UCLA does B and it sucks.”
For engineering, I believe UCLA does A.
The limitation on nursing seats is a real one- qualified instructors to teach a new generation of nurses. A large university can’t just magically make 100 seats in a nursing program appear because there is high demand if there aren’t instructors who are qualified to teach.
Unlike the medical field which has cultivated an entire generation of clinical physicians who see patients, do research and also teach, most nurses (especially those with a doctorate) follow an either/or path.
Oh right, I think you’re correct. There’s another long thread going on about that now (getting admitted to engineering at UCLA/UCB). I had L&S in mind when I made my post.
Engineering is not a single major; the various kinds of engineering do not generally have interchangeable faculty and subject-specific facilities and equipment. Note that even the more usual types of engineering, like civil, chemical, electrical, mechanical, and computer, can have ups and downs in demand, usually following industry ups and downs.
However, it is true that many engineering majors at many state flagship level universities are oversubscribed most of the time, so expansion would be desirable as a longer term project. But there are probably funding and internal political problems that get in the way.
Universities are probably cautious about expanding new or existing departments or programs, since hiring a tenure track faculty member is a multi-year commitment (much longer if s/he gets tenure). Yes, they can be more “nimble” by using adjuncts more, but would that really be desirable for the upper level courses that are likely the reason for capacity limitations? But such caution about expanding departments or programs means that oversubscribed majors can be a persistent problem.
Just to chime in about tenure: Tenure includes job protections, but it includes no protections against being reassigned to teach in another discipline. Yeah, you wouldn’t reassign a tenured faculty member into something quite distant—that would be silly, not to mention detrimental to the whole enterprise—but into an allied field? Yeah, that happens.
Of course, less than half of all faculty in the United States are tenure-line, anyway—not even counting graduate teaching assistants!—so the claim that the immovability of tenure line folks prevents nimbleness in reacting to enrollment trends is a red herring, anyway.