Dartblog

Dartblog ran an earlier version of this post a while back, before course enrollments had been completed. I have now re-examined enrollments to look into the details of the College’s oft-cited statistic that “64% of all our courses have less than 20 students.” In a previous post, I noted that while there are many small classes at the College, only about a third of students are in <20-student classes at any given time.

First of all, I can tell you where you won’t find very many small classes. Look at the Fab Four top-drawing/top-drawer departments (with over half of the majors at the College). Only the History Department hits its mark:

Economics
2009 Majors: Approx. 200
Fall 2009 Courses Offered: 28
Fall 2009 Courses with <20 Students: 2
% of Fall 2009 Courses with <20 Students: 7%

Government
2009 Majors: Approx. 125
Fall 2009 Courses Offered: 35
Fall 2009 Courses with <20 Students: 15
% of Fall 2009 Courses with <20 Students: 43%

History
2009 Majors: Approx. 100
Fall 2009 Courses Offered: 34
Fall 2009 Courses with <20 Students: 22
% of Fall 2009 Courses with <20 Students: 65%

Psychology and Brain Sciences
2009 Majors: Approx. 160
Fall 2009 Courses Offered: 14
Fall 2009 Courses with <20 Students: 6
% of Fall 2009 Courses with <20 Students: 43%

All Four Departments:
2009 Majors: Approx. 585
Fall 2009 Courses Offered: 111
Fall 2009 Courses with <20 Students: 45
% of Fall 2009 Courses with <20 Students: 40%

In these four academic areas, arguably the College’s strongest, we see that the vaunted 64% figure has dropped down to 40%, with only two small classes offered by the Economics Department. It is striking to see the variation between these departments — variations which, it seems, have existed for many years with no effort at correction on the part of the adminstration.

It sure looks like we need fewer History profs and a lot more Economics professors, at least as a first step.

So where are the small classes? Look to the 40 sections of Writing 2/3 and 5 (formerly English 5); and all of the introductory language courses. In fact, all but 23 of the 112 intro and upper level courses in the language departments of Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish departments had fewer than 20 students. That’s 80% of them. However, the Spanish department has 17 of these 23 courses above 20 students.

Even among the language departments, the size of classes is another example of the imbalanced allocation of resources at Dartmouth: this fall’s three Italian I classes have a total of 29 students, whereas the three Spanish I classes have 65 students in them. Who is managing staffing at the College?

Now don’t get me wrong; the teaching of foreign languages is vital (I speak fluent French and Italian, and passable German), but the College is putting a heck of a lot of resources into these areas at a time when Economics majors enjoyed the close attention of a professor in only one upper level seminar this fall (and one statistics course with under 20 students).

And the other dirtly little secret of all of these small classes? How many (or few) of them are taught by tenured and tenure-track professors — as opposed to adjuncts, visitors and other categories of non-tenure-related professors? Hint: the answer will appear in a future post; and it’s a high number.

One of the tasks confronting President Kim is a reallocation of teaching resources to the disciplines where the students are. Our President runs little risk of being deemed unserious for putting more budgetary emphasis on the departments of Economics, Government, and Psychology and Brain Sciences.