Dartblog

As much as Administrators like to deny it, Dartmouth has a problem with class enrollments. After being shut out of my second class, I can speak from personal experience on the matter.

Both times I was trying to enroll in a Government course, which, as you, kind reader, are familiar with by now, is one of the most popular departments in the College. The first time it happened, the course was U.S. Foreign Policy. Although it was only my junior fall, I was very interested in taking the class because I was close to declaring my minor in International Relations. However, as a junior without Government declared as my major or minor, I didn’t have much of a chance…

The below chart is taken directly from Banner Student (the online resource page for students); it was posted this fall just before the time to sign up for winter courses.

The chart shows the Government Department’s method for deciding who will be enrolled in each course. It lists the course number, then the course name, followed by the number of students to be enrolled and the order of priority in which assignments are made. The section to the right shows the four introductory courses that serve as prerequisites to the majors and minors. As you can see, senior majors and minors have top priority. The order for enrollment is the same for every course in the Government Department, and in course selection in the College at large. (You can see the entire document here.)

The very fact that departments even have “course enrollment priorities” proves that there are issues with course enrollment. If there were space for students in the classes they wanted to be in, there would be no need for these priorities. The Registrar’s Timetable of Class Meetings shows that 10 out of the 34 Government classes offered in Fall 2009 were at or above their enrollment caps.

Additionally, I selected this particular portion of the chart to show how the system suppresses academic exploration and discovery. Truth be told, each of these courses has a large enrollment limit, but the possibility exists that students can get turned away even from these courses. The biggest problem is the consistent favoritism shown to majors and minors with these priorities. Obviously this is necessary and unavoidable when it comes to problems with oversubscription. After all, we need students to graduate on time. However, it hurts freshmen who want to explore different subjects out of intellectual curiosity. When you can’t take an introductory course as a freshman, you take it later on, which in turn takes more class space away from future freshmen.

But it’s not only freshmen who suffer from this. When I was shut out of the U.S. Foreign Policy course last year, I wanted to take the course less out of academic need than out of personal interest. After all, I’m in ROTC and will probably be implementing U.S. foreign policy overseas somewhere in the next ten years. But my experience told me the truth; I would need to game the system, as so many other students do.

I would need to declare a Government minor in order to take the courses I wanted within the department. Rather than being able to pursue some courses outside of my major and minor departments, I’ve had to fill that space in my schedule with Government courses that I’m not terribly interested in so that I can keep my minor. Thankfully I did squeeze Drawing I in, so I could then take Photography I this fall. It was one of my most rewarding classes at Dartmouth.

I’d like to be able to take more classes out of curiosity, but it looks like I won’t have much of an opportunity. My winter term will be filled by two minor courses and a major course. That is if I’m allowed into the Government Seminar I want. I was not allowed in during the signup period this fall despite my status as a senior minor. Obviously, the course limits are much smaller for senior seminars (14), but there are only four of them offered before I graduate. One of them is U.S.-China Relations, but that doesn’t really fit in with my Arabic-modified-with-History major. So, I seem to have only two classes that will fulfill my minor before I graduate. True, I was a little late to the game in declaring my minor, but should students be punished for exploring other areas of study?

Of course not. President Kim, the solution is clear. We simply need more faculty in the departments that are regularly oversubscribed.