Ryan has the same experience every semester when he walks into the first-year writing classes he teaches — a full section with at least three students hoping to get off the waitlist. Some students do get off the waitlist, but, increasingly, some don’t. This past semester was no different.
Ryan was sad to see this happen to yet another student in his class this past semester. The student came in excited to jump into classes for his major and degree requirements. He was looking forward to writing especially, which he said “seemed like a great thing to start with!”
Unfortunately, this student — like many other freshmen — ended up on the waitlist because all the sections for the class were overflowing, even though it was winter semester and a large number of freshmen had already taken their first-year writing courses. Ryan and the English Department Writing Program staff worked hard to find him another section, but none materialized. Despite participating in class for almost three weeks, he was dropped because it was full.
“It was disheartening for me,” the student told Ryan, “because I’ve been going to sessions and getting a hang of the class, getting to know what things were, completing assignments. It’s a little sad.”
To make matters worse, he is facing similar problems for the fall. While he found a Writing and Academic Inquiry seat, but no openings in Calculus 1.
“Again, I’m on the waitlist,” he said. “So I decided to just wait and not take this class now because I know how it works. On the waitlist, it’s just not the ideal situation for me or for students to be in.”
This student’s experiences are unfortunately common. But the University is making changes that will exacerbate these difficulties and negatively impact undergrads, graduate student instructors and lecturers.
As undergraduates register for next year, they may notice even fewer spots in gen eds like Writing and Academic Inquiry. In other departments, such as Philosophy, sections remain steady, but GSI positions are being cut, meaning those graduate students lucky enough to receive a position must accept a work increase without a pay increase. While GSIs previously taught 50 students across two sections, they’re now expected to teach 75 students across three sections for the same wage.
Students unable to register for courses next year might hope to fulfill requirements this summer, but some summer sections have been drastically reduced. Last year, English offered seven sections of Writing and Academic Inquiry during spring and summer. Now, there are only two. Instructors who teach courses with hundreds of students are learning that the key administrative positions GSIs historically filled have been eliminated. According to GSI discussions with department staff and administrators, these changes result from new university policies aiming to expand the University’s profits by demanding that LSA cut $20 million from their budget, even if doing so sacrifices education and research.
These numbers are startling. The reported cuts eliminated as many as 25% of previous GSI positions in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and as many as 40% in the Political Science Department, as well as all GSI positions in upper-level undergraduate courses in the Physics Department. In several other departments — including Philosophy, History of Art and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology — these cuts have also reduced individual GSI appointments to below full-time. Students often tout small discussion sections as the most useful part of large lecture courses, but the university is either eliminating these sections or increasing their size.
The University has designed these changes to cut costs and discipline workers, even though it makes it more difficult for students to enroll in the classes they need. For graduate students, who rely on teaching for income while they learn how to become academics, completing their programs becomes a hurdle. Departments often have to wait until the last minute to hire new lecturers, sometimes only days before a semester starts, making course prep difficult for incoming instructors.
University administrators claim they have to offer fewer classes and push for full enrollment before opening more sections because they can’t afford it. But the math doesn’t necessarily support those claims. In a first-year English writing class the University takes in about $432,414 in tuition for the six courses a lecturer teaches. GSIs only teach one class a semester instead of three — in addition to their research — but still bring in $144,138.96. Clearly, the University isn’t losing money by offering classes. Instead, it seems like the University might be using course allocations as a weapon against unions: as punishment to the Graduate Employees’ Organization for its recent strike and as a warning that the Lecturers’ Employee Organization should stay in line.
These new policies do not just reduce the number of teaching positions available to GSIs and lecturers. They also institute new guidelines making it difficult to hire law students, master’s students or doctoral students who exceed the funding guaranteed at admission. The University’s own data suggests that doctoral students regularly require more time, and therefore more funding, than initially guaranteed. The University rushes doctoral students through their programs by restricting funding when this initial guarantee is exceeded, without addressing the reasons why graduate students require teaching positions and additional financial support.
Moreover, eliminating positions for law and master’s students is an enormous reduction in financial aid for the Law School and master’s programs. These changes will place advanced degrees further out of reach for students who can’t afford thousands of dollars in tuition charged by the University. Once again, administration is prioritizing profit over education and research.
Cuts to spring and summer sections are especially problematic for students who are hoping to at least be able to finish the first-year writing requirement this summer. With so few sections offered, there will likely be students who still cannot get a seat. This problem will compound in the fall with enrollment rates continuing to rise, worsening the trend of larger class sizes and less individualized instruction. To make matters worse, the University allocated funding for at least 6 fewer sections of Writing and Academic Inquiry in the coming year, meaning that there will be more students who can’t fulfill one of their core degree requirements.
The University claims to be cutting courses because it can’t afford them. But this begs a few questions. If the University knows students are already struggling to find seats in classes they need, why continue to enroll more students? If students can’t find open sections of courses, doesn’t that suggest the University should be increasing teaching positions, not reducing them? And, most obviously perhaps, if tuition dollars for an individual class already exceed the cost of paying an instructor, how can the University plead poverty and say they simply can’t afford to offer more sections?
Of course, the answer to all of these questions is clear: The University is enrolling more students and allocating fewer class sections because it is trying to maximize profits and undermine the power of GEO and LEO members.
But this presents an opportunity for undergraduates, grad students and lecturers to come together and recognize their shared interests in reducing this profit-above-all-else approach to running a public university.
Undergraduate students and their families should strongly protest policies restricting appointments and reducing sections, since that will clearly impact their learning experiences. GSIs and lecturers should call on their departments to speak out against these measures and the hollow-ringing budgetary arguments being offered to justify them.
Most importantly, everyone impacted by these cuts — students, GSIs and lecturers alike — must stand together when the University tries to pit us against each other. Teaching conditions are learning conditions. After all, this is the University of Michigan, one of the wealthiest universities in the country. Students and instructors should not have to weather these ever-worsening conditions.
Ryan McCarty is a Lecturer and Daniel Weaver is a GSI and PhD Candidate, both teach in the English Department.They can be reached at ryanmcca@umich.edu and daweaver@umich.edu.
The post Students and instructors should work together to fight the University’s new austerity appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
Leave a Reply