Class size is normally first thing to rise as schools cut budgets and tighten their belts.
It’s that or axing professors.
In the midst of dwindling funding, our University has done pretty well in keeping most classes between 10 and 29 students, numbers needed for a critical mass of inquiring minds, according to Malcolm Gladwell, author of popular books such as “The Tipping Point” and “Blink,” which apply economic principles to social issues.
And the professors remaining after the last rounds of cuts received pay raises in recognition of hard work.
So on paper, we look pretty good. But if you check in on classes, there’s another story.
Many professors complain about attendance and engagement of students with access to the Internet during lectures.
Students complain about the difficult course loads necessary to graduate within the expected four years and unfair testing policies.
No one’s happy, and something needs to change.
Solutions include making attendance mandatory via heavier grade weighting for so-called participation, grades based on take-home essays instead of taking exams and then drinking oneself into oblivion after grades are released.
But none of these address the root issue: maybe we all shouldn’t be in college.
Sometimes attending school feels like a brain drain, and if the point of college is to educate ourselves, sitting in a huge lecture hall listening to someone drone on about “study skills” isn’t the best way to carry out that goal.
Plus, we’ve all heard the refrain about how we’re training for jobs that won’t exist in five years. That’s always a heartening one.
I’m not saying after high school everyone should retreat into the family basement and binge on potato chips until a call center job opens up. We are worth more than that.
But we’re also worth more than the college education we’re receiving, and some of that is on us. If everyone attended classes all the time and took advantage of office hours, maybe we could make something of our degrees.
But the fact that we don’t feel obligated to do either of those things leads back to the fact that we’re not using our time well by attending college.
I suggest a 30,000-person walkout, all of us refusing to attend school next week, beginning Monday, until something changes.
Oh wait. It won’t be any different than the average University Monday.
We could call other U.S. colleges to arms as well, but they face similar issues. About 82 percent of students attend class on average in the country, but only about half are engaged during class time.
Check your average University classroom and similar patterns will show up. Try sitting in the back row of any class in the Lockett basement. Is anyone on their computers taking notes without Facebook or some shopping website pulled up as well?
That’s a rhetorical question because we all know the truth, and most of us are guilty.
To those of you blindsided by this, congratulations. You’re getting the most out of your college experience.
That’s not an arguable claim. It’s proven that students get more out of a class when not multitasking. As far as defining the college experience, I’m looking at it academically. Partying and sleeping in on the state’s or your family’s dime is not the point.
So go to class, because most of our class sizes are optimal for learning. And engage, so you can separate yourself from the herd.
The University has a good thing going, as far as current standards are concerned. Take advantage of that so you can overhaul the system in the future, and your children will never have to sit through inefficient general education courses.
Megan Dunbar is a 20-year-old English senior from Greenville, S.C.