One of the most profound things turned out by this university in the past few years has been its “Flagship Agenda.” The agenda calls itself the “seven-year plan to bring LSU to a new level of excellence” by revamping every level of the LSU experience. Recently, the plan has been used as an excuse to fire a vast majority of the instructors in the Department of Mathematics and Department of English over the next few years, replacing them with fewer and more expensive tenure-track professors. This unethical action imperils the very nature of our University’s English department, and should be cause for alarm for those interested in the future of our university.
The move must fall under the third objective of the agenda, which is to increase the quality of undergraduate students and programs. Point three of this objective is to “provide a broad array of nationally-competitive undergraduate degree programs through systematic review and targeted investments,” the “review” referring to firing instructors and “investments” referring to hiring of professors. Implicit in the hiring of fewer professors is the fact that lower-level English and mathematics classes will swell to much larger sizes.
Sciences and history require less interaction with the teacher – and in many cases, none at all. This can be an excuse for larger class sizes in those subjects. But English composition? Have our leaders gone mad? The plan implies that a tenured professor – who will undoubtedly be preoccupied with research obligations to the university – can better instruct a class of hundreds than an instructor would in an intimate environment of a dozen or two.
One of LSU’s greatest strengths is its English department, which has depended on its low student-teacher ratios and personal interaction between instructors and students for its success. The Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Joan Collins, stated that increasing tenure-track faculty “while maintaining instructional quality and capacity” is achievable. If we retain our class sizes, this will surely be the case. But we won’t.
I can envision the day when the Cox auditorium fills with English students on the first day of class. To be precise, English 1001. To be precise, 500 students fill the room. The tenured professor shuffles in, mumbles to the mass of freshmen for just under an hour, and walks out. The first paper is due at the end of the week, and for questions one must seek out a TA.
What Ms. Collins and the chancellor do not understand is that success in English can be directly related to class size. For the price of one tenured research professor, we lose four or five passionate young instructors eager to work with students on a personal level.
The preamble to the Flagship Agenda states that “the Agenda recognizes that, as a public institution, LSU must be accountable and accessible, always demonstrating that it has used its resources wisely and efficiently. Shared governance is a fundamental principle: we must work as a team, with full respect for dialogue and due process.”
The “respect for dialogue” has clearly been breached; none of the instructors had a say in when they would go. Furthermore, the decision could have been handed down much earlier, so those affected could at least begin the job search process at an appropriate time. Is the middle of the semester really the most prudent time for instructors to find jobs elsewhere?
The decision to release instructors may devastate the English department. Personal instruction will become a thing of the past as our leaders replace those who know their students with those who know their research. As an English major, I am appalled. As a student, I am ashamed. As a person, I am glad that I will not be one of next year’s incoming freshmen.