Doing More with Less is the Mantra of Burgeoning Enrollments

Abstract

Blessing or curse? On the one hand, journalism and mass communication programs need and want a vibrant and healthy student body, but on the other hand, burgeoning enrollments take their toll on already overextended programs. Schools or departments facing dynamic are frequently in regions where there are a large number of community colleges that send graduates to the regional four-year university, and where there is significant population which produces college-age students who seek four-year university educations. Several journalism and/or mass communications programs in the California State University system, which is the largest university system in the nation, are part of a university culture that is desirous of campus and are told that they must grow along with the university. Other programs have been permitted or asked to control enrollment by declaring impaction. And a number of universities have journalism and/or mass communications departments that are experiencing a decline in enrollment. In states where budgets are strong and there is a surplus of collegeready students, is natural and expected if the university's mission is to accommodate the demand of qualified students. If these universities have ample space for classrooms and laboratories, healthy equipment budgets, strong part-time teaching pools, an ability to attract qualified faculty, and adequate budget to cover the growth, they are able to operate in a business-as-usual mode and experience little impact on the culture of education. Unfortunately, there are too many instances where amenities do not follow the enrollment adequately, and in these cases, there is definite impact on the culture. Administrators face challenges to maintain quality, which means, in the words of some faculty, doing more with less. Having lived in a program that has experienced burgeoning enrollments during the past decade, I can easily describe the impact that unplanned growth can have on a program and the challenges to keep the program healthy and productive. One impact that is somewhat common when enrollments increase is class size expansion. Lecture classes of 35 become 45 or 50, and departments look for large lecture rooms in which to herd 125 or as many as 250 students to maximize the use of faculty. This is especially true when weak state budgets force reductions in university support. In some instances, faculty-student ratios increase so that more students must be served by fewer faculty. Thus, the smaller, more intimate classes become larger and faculty must adjust teaching methodologies in order for the teaching outcomes to remain the same. In addition, this enrollment increase is necessary in the lecture classes to offset the many new sections of lab classes that have 20 or fewer students in order to maintain the assigned student-faculty ratios that are higher than the size of all lab classes. Also, large lecture classes must make up for sections of 10 to 15 student-enrolled graduate classes. Further, wily administrators know that larger classes not only help meet targets but they also can produce much-needed salary savings. Full-time faculty have maximum loads, which decrease the demand for part-time faculty. This salary savings becomes unrestricted money to support faculty development, faculty assigned time for extra assignments, and operating expenses. Increased class sizes create a greater workload for faculty. Advances in technology revolutionize the classroom and engage students, but just the same, faculty simply aren't able to provide the same attention to individual students that they could when classes were smaller. In addition to time for classroom preparation, faculty are forced to spend more time outside the classroom in order to evaluate student work and to meet grading requirements. Thus, students and faculty are impacted in that students don't have the same access to faculty, and faculty face greater demands on their time. …