Re: Low enrollment courses

[Larry Smith <larry.smith@SNOW.EDU>]

At 10:35 AM -0600 11/4/04, RAUBER, JOEL wrote:
> Do any of you come from schools or know of schools that cancel low
> enrollment courses (sections)?  If so, how do they handle exceptions?
> In particular I'm interested in schools that use a mechanism along the
> lines of the average section size for the department must be above a
> certain magic number.  Or other creative ways allowing, the often low
> enrollment advanced physics courses, to proceed.
>
> FYI, the magic number for a section not to be canceled at our system is
> 10 students in an undergraduate section.

The magic number at my institution (a small 2-yr rural college) is also 10.
Unless it is required for the major--and then it can be smaller.  So every
semester we have to re-justify every course with enrollment of less than
10, even though they may have been justified 100 times before.   But if the
enrollment is less than 6 then the faculty member gets only 1/2
workload/pay for it.  We do not have provision for this to be offset by
other larger sections, although some have broached that idea.  So, yes, we
occasionally cancel sections.

It is even weirder (worse?) in the summer terms.  Two weeks before the term
starts the enrollments are examined.  If the number of students enrolled is
12 or more then the faculty member is obligated to teach the section.  If
less than 12 then the faculty member is given the option of teaching the
class for x/12 pay.  If x is too low and the faculty member declines then
the students are notified that their class has been cancelled.  Why the
magic number is 12 in the summer terms and only 10 in the regular semesters
is beyond me.

Larry