Joel Rauber quibbled when I blamed hours-in-the-major limits on the fact
we are a liberal-arts school. He is correct. It is local politics.
However, I believe local politics here are repeated at many liberal-arts
schools such that limits are now commonplace in such schools.
Don Polvani asked if something has changed in liberal-arts institutions.
Yes... several things. I'm not sure I can remember all them. I'll just
start listing some of them. I'll try to make it flow into a logical
argument.
Students seem more career oriented. Students are more apt to choose
courses for which they see short-term career paybacks as opposed to
long-term quality-of-life paybacks.
This has hurt the whole liberal-arts idea, but especially the
humanities. Students at any institution (regardless of whether the
institution says it is liberal-arts) are not likely to take any history,
literature, philosophy, fine arts unless they are forced to take them.
Students are too enamored with the labels of "major" and "minor." Being
able to say they had a double major, or a major with 3 minors (and all
the perturbations) strikes them as more prestigious than having a major
with a transcript that shows wide dabbling in all sorts of courses.
This gives exploration perhaps a triple hit. The first hit comes if
students believe electives (i.e. true electives that are exploratory as
opposed to counting toward a 2nd major or toward a minor) are not really
useful. The second hit comes when they become fearful that exploration
into an unfamiliar field might hurt their GPAs. And now this third hit
comes about because they currently believe the ability to have a 2nd
major or several minors will raise their status and improve their
chances of getting a job.
In the end, the cards are stacked pretty high against taking a course
"just for fun" or "just to broaden oneself."
Another thing that has changed is that students are more concerned about
grades than about getting their money's worth. We require 122 semester
hours for graduation. If a student takes 15 hours per semester for 8
semesters that is 120 hours. Thus the student needs at least one
semester with 17 hours, or two semesters with 16 hours, and the rest can
be 15. However, we offer 12 to 18 hours for the same price. Students
could take 18 hours per semester and graduate in 8 semesters with 144
hours rather than 122. At roughly $500 per credit hour those extra 22
hours are worth $11,000 yet very few students claim them. Most graduate
with between 122 and 125 hours. I think the biggest reason is because
they don't want to work hard which can also be interpreted as they want
to reserve time for fun.
One fun thing they do is play sports. This starts in high school. This
is especially rampant for women athletics since Title IX ended up making
more athletic opportunities for women both at high school and college.
I may be wrong about this, but I think this has hit small liberal-arts
colleges harder than it hit larger institutions. If a student became an
athlete in high school and loved being part of a team, but the student
is not good enough to make the intercollegiate team at a Big-Ten-sized
institution, they either have to give up interscholastic athletics when
they go to college, or they have to go to a smaller school where their
athletic ability is good enough for them to make the team.
Coaches advise athletes to take the minimum number of credit hours to
assure they can graduate in four years. Taking more hours than
necessary just cuts into practice time, sleep time, and complicates
schedules when you have to travel to away games and miss afternoon
classes.
Here are a few numbers concerning athletics for Bluffton University.
Our current enrollment is 1211 overall with 131 graduate and 1080
undergraduate. I just looked at the rosters for all intercollegiate
athletics and counted up 188 men and 88 women for a total of 276
intercollegiate athletes. There is very little overlap (few students
playing two sports). The men's group is larger because of football.
This means about 26% of our undergraduate student body would be involved
in *intercollegiate* athletics. (There is also a large intramural
sports program.)
Before I get branded as too negative toward athletics, let me mention
that some athletes have been among the top of the class in my physics
and chemistry courses. However, athletes are not going to take
"unnecessary courses." They don't want unnecessary courses, and they
are actually advised against them (by their coaches). I typically
cannot talk even a top student into taking electives if that student is
involved in intercollegiate athletics.
I might also want to mention that because of attrition the 276 total
athletes are not divided equally among all four years. There is a
preponderance of freshman and sophomores on the athletic teams. I did
not make an actual count, but the percentage appears to be about 35% of
our freshman and sophomores are involved in intercollegiate athletics.
These students are setting the class habits they will likely maintain as
juniors and seniors.
Well... It's lunchtime here and I've already written a lot. Perhaps
I'll think of more that needs said, but for now let me just say that
liberal-arts education is not the same thing today as it was when I was
a liberal arts student in the late 60s early 70s. Of course many things
are different... Especially the cost of gasoline.
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry and Physics
Bluffton University
Bluffton, OH 45817
(419)-358-3270
edmiston@bluffton.edu
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