Student Workloads

PAGE 2 OF 4

 
        It seems I have generated a lot of discussion about the issue of
students and their time, which is great because I think it needs a lot of
discussion.  I want to clarify that I in no way feel that professors are at
fault for assigning a ridiculous amount of work. The amount is perfectly
reasonable especially if the context were for a student, with a reasonable
educational background, attending school full time and graduating in four
years to pursue a career or further degrees. But lets look at the facts.
        College tuitions are on the rise nationally, thus each year a
student spends in school is greatly increasing their debt. You cannot
receive financial aid if you are attending part- time (as some people
suggested). And what we are talking about here is a bachelors degree, which
we all know doesn't get people as far as it used to. You cannot even get an
entry level job doing anything interesting without a bachelors degree. So
where are we working? Well, Erotic dancing, bartending and waiting tables.
I'd rather not spend 15 years of my life like this waiting to get the first
degree of many, so I can improve my life and standard of living. And when I
get this bachelors degree, I can spend the next 10 years paying off the
debt. I'm not talking about a PHD. I'm talking a bachelors degree.  Colleges
now compete for freshman by promising that students will graduate in four
years. This has actually become a factor for admissions! I suspect that
departments will soon find themselves competing for majors on the same
basis- thus this is everyone's problem.  Think about whether or not it makes
sense to expect students to spend more than four years on a college
education. As it stands now, most of us attend summer and an extra semester
or year to get our degrees. This is attending "Full time". I spoke with one
professor recently who told me she now expects half her class to receive
incompletes each semester.
        So, how does this relate to course work? Well, let's say it takes 5
courses a semester at 3 credits each to complete the credits in four years.
And each course expects 100 pages of reading, a midterm, a final and 2 short
or 1 long paper a semester. Go and multiply that by five. That's 15 hours in
class, 15 hours out of class for the weekly work and another 10 for the
semester length work. Well now we're up to forty hours for a good academic
effort. How do you suppose we manage a 32 hr a week job on top of that?
Someone joked about letting sleep be the thing that goes. Well, basically it
is. At a cost to the professor of a lively, awake, functioning student. How
are we to remember what we've read, or stay awake through a three hour course?
        More importantly, what does this structure and attitude say about
our concern for women's lives? What's the message we are sending? That to be
a sucessfull well- educated woman you need to sacrifice your physical and
emotional health. That you must essentially suffer to achieve what you want
from life. I had thought this was a rather patriarchal costruct of
education. I also don't have sympathy for people who claim I should simply
adjust because they did. No more than I have for my relatives who feel I
should be married and pregnant soon because that's the way it's always been.
Part of our job in women's studies has been to deconstruct "The way things
have 'always' been".
        At the risk of some of my own professors reading this, I'll be
honest. What happens to students that are put in this no- win situation is
that our academic work suffers. The papers are not as well written as they
could be, and the revision time nill because we only have a few hours to
write them. We speed read the writing to get through all of it, digesting
very little in the process. We choose the easiest paper topics because we
don't have time to challenge ourselves, and we skip one class to make up the
work we are behind on in another. And we still only pull a B average. In
fact, I consider straight B's and only one incomplete a sucessfull semester.
And I leave each semester feeling cheated anyhow. Because I never fully got
all the reading in the class. Because I couldn't find the time to do really
interesting research. And because I am in college to get out as quickly as
possible. And this is really sad. Because it IS NOT the way things should
be. I should have time to reflect, to digest, to give myself a challenge. I
don't like re writting the same paper. It bores me. I'd like to sit around
with class mates and gab about our classes. I'd like a cushion in which to
slow down when I am sick, or someone has died, or the theories I am reading
have touched me deeply on an emotional level. I'd like to be getting enough
sleep so I can talk in classes, so colds don't progress into pneumonia. I
think it's a real tradgedy that I can't.
        So, what can be done? Perhaps the answer lies in assigning more
credits to certain courses, or reducing the course load in each semester.
Maybe it's entirely appropriate that women studies is the department to take
a stand and say "A college education should be meaningfull and accessible to
everyone. And it shouldn't come at a cost to women's well- being". But we
all know how difficult it can be to change administration, and I agree that
women studies has a reputation for being "soft". But we all know that the
complaint is totally unfounded. So why are we buying in to it? And why do we
need to react by being unreasonable to students? Is that really going to
change the public perception of the validity of women's studies?
        I don't think that reducing reading loads will automatically reduce
the quality of a course. The most interesting and informative courses I have
taken are ones where the reading load was such that everything could be
addressed in the course. Readings that aren't addressed are often forgotten
among the hundreds we read a semester. I think a good professor, with good
teaching skills can do a fine job with less readings.
        I also see a tendency in Women Studies for each professor to feel
that we need to read every excellent piece of writing and cover every
important topic in each of their courses. The result is that I have read
several articles three and sometimes four times, often with no new insights.
And rarely do we go into great depth on any one topic or piece of writing,
because we have so much to cover. I think greater communication and
cooperation among faculty- particularly in those cross listed courses would
do a lot of good.  If one course is really addressing one area, another can
handle another. I have friends in several universities around the country
who have the same problems in their schools. And it isn't just Women Studies.
        When I taught, we had by far the most obscene syllabus and set of
expectations. What I observed is this. When discussing a piece of writing in
class we had to HOLD UP the item for students to remember what it was. They
often confused pieces of writing, and the authors. When we reduced the
number of readings by a third, suddenly everyone not only was doing the
reading, but they could remember what they had read and where. This becomes
really problematic when you're a women studies major, and may take four or
five courses in the same vain. I've found myself and others referring to the
wrong articles from other classes during discussions. As a result, the
collective I work with has decided to drastically reduce the number of
readings each week and also to reduce the amount we cover. Yes, it is really
hard to let go of some of the readings. And I feel we are cheating them if
we don't cover everything important in women's lives. But for the INTRO
level, it does no good to have classes where you cannot cover the required
reading and where students leave a class discussion with thousands of
emotions and unanswered questions about the topic or the readings. We want
the discussions to be more in depth than as one major at a nearby school to
mine joked: "Rape- bad", "Feminist- good", "Challenge structures etc...
times up, see ya next week".
        Clearly, we need to do something to make women's studies a positive
experience for students and not one that drains them financially, physically
and emotionally. I feel this can be done without "Dumbing down" or creating
a two- tier system. Which, by the way is rather irrelevant if these non-
traditional students cannot even attend college for these reasons in the
first place! And as for our generation being the TV culture, not only do I
see this as a generalization that is incredibly offensive and ageist, but it
is also totally incorrect. Many of us actually grew up either without TV,
with little interest in TV or with someone called a parent to restrict our
viewing. Personally, I've been an avid reader since the age of four and
still have a problem with the current educational system. Remember the
equation I stated before about how many hours it takes per class a week?
What about students whose primary and high school educations were so poor
they can't read more than 10 pages an hour? How about my students from
wealthy long island school districts who wrote me papers about the plight of
women in Kenya, one of the *states* in the *country* of Africa? And I have
the most unbelievable sympathy now for professors after I experienced the
writing skills of college juniors and seniors? Who can be blamed for this? I
really didn't feel comfortable penalizing these students for a failure of
public education. And I hope others feel the same way. Perhaps this is why
Teaching is the most challenging job out there.
                                        Carrie Duggins
                                        shakey  @  earthlink.net

 
I wanted to re-iterate a point made earlier:  the 'traditional student'
is a rarity and not common place in today's student body, which is
perhaps also a generational difference.  But then again, perhaps there
never has been, strickly speaking, a 'traditional student' outside of the
dominant class, race, sex ...?  rita

 
I think Carrie Duggins makes some extremely important points.
 
One of the most important with respect to Women's Studies specifically,
I think, is the problem of curriculum overlap.  This was brought home
to me several years ago by an exasperated student who wrote on one of
my teaching evaluations (paraphrasing here) "This is the FOURTH course
in which I have read 'This Bridge Called My Back'.  For God's sake,
didn't any OTHER women of color write anything worth reading?!?!?"
 
I think that those of us who have the power and capacity to influence
curricula and to construct syllabi need to take responsibility for
this systemic failure to use students' time carefully.
 
I am now teaching in the 4th undergraduate Women's Studies program
at the 4th different institution since I finished graduate school.
ALL of them suffered from a similar problem:  i.e., the fact that
Women's Studies was an underfunded "Program" (as compared to a
"Department"), or else it was a "Department" which had an extremely
minimal budget and *far* too few full-time faculty whose primary
"tenure home" was actually IN the Women's Studies Department.
 
My experience has been that this is a major contributing factor to
the lack of curricular coherence.  It is impossible to build a
sequence of courses which actually progresses, and which counts
on material learned in previous courses as a basis for going further
and deeper into the subject matter, because it is often impossible
to determine what the available staffing will be until the *very*
last minute.  Who can teach Women's Studies courses in any given
semester, and what courses they will be able to offer, are often
determined almost entirely by the whims and needs of every OTHER
department in the College -- and by who those departments can
"afford" to "release" for Women's Studies teaching during that
particular semester (if anyone).  Students cannot take the courses
they need in any rational order.  They too are at the mercy of
decisions that are made at the very LAST minute -- decisions
which are made primarily with some OTHER departments majors
and curriculum in mind (not theirs).
 
I worked at one college which offered a Women's Studies major, at which
there was so much demand, and so little staffing, for "Intro to Women's
Studies" (which was *supposed to* be a prerequisite for every other WS course)
that almost no students (including WS majors) could get into the
"Intro" class until the last semester of their senior year.  That
is just plain absurd.  But what these sorts of problems mean for
the syllabi of other courses (including the HUGE number of other
courses which are cross-listed with other departments, and which
therefore may have students in them with NO previous exposure to
Women's Studies) is that almost every WS course needs to be taught
at an "intro" level, regardless of what number it has and regardless
of whether it is intended as a course for first year students or
for 4th year majors.  Would this arrangement EVER be considered
acceptable in the chemistry department?  In the psychology dept?
In the music department?  In the history department?
 
What's worse, I believe that as Women's Studies becomes more
and more committed to being an interdisciplinary kind of field
(and major), this problem is getting worse rather than better.
 
And it seems as though it will be a cold day in some very Hot Place
before Women's Studies DEPARTMENTS can sit down and plan out
coherent curricular offerings for several years in advance
with THEIR curricular needs (not OTHER departments' staffing
needs) being the prime consideration in deciding what to offer
and who should teach it.
 
I think there are historical reasons for this.  Most Women's
Studies programs started out on a shoestring and were just
barely held together by an enormous amount of commitment and
time and passion for the field, on the parts of faculty who
*donated* their time to WS and who came from all kinds of other
departments within the college or university.  Of course there
would be no Women's Studies at all if those who had dedicated
themselves to fledgling programs had not committed their lives
and careers, as well as their blood, sweat and bagels to "the
cause."
 
But it is time that we must move beyond that stage.  Times change.
Things change.  Students change.  Faculty change.  Institutions
don't change nearly enough.  How many Women's Studies "programs"
are STILL (after all these years of "proving" that we have a
"real" academic subject, and that we can walk like a department
and swim like a department and quack like a department), STILL
operating with budgets and faculty lines (or lack thereof) that
would make any other department on the campus curl up and die?
How many of us are STILL relying primarily on volunteer and
donated labor to keep our courses staffed and to keep our
business attended to and our paperwork turned in, our majors
mentored, and each other out of the psychiatric ward of the
local HMO?
 
And WHY is this so?
 
There are some things that we, qua academics, cannot change.
OF COURSE we need a social, political and economic revolution
to fix some of the problems that beset not only our women students,
but women in general, ourselves included.  OF COURSE we need to
keep working OUTSIDE of the Academy to ensure that women are not
solely responsible for the care of children while the men who
fathered those children are developing their careers.  OF COURSE
we need a revolution in the educational infrastructure of
whatever country we live in, so that a free, public, accessible
and appropriate education is assured to ALL -- to whatever level
it takes to prepare that person for productive and meaningful
work as an adult member of the community.  We can work toward
those goals, in concert with others who share those values and
goals.  But they aren't going to happen in Academe ALONE
without happening in the rest of the world as well.
 
But we CAN try to take more of the responsibility for changing
the status of Women's Studies programs in the respective
colleges and universities in which we teach.  SOMEHOW (and whoever
has any answers to how to accomplish this, PLEASE step forth
and offer your insights to the rest of us) we MUST begin to
change the chronic second-class, underfunded, understaffed
status of Women's Studies within our own colleges and universities
so that we can offer our students educational programs that are
as well thought out, and as well planned, and as well executed,
as what is taken to be the "norm" in every OTHER department in
our institutions.
 
Perhaps we need to start calling administrators' bluffs -- and the
next time they say "Well, if you MUST have that in order to offer
Women's Studies on this campus, then we'll just have to stop
offering it," start putting the responsibility on THEM for
closing down Womens Studies and see if they really have the
guts to do it.  One might HOPE that there are getting to be
enough constituents, trustees, alumna, colleagues, parents, students,
and members of the public who would CRITICIZE the administration
for doing a BAD job if they "closed down Women's Studies" rather
than praising them for doing so (or not even noticing).  Somehow
we need to replace our compensatory individual voluntarism with
an institutional commitment to our programs, or else we will be
continuing to serve ourselves and our students poorly in the
long run.
 
I don't know how - but the time is long overdue, and I think we
are going to have to think of ways.  VERY soon.  Like, yesterday.
 
Ruth Ginzberg
Women's Studies
Beloit College
ginzberg  @  beloit.edu

 
A few more thoughts on this thread...
 
1) Since my TA days in the 1970s, if I had a buck for each time that
I received such comments as "She expects too much reading," "She
expects too much work," or "She grades too hard" on student course
evaluations, I could take a year's leave of absence, buy a small
island, or both. Despite such complaints,
    a) I am often asked by the "A" and "B" students to write
       reference letters or to serve on their honor's thesis
       or Master's thesis committees. My hypothesis is that
       the most ambitious and highly-motivated students
       respect faculty who require them to "stretch"
    b) I've served on NUMEROUS faculty tenure and promotion
       committees where even the (small handful) of faculty
       who require very little reading and work, imho, get
       the same complaints about "He expected too much reading.."
 
2) Regardless of the discipline, students have to "know" chunks of
material. If students are planning to take graduate college board
exams, they HAVE to know sociological theory, methods, and a potpourri
of "stuff" in sociology.
 
3) Even if students aren't planning to go on to graduate school, they'll
be looking for jobs. Diluting the coursework will make them considerably
less competitive in the job market. In fact, I often encourage students to
take "tough" courses because many of the social science research positions
may go to marketing and advertising majors, for example.
 
4) I often remind our students that solid coursework will serve them
well in "doing a good lunch." Thus, the more they read, write, think,
and speak, the better they'll do in applying for jobs, interviewing,
and keeping their jobs. Thus, I constantly encourage our students
to make their coursework a high priority (as several posters have noted),
to go to plays, read all kinds of materials, and write, write, write.
 
5) Although I rarely do it, once in a while I become impatient and
remind my students (but only during office sessions rather than in the
classroom) that not only have most of their faculty come from
backgrounds where they took 18 credits (as undergraduates in the
"dinosaur" days) but also had 20-hour-a-week jobs (though most of
us weren't raising children) and managed to date, court, etc., but
also that many faculty--both female and male--STILL have extremely
busy schedules trying to balance teaching, research, committees,
families, service commitments, etc. Not saying I like all of this,
but...that's life for both students and faculty.
 
6) If community colleges/colleges/universities awarded different
types of degrees, I'd have no problems with changing my course
requirements, grading, etc. accordingly. Thus, for example, if
we had an "almost BA/BS" degree (and that'd be fine with me), I
could decrease the coursework, spend less time with these students,
and be less rigorous in my expectations. Until then, however, I
think we're doing students a dissservice by watering down our
requirements depending on their (or our) marital status, number
of children, caring for elderly parents, divorce or dating problems,
work commitments, serious illness in the family, etc.
 
As an aside--I used to LOVE all my English courses. I used to save
all the reading (novels, plays, maybe less so for poetry--no offense)
until the end of each day because it was a way to "reward" myself after
working on all that dry stuff in the sciences and social sciences.
Please--no flames from faculty in the sciences and social sciences;
all I'm saying is that the various Literature courses were a joy
rather than a burden.
 
niki Benokraitis, Sociology Dept, University of Baltimore
nbenokraitis  @  ubmail.ubalt.edu

 
I have read the posts on this topic with great interest and constantly
find myself thinking about my own teaching experience.  I have taught
introductory music courses for the last five years, some as a TA but
many as an instructor.  If there is a subject that falls at the bottom of
students' lists of priorities it IS music, particularly when it is a survey
course.  Despite this, I refuse to treat my subject any less seriously
for students.  In my first lecture each semester I point out that if this
was a math class they wouldn't be able to be excused by saying "but I
can't add."  They'd be expected to learn.
 
Secondly, I've found that my students take my classes more seriously
and respect what I do and ask them to do if I don't "water" it down.  I am
very honest with them about my expectations, I set out everything in
excruciating detail in the syllabus, and students all know what they have
to do and by when.  Every semester I include essay questions on my exams,
and then make sure my students know how to approach such questions,
and prepare for them so that they will have some level of success.  I've
had to explain almost every semester that I don't do this as a form of
random torture, but in order that they can show me what they have
learned in the class.  Only once has a student complained that this is not
an English class so they shouldn't have to write.  My response was that
writing skills are still highly valued in many careers such a business or
journalism or law, etc., and that if she/he could write fluently and
coherently about music, which is highly abstract and extremely difficult
to describe in words, they could write about anything.
 
For the record, almost all of my students are "non-traditional."  Most of
them are paying their own way through college, and are working one or
more jobs, and raising children.  Given this, I do the work to find the least
expensive text that meets my requirements, and make my office hours
as flexible as possible to meet students' needs.  I was a "traditional" student
but I still worked 2 jobs and it took me 7 years to complete my degree.  I
have often told students this, and they are always surprised.  I think our
students sometimes forget that we were also undergrads at some point,
or maybe they think that we were the kind of undergrad to who success
came easily.  I also make it clear that I realize that life happens,
that sometimes circumstances are such that work doesn't get done and
other things have to take priority over school work.  All I ask of them is
that they let me know so we can make other arrangements for them to
complete the semester successfully.
 
If we are clear about our expectations, and equally clear that we understand
that things get in the way of students meeting them, if we let our students
know that we too had, and continue to have, too much work and not
enough time, I think that the learning partnership can be made a lot easier.
 
I also want to add that if its a choice between four years of full-time school
where the student is stressed and hasn't the time to give their full
attention to anything, or more years of part-time school where students
can actually learn, I'd encourage the student to go part-time.  Many schools
have colleges that offer night classes, and financial aid is available for
part-time and non-traditional students.  Many students who enrol full-time
are never told that this option exists.  The colleges usually carry the name
"general studies" or "continuing ed" but they offer a full BA or BS or
whatever degree and in the case of my institution also offer financial aid.
To not inform our students of such options is, in my view, irresponsible.
 
Sorry to go on at such length, but I spend a lot of time thinking about these
things as I spend most of my time teaching these students.
 
Gillian Rodger
gmrst8  @  vms.cis.pitt.edu

 
This has been a very lively and informative discussion and I think it is
indicative not only of the major changes higher ed is undergoing, but
also of the ways the dominant power structure teaches us to be at odds
with those whom we (ideally) might want to be working with, rather than
against.  This functions, IMHO, to keep us from storming the admin bldgs
or the pres' offices or the Board of Regents' offices _demanding_ that
higher ed be more humane.  Instead, we blame ourselves (something I keep
seeing underlying these contributions), we blame our teachers or our
students, we blame the power structure but not enough to challenge it (as
Ruth, I think, suggested earlier).
 
Anyway, in the interest of putting my two cents in, and because I so
appreciate this level of discussion on the list (and it is the only list
I belong to where I can count on this level of discussion), I wanted to
make a few observations.
 
It is possible for part-time students to get finanacial aid.  The problem
is that the aid amount is often pretty drastically reduced and some forms
of aid are only available to full-timers.  So how about some
organizations/foundations/rich feminists (smile) putting together
scholarships for part-timers?  Next time you're on a committee that is
putting together a scholarship, try bringing this up as an option and see
how far you get.  This, I think, is indicative of the lack of respect in
academe for part-time students.
 
In addition, I am another fan of "letting students know what they're in
for" in my classes.  I always tell them the first day of class: "In case
you haven't heard (& many of them have), I have a rep as being a fairly
hard grader, and I require quite a bit of work in my classes.  I also
give quite a bit a work."  It says on my syllabus "Late work is strongly
discouraged; however, if circumstances cause you to be late with a paper,
please come and speak with me about it as soon as possible."  I haven't
heard the complaints (I do get comments--and I also do a lot of
recommendations and thesis committees and independent studies) in a long
time.
 
It is important to be flexible, I think, for students' "real lives"--when
I get a student with mono (three, currently), with a car accident, with a
death in the family, with a personal crisis (I hear at least three
rape/assault stories each term), I listen, I give sympathy (it's real) &
I give a little bit of extra time to complete assignments.  I also often
try to introduce students who are having problems in class to students
who are excelling (subtly--by putting them in in-class groups together).
I think it is important to be flexible, and everyone who has contributed
to this thread, I think, seems to be expressing that opinion.  It is
important to maintain the distinction between "dumbing down" a course and
maintaining a flexible approach to life.  (I don't schedule in all my own
activities; sometimes I end up coming to class without their exams graded
because my son "forgot to tell" me about an activity at his school.  I
try to give what I'd like to get.)
 
Finally, in response to the students' concerns about grades:
It is also possible to get a _very_ good education, to learn _a lot_ and
to hone critical thinking skills WITHOUT GETTING AN "A."  This might sound
shocking, but I learned at least as much in classes in which I earned a
"C" as in the ones I earned an "A" in.  Frankly, there were a few courses
in which I earned an "A" that required very little thinking/learning.  I
got the "A" because the work wasn't hard, not because I worked hard.
However, in some of the responses on the list, I have noted a
preoccupation with that "A"--understandable, I might add, in light of our
culture's focus on superficial signs of success, rather than on success
itself.  I, too, was focused on those "A" grades (and suffered
emotionally when I didn't get 'em).  If I had to do it all over again (an
impossibility, since I am over $75,000 in debt for my degrees), I would
"choose" a grade-goal for each class and stick with it.  My choices would
be based on: whether I thought I could, with hard work and reasonable
commitment, get that grade (since I tend to be an overachiever, I don't
think this criterion would lead me to lower my standards, just to forgive
myself more!); whether the course work was extremely interesting to me,
only mildly interesting, etc. (of course, all courses are interesting &
important--I'd just be prioritizing); and whether the course was in any
way related to my goals for my life.  No offense meant to anyone in the
business world, but those hours I spent in agony trying to raise my grade
in macro- & micro economics courses may well have been better spent if I
had "shared" that time between the coursework (I never did get better
than a "C" anyway) and doing some kind of personally-satisfying volunteer
work or something.  I would expect that someone working toward an MIS
degree might not prioritize the work in my classes (media studies,
women's studies, ethnic studies, etc.) over their major courses.  Does
this mean that I don't think they should be in my classes? NO! It does
mean, however, that if a student has a paper in my class due on the same
day as a major exam, and if she comes & talks to me about it (and if she
hasn't been having this problem on a regular basis), I probably will not
penalize her paper if it is a little late.  I try to encourage my
students to think of college as "real life"--not as a prelude to real
life.  College is a job.  If you do less work at your job, you get less
"return" (in terms of $, promotions, satisfaction, etc.).  If you have a
real life crisis, it interrupts your job.  That's the way it is.  but we
can work through it, together, I tell them.  And, so far, we always have.
 
Best to all,
Jeannie
 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=Jeannie Ludlow=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
                   jludlow  @  bgnet.bgsu.edu
"I wish more people would share the ways of the grandmothers.  I think it
would help the present world situation if we all learned to value and
respect the ways of the grandmothers--our own as well as everyone else's."
                          --Beverly Hungry Wolf (Blood/Blackfoot)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

 
To follow up on my own previous post, as well as on this informative
list discussion:  the point I skirted but clearly did not succeed in
making is that quantity does not necessarily equal quality.  I have found
students retain more, learn to think more actively and critically, and
work harder if they are asked to focus intensely on readings that we can
completely cover in discussion.  Thus, what benefits working students
actually also benefits the entire class.  It's not a "dumming-down" of
the curriculum, but a heightening of its intensity.
Jo Ellen Green Kaiser jgkais00  @  ukcc.uky.edu

 
>        So, how does this relate to course work? Well, let's say it takes 5
>courses a semester at 3 credits each to complete the credits in four years.
>And each course expects 100 pages of reading, a midterm, a final and 2 short
>or 1 long paper a semester. Go and multiply that by five. That's 15 hours in
>class, 15 hours out of class for the weekly work and another 10 for the
>semester length work. Well now we're up to forty hours for a good academic
>effort. How do you suppose we manage a 32 hr a week job on top of that?
 
    While there have been many many excellent answers to Carrie's argument
about coursework.  I just wanted to add that I do not consider the 40 hour
week to be excessive when students are taking a full load of classes.  Indeed,
the expectation is slightly low; I tell my students that they should expect
at LEAST two hours preparation time for each hour spent in class.  And indeed
I remember reading somewhere that this is the normal expectation for classes.
With a 20 hour a week job this is stressful; with a 30 hour a week job you
will end up making trade-offs some of which are not pleasant or fair.  But
what amazes me is the expectation of students that it is the responsibility
of professors to change the amount they teach to fit student lifestyles.
That energy would be better focused changing the structural factors (low
government support of education) which require that they work the 32 hour
a job week in the first place.  However, I agree with many others that have
already written that this does a student a disservice if we lower our
expectations of them.  This is not to say that we should not reexamine the
material we assign if we cannot cover it all or adequately in class.  I
have reduced my reading load on occasion because the class simply did not
have adequate time to discuss the piece and because I did not feel the
extra reading was SO essential that students should be required to digest it
on their own.  However, in some cases, I often do require students to read
and know things we do not discuss in class; it depends on the centrality of
the reading to the course.
      Another author noted that reading loads are often lighter in other
countries and asked for comment.  I have taken courses in Germany and Switzerla
nd and taught in Malaysia so while not an insider, I do have a perspective
on how things work in a few select countries.  While it is true that German
and Swiss students have lower reading loads for their courses, coursework
is not all that is required in order to acquire a degree.  In both countries,
there are exams at the end of the college career that are **comprehensive**.
So professors often require little reading in the courses but hand out
LARGE bibliographies which the students are expected to have read and
comprehended by the exam.  Overall, then, I do not think that students end
up reading less (certainly not in Germany or Switzerland) but they read
less as a requirement for coursework.  I cannot speak to the British system
but I suspect that it is somewhat similar.
     Lee Ann Banaszak
     Penn State University
     LAB14  @  PSUVM.PSU.EDU

 
One issue this thread has not addressed is the comparatively high quality of
those very non-traditional students who are so stressed out by multiple
expectations (family, jobs, school, and the continual unexpected crises of
all of the above).
 
If I did not know better and were reading this thread, I might get the idea
that the very best students are the 18-22-year-olds who have their tuition
paid and can spend all their time on school and socializing, and that the
non-trad. students are marginally able, because of their outside issues, to
complete their work.
 
Quite the opposite, as I am sure you all agree!!  Even if my classes are
absolutely jam-crammed full, and an older student wants to get in, I will
invariably sign them in, because of the effect they have on the whole class.
 Especially in Women's Studies this is true, as they, with their real-life
experiences (including hitting some of the "brick walls" the younger students
don't even yet know or believe are there), and their willingness to say what
they think, provide a leavening for the whole class, encouraging discussion
and raising the level of the whole experience.  Further, These students,
because they value the educations they are struggling so hard to achieve,
work the hardest, write often the best papers, and care the most about what
they are doing.
 
I am reading with interest the debate about how much to assign, and I don't
have a response there, but I wanted us to clarify that these older students,
far from being "the problem,"  are a cause for real celebration!
 
Ellie Amico

 
Let me echo and add to some of the comments about "too much to read."  I
am a full time student and a full time instructional aide in the
public school system.  I know I have a certain amount of time to get my
work done, and realistically know that each week I may not get to all of
my readings/assignments, but this is not my professors' faults.  Earlier
in my career as a student(when I was a more "traditional" student working
only 15-20 hours a week), I did complain about having too much work and
probably blamed the professors I had, but it is an issue of discipline
and maturity, not of adjusting a sylabus to fit my schedule.  I think the
best thing that professors can do for students in this situation is an
understanding insistence that they complete a reasonable assignment each
week. (I have wonderful professors who understand that I am carrying a
lot on my tray, and although I expect to be held accountable for the
work and material, they show a great deal of compassion when I fall
short of the mark.) It is a big adjustment for some students in college
(I know you all know this already), but sometimes you gotta sink or swim.
I sure know my *boss* is not willing to make my job easier because I
just don't have (make?) time to complete my duties, I hope my
professors will be equally demanding of my potential.
 
Lise Schlosser
lschloss  @  niu.edu

 
I had been reading this thread (as a graduate student and composition
instructor) with some interest and sympathy for students.  I feel that
student rights is an often overlooked subject.  (I had a friend who wrote a
paper about the student movement in France in 1968 that a professor called
"tediously jejeune"--I read it; it was no such thing, if there is such a
thing.)
 
But today one of my students told me he didn't want to think.  He said
there should be more teachers so more material could be covered in depth in
courses.  When I asked questions meant to help him clarify, specify and
expand his paper, his response was, "I don't want to think."  My
composition class has *NO* outside reading.
 
Watching the rapid degeneration,
 
Nikki Senecal
senecal  @  chaph.usc.edu
"If you buy either Clinton or Dole, you get the other one free."
                                -- Herman Leder, The Nation Letters

Organization: The University of Birmingham

 
There are some interesting things being said in this debate but I fear that
they are being mixed up.
 
1) are we trying to teach too much?
 
this isn't about 'dumbing down' but about recognizing the limits of the
particular course we teach and the fact that students do several courses
during their degree. Why do we all feel the need to include everything in
all our courses rather than just being honest about the limits and pointing
students in the direction of other courses which might cover other things?
Ruth's comments about needing to plan Women's studies minors/majors/etc. as
coherent groups of courses seem very important here
 
By the way, in Britain we now commonly get some training in teaching and
learning issues when we begin an academic career. One of the things I
learned from this is that trying to do too much is very common. I have taken
a personal decision to try not to do this. I'd rather focus on what students
actually come out with than how much material I put in. If they don't
remember much or they can't distinguish different positions then it doesn't
matter how many different positions we have covered.
 
2) reading and writing:
 
Who says only literature is about 'how' you read (rather than content) and
that writing skills are not an integral part of ANY degree? Maybe the reason
a BA doesn't get you very far in the job market these days is that employers
are recognizing it doesn't stand for what they thought it did. For the most
part is employers are looking for students with humanities or social science
degrees they don't want specialized knowledge they want an ability to
communicate ideas effectively; an ability to sift information, selecting
what's useful; an ability to work with minimal supervision; etc. If we don't
make students do these things in an academic context when do they learn
them?
 
By the way, throwing the blame onto an inadequate secondary schooling system
and then excusing them for their inability to write coherently PENALIZES
students later on! Do we honestly believe that they are going to get and
keep the kind of jobs they want without those skills? June Jordon has an
excellent article about this (and the politics of the reduction in literacy
skills) in the collection _Moving Towards Home_. The piece is called
"Problems of Language in a Democratic State_. All of us, particularly in
women's studies, should think about the political implications of not
requiring students to improve their reading and writing skills.
 
3) full-time education
 
While I sympathise with students who need to work while studying full-time,
I think it IS irresponsible for us to assume that a full-time education is
less than full-time. Full-time education, IMHO, should be 35-40 hours per
week of work. If students have to do a full-time or almost full-time job on
top of that it is regretable but the solution is not to require less than
full-time commitment to their education. A secretary in my department
recently had to take on another job to make ends meet. She didn't even
presume to ask us to reduce her hours of work without reducing her pay in
order to better enable her to juggle two jobs. And I bet none of you would
even consider such a thing if a member of the administrative staff in your
department did the same. So why do we think it is reasonable for full-time
students to ask for a reduction in their hours (and their responsibilities)
without a consequent drop in the benefits? WE are not (individually)
responsible for the underfunding of education! Fighting to change things
might help. I have been known to tell students to write to their Member of
Parliament about these problems as s/he was in more of a position to do
something about it. Encouraging students to get politically active would
also be a good idea.
 
Well there we go. The UK system doesn't have the chronic problems of the US
system at the level of individual students but it is going that way. Our
students increasingly have to work and part-time options are not widely
available. I would warn the woman who made the comparison with Cambridge not
to BELIEVE that British students are getting a better education. There is a
powerful cultural myth in the UK that US higher education is worthless but
my students don't write well either and they don't want to do the work and
there are serious drawbacks to the fact that they specialize at age 16 down
to 3 subjects. And women's studies suffers the same institutional problems
though it has never been strong at the undergraduate level anyway (mostly
masters level).
 
Sorry for rabbiting on so much.
 
Dr. Jo VanEvery
Dept. of Cultural Studies
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
United Kingdom
 
0121-414-3730
 
J.Van-Every  @  bham.ac.uk