In theory, a well endowed school can hire more faculty (as well as build enough facilities) to cover the expected student demand for the courses and have enough headroom for typical yearly fluctuations.
Generally, it appears that restrictions on majors are due to capacity limitations. An example at Berkeley is the computer science major in its College of Letters and Science. Prior to the early 2000s, it was a restricted major that required a GPA higher than 2.0 in its prerequisites to declare. Popularity dropped after the tech bubble crash, so from the early 2000s, it was effectively non-restricted, with the GPA requirement being dropped to 2.0 in its prerequisites to declare. More recently, surging popularity* resulted in it becoming a restricted major again, with the GPA requirement being raised to 3.0 a few years ago, and again raised to 3.3 for students starting fall 2015.
*Introductory CS courses for CS majors grew to over 1,000 at Berkeley, and over 700 at Stanford and Harvard.
But they can’t just hire willy nilly. Many on CC already complain about adjuncts or TA’s. FT hiring means salary, benefits, some expectation of continued teaching work, and the support profs get for their own research. They need office space, not just an id card and a roster. Then, what do you do with those folks when demand goes down? Or shifts?
I am an alumni ambassador for Case Western and I make sure to point out the One Door Admission policy…no having to get into the “business school” or the “engineering school”…you can major in whatever you want (obviously starting with the pre-req in your major of choice).
I am in the process of trying to understand what the requirements are to get admitted to the Chem E major at Wisconsin and at least as an outsider who is not familiar with the details and processes at Wisconsin, it seems complicated.
I am glad you started this thread. I think that it is important to sort this type of thing out so that when you begin at a school, you understand the requirements from day one, and not find out that you can’t get in to the major you want after you are there for a year.
My next question is how achievable a 3.5 in math and science courses is at Wisconsin. I think it makes a big difference whether it is 80% of Wisconsin engineering frosh that achieve a 3.5 and get admitted to engineering, or only 20%.
I don’t know how you would find this out - you might ask the school - but it could be 85% of students who have taken most or all of the freshman STEM classes in their AP version and/or scored above a 750 on their math SAT, and a lower percentage of students with less impressive credentials.
I am wondering if schools track these sorts of things. A while back I talked with a WWP parent (to reference another thread) who mentioned that her S barely needed to show up in class to ace his calc 3 and diff eq classes since he had already learned the material in high school. Large state flagship with impressive engineering rankings.
Note that most of the engineering majors at Wisconsin have lower GPA thresholds than 3.5 core / 3.0 overall to gain admission to the major.
Note also that Wisconsin’s grading system does not use +/-, but has half-step grades. For example, between A and B grades, there is an AB grade that is 3.5, rather than A- = 3.7 and B+ = 3.3 grades.
Doesn’t the UW-Madison GPA thresholds seem a little odd? I can understand the 3.5 GPA for Biomedical (wanting candidates that have a good chance of going on to a professional or grad school), and a 3.5 for ChemE (UW has one of the best programs in the nation), but the 3.5 requirement for Engineering Physics? UW-Madison only awarded one BS in Engineering Physics in 2014-15, that 3.5 GPA requirement can’t be due to resource limits. How about the 2.8 GPA for EE? That’s lower than Computer, Nuclear, Mechanics and Material engineering (all fairly small programs).