If a major at a college are filled to capacity, with more students wanting to get into the major, what is preferable for the college to do?
Common examples of such majors are nursing, engineering (usually at popular state flagships), computer science, and business, but could also include other majors (including some popular liberal arts majors).
A. Have frosh/transfer applicants apply specifically to the major, with higher admission standards than the school overall. What space that becomes available due to subsequent attrition can be offered to major-changers through a competitive secondary admission process. (Some schools offer applicants rejected from the major admission in a second choice major or undeclared, while others reject entirely if not admitted from the major.)
B. Have frosh/transfer applicants apply to general admission or pre-major status, admitting more interested students than the major can hold, but weed some of them out of the major by requiring a high college GPA or competitive secondary admission process later.
C. Combination of A and B, where some space in the major are filled by admission to the major, but other space (beyond the space that becomes available by attrition) are available for students admitted to general admission or pre-major status to compete for.
(Some schools may use different methods for frosh versus transfer applicants.)
A is preferable for students because at least they know they have access to that major for sure.
B is preferable for the schools because they can over admit good students, and then try to nudge them into other majors.
Interesting that you don’t include the option:
D. Hire more faculty and run more sections of courses so that students can choose (and switch) majors with greater freedom.
That would be ideal but that would cost money unless they fire professors from departments with declining student enrollment. This is probably not possible if the faculty have tenure. Also, beyond a certain point, the schools may not wish or be able to expand certain departments. Intro class enrollments in some departments may begin to exceed the capacity of their large lecture halls, laboratories, etc. Also, the school may see value in offering a larger array of majors rather than cutting the least popular programs to expand the popular ones.
One doesn’t really affect the other. The declining departments are going to continue to decline regardless of whether other departments expand. Expansion would need to be planned so that it covered its own costs and the long-term forecast for sustaining the expansion would need to be strong.
Hiring justifications typically take place at the department level, not across the school.
There are some ways to eliminate tenured positions based on declining enrollment, but it’s not simple. It would then free money to move from one department to the other, so that would make it easier.
New administrators are hired at the drop of a hat. There is no reason why students should suffer in their choices of majors. Education should be the central purpose of a university, and the large introductory lecture classes in many of the most popular majors are not particularly expensive to run. It’s all a question of balancing priorities in spending, and IMO spending priorities at colleges and universities have been askew for many years now and are doing a disservice to undergraduate education.
It’s not even a matter of hiring faculty but of getting enough grad students of high enough quality to meet the grad school standards to meet the demand for TA’s.
That can be a long term solution, but changes in student demand for a given major (either up or down) can happen much more quickly than tenure track faculty positions can be made and hired (or eliminated through retirement/attrition in a declining department).
Well, if A and B are really the only options, I’m going with B. Eighteen year olds change their minds. I hate the model that insists teens decide RIGHT NOW what their major is. Run the major admissions process once, after the potential majors have had some exposure to the coursework.
Personally, I think it’s preferable for there to be a variety.
Then kids who are sure of a major can go for schools with guaranteed major or guaranteed choice and those who aren’t can decide to go elsewhere.
As it stands at the UCs right now, I would only recommend my child go to an Engineering program with A because there is no guarantee/little chance of getting in an engineering major otherwise. That reasoning would also apply to L&S CS at Berkeley. However, if B was more like Virginia Tech where you’re pretty much in at least some engineering major, I would feel better about that option:
Degree granting engineering majors accept applicants on a space-available basis
- Students must have a minimum 2.0 overall GPA at the time of application.
- Students with a minimum 3.0 overall Virginia Tech GPA at the time of application are guaranteed
their first choice major.
- Students below a 3.0 overall Virginia Tech GPA at the time of application will be rank ordered
according to their GPA and placed in their first, second, or third choice based on space availability.
Popularity of a major is not a good criteria to use for making decisions about growth of a department. The size of the department should be based on a consideration of a range of factors, some of which include the societal need-not student interest.
As a parent, I prefer A. I expect/anticipate a competitive process for the most popular majors and would prefer rejection at the start of the four-year journey rather than in the middle. There’s more runway for pursuing another career path.
UCLA does B and it sucks. Both of the majors my D is interested in are impacted (limited enrollment). She has to declare sophomore year but then what do we do if she doesn’t get in to either? From research it looks like both majors are highly competitive with very low admit rates. And they’re humanities majors, go figure.
Re #10
Note that UCB EECS (and other CoE majors) does A. UCB L&S CS (and other L&S majors) do B, although only a few popular majors are oversubscribed (CS (3.3), economics (3.0), psychology (3.2), art practice, and a few others). UCB business does B.
Note that, several years ago, L&S CS was an open major (2.0 needed to enter). Enrollment has shot up rapidly since then.
Some colleges have endowed professorships. In that case, even declining enrollment in a major doesn’t necessarily mean the money can be reassigned to other majors.
With the rapid decline of tenure-track positions anyway, it isn’t so much a matter of investing in long-term tenure-track faculty hiring for popular majors (which would indeed be a bigger investment), but rather shorter term hires (visiting professorships, three year lectureships, graduate TA’s etc.) for temporary increases in popular majors. Then if the increase proves to be more than temporary, more long-term hiring solutions can be considered.
That’s a wonderful idea, but reality is if you can’t fill enough seats to pay for classes, you can’t pay salaries. Schools shouldn’t just chase the popular major, but they do have to consider the ROI of offering declining majors. Personally I agree that societal need should be a factor, but in reality that doesn’t pay the bills.
Took the words out of my mouth.