Interesting charts

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Wisconsin
1

<p>Popularity of majors over time 1989-2008. Also a way to find majors that might have smaller classes.</p>

<p><a href="http://apa.wisc.edu/Charts%20of%20undergraduate%20majors.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://apa.wisc.edu/Charts%20of%20undergraduate%20majors.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

2

<p>Thanks. The data is fun to explore. Deciding one’s major based on its popularity will havew no effect on the class size for those upper level courses- they will have more sections if there are more students. Too few students and a course may be dropped or only offered every other semester. Undecided seniors- note that students can get senior status semesters ahead if they have sufficient AP classes. Some interesting peaks and valleys of popularity over the years. Note the scales vary (vertical axis) when trying to compare different charts.</p>

3

<p>No, you are wrong. Most depts will keep the same number of faculty and teach the same sections whether they get 10 or 40 people. That’s the way UW works. It takes a long time for positions to get moved from one dept to another. Tenure you know.</p>

4

<p>You look at a major like biomedical engineering and you see very rapid growth. One wonders how they accomodate that. Or don’t - do they just limit enrollment until capacity is there?</p>

5

<p>Up to the dept. Some are quick to limit majors and others just suck it up and hope to get more profs. BME is a very new major area and should have some growth in profs built into the plan. Usually they have to wait for some declining dept to have a prof retire and then they can move the position over. The total number of full-time profs has been pretty level at UW for decades it seems. The take up the slack with adjuncts as many now do.</p>

6

<p>Wrong, barrons. The timetable will show one section for some courses, 2 for others and many more for others- see math majors courses for an example. Some upper level courses are not offered every semester. The point is that the chart may show only a few majors in a field, but that field may not have as many course options as a more popular major. You could get stuck with not getting a choice of times or professors. Nothing to do with number of professors, but no reason to have many sections if there is no demand.</p>