SF State Policy Cancels Under-enrolled Courses

GOLDEN GATE XPRESS -- According to interim Provost Jennifer Summit, whose office is in control of course scheduling, the practice of terminating “under-enrolled” classes was stated in a memo from 1983, which defined under-enrollment as less than 13 students enrolled in lower division courses, 10 in upper division and five for graduate classes. “By closing low-demand courses, we try to redirect the funding so we can offer more high-demand courses for the students who need them,” said Summit. “It’s an inexact science, but we’ve recently adopted an analytics platform that will allow us to do a more accurate job predicting student course demand so we’ll know how many sections of which courses to offer long before they appear on the schedule.”Summit stated in an email that the University does not keep a list of classes that have been Summit stated in an email that the University does not keep a list of classes that have been canceled. While it is difficult to predict how many students are going to enroll in courses, professor Lucia Volk says that class enrollment criterion has shifted away from determining the value of a course by its content to an evaluation of enrollment figures only. In Volk’s opinion, this change in policy led to a “practice of canceling classes that were deemed ‘under-enrolled.’” “It led to situations where courses were pulled the week before classes started,” said Volk. “Professors were reassigned last minute…and lecturers lost the courses they had prepared to teach (and the income they expected to get).”