The Dean floated the possibility that we’ll soon have an automated course scheduling system, and I almost cried with joy. It won’t help me because I built my last departmental schedule in March but it’s still a relief.
In theory, it was good that we were in control of our own schedule. But in reality, I spent 6 years having to schedule almost all of our courses into the same time slot at noon on MW. Our enrollments are in the toilet because students reasonably say, “I’d love to major in Spanish but it will take me ten years to graduate, so I can’t.” Because everything is MW at noon, including large required courses.
Everybody is going to bitch that this is yet another glitchy, expensive automated system and that it’s soulless and inconvenient. The administration is bad, it’s evil, it doesn’t respect faculty. But what’s the alternative? If people refuse to accept MWF at 10 and 11 am, which students love and enroll massively, then what’s the administration going to do?
There are no morning courses on the MW schedule. MW courses start at noon. This means that for instructors who teach 4 courses per semester, the last course on the MW schedule will end at 5:45. Students don’t enroll in such courses because our students work in the evenings. You think I’d be able to explain this simple fact.
“Why do you keep scheduling me so late? It’s unfair!! Nobody enrolls!!!”
“Would you accept an MWF schedule? Because MW means noon to 5:45.”
“No! But 5:45 is too late. Nobody will enroll!”
Of course, nobody enrolls. The program is dying. The Academic Scheduling hates my department for this shit. The Dean hates us.
(We can’t do TTh for almost anything because TTh is when the School of Education schedules its courses and we can’t coincide with them because, again, students won’t be able to enroll and won’t go into the program.)
I proposed many times that we take turns on the MW. One semester colleague A gets it. The next semester colleague B does. Nope. Didn’t work. Nobody agreed. I’ve tied myself in knots to help students advance to degree completion by offering endless equivalencies, letting them count all sorts of extraneous courses in lieu of Spanish and French. “How come you are letting these students graduate in Spanish when they took so little Spanish?” the Dean asks. Yes, I know, it’s nuts but what am I supposed to do?
Sorry for the long rant but when I heard about the plan to automate this process, I experienced extraordinary joy. I hate excessive automation. I hate the destruction of academic self-governance but we are bringing this on ourselves. We really do.
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