Innovation does not equal high enrollment

There are just so many examples of how institutions undermine themselves, despite their best intentions. In the era of budget cuts, administrators have become more concerned than ever with maintaining high enrollments. So now some universities have begun a review of courses in order to eliminate the “under-enrolled.” Missing in much of the discussion about course enrollment is a consideration of course content.

A common distinction, in graduate courses, is made between courses that are listed, and often required, by the department bulletin and “special topic” courses which are taught by faculty interested in developing a new research topic. These “special topic” courses have been targeted increasingly because they are under-enrolled. However, the low enrollment in such courses does not indicate that these courses are unimportant or uninteresting. In fact this year’s special topics course may become a requirement in five years, it’s just that no one can predict that today.

Special topic seminars are, in my experience, where the new research happens. Every literature department can fill a course on Romanticism, but not everyone is willing to take a course on race theory in German Idealism. Just wait though a few more years, and those handful of students who took the race theory course will be publishing up a storm. The Romanticism students will probably be following in their tracks. Yes, its more pleasant to discuss Wordsworth crossing the Alps than the Haitian Revolution. But if we pause a little, we will find that of course Wordsworth has a few things to say about slavery in the Caribbean and before you know it we have dissertations on race theory in Romanticism—here’s the point though. The race theory class was first presented as a “special topics” course, something outside the mainstream curriculum, an innovation, an experiment, a professor’s first attempt at laying out a long and complex argument. Someday we may all think Wordsworth’s most daring poem was dedicated to Toussaint L’Ouverture. But you heard it first in a “special topics” seminar.

So if you want a university that innovates, that does not fall back on the familiar, a university that grows and develops new research, please, dear high-level administrators, do not cut the special topics seminars, just because they are under enrolled.