INTERNATIONAL advancing knowledge and teaching, the Humanities is not only a baruse new media in our classes; rather, we cannot employ these new gain, but also a profit-generating entity. Massive cuts in the Humanitechnologies to completely replace in-class instruction. ties instructional budget are not only destructive to the core mission In one of the most dubious parts of this report, the writers claim that of the University; they are also financially unjustifiable. the turn to online writing instruction will actually save money and jobs: According to this analysis, Writing Programs generates a large Online learning offers the potential to achieve several concrete goals: profit for the Humanities, and any cut to this program would be improvement in students’ time-to-degree; a lessening of pressure in destructive to the core mission and financially unjustifiable; however, overcrowded classrooms; the generation of funds in order to save the report fails to mention that all of the faculty in the Writing Prolecturers’ positions; and the emergence of UCLA as the leader in topgrams have been given one-year layoff notices. While we expect that quality, i.e., not cut-price, distance education. some of these layoffs will be rescinded, the current plan is to replace First of all, if you move courses to summer and online, you will not many of the lecturers with graduate students and faculty from other need any lecturers, except for the ones you hire on the cheap during programs. the summer. Second of all, the reason why online programs cost so In one of the only other mentions of writing instruction in the report, much is that they require a tremendous amount of equipment, staff, the authors actually suggest placing faculty from other departments electricity, and administration; moreover, most studies of online eduwho continue to have low workloads into writing classes: cation show that these programs hurt the ability of students to gradFaculty whose courses are insufficiently enrolled could be assigned uate on time because so many students drop out or do not complete to appropriate courses in the Humanitheir courses. ties Institute, The Language Center, Perhaps the most noxious part of ...by moving half of the courses to or the Writing Programs (as is already this plan is the idea to force students the case in at least one department). to pay extra to fulfil their language summer, UCLA would be able to lay Department chairs will be responsicourses in the summer: off all of its language instructors, and ble for making such assignments, and Because many students might then hire these faculty members back for assuring that faculty teaching in prefer to avoid the added expense without benefits and at much lower the writing program are sufficiently of summer study, a respectful hiertrained through the program’s pedaarchy would need to be established salaries. gogy course. among participants. If languages In this structure, teaching in the were indeed offered year-round, Writing Programs would be the ultimate threat to tenured professors. it would be only fair to give Majors and Pre-Majors in the relevant Here we see how the most popular and profitable program at UCLA departments first choice during the school year. Language instrucis represented as the worst form of punishment for underutilised faction that is traditionally oversubscribed, such as Chinese and Spanish, ulty. could require transfer or ‘external’ students from other departments to Not only does this task force suggest moving language courses to satisfy their language requirements during the summer. the summer and online, but it lists over a hundred high-enrolment I believe this passage is positing that students who are not majorcourses from all over the curriculum that could be shifted to the ing in a specific language would have to take the course during the summer. If the university actually followed the advice of this report, summer or some other program that requires payment. Instead of we would see most of the required undergraduate courses placed students being able to study their home language at UCLA, they online, and students would have to pay extra for the privilege of would now have to pay extra for the privilege of language instruction. taking these classes of questionable quality. One of the justifications for this move is that the high-enrolment classes already suffer from a low level of quality: ...most of our GE/Lower-Division students have some experience of As language instruction gets squeezed, the plan is to set up a new classes that are so big, they’d be better off watching a video performHumanities Institute and develop a new major in Digital Humanities. ance, a close-up broadcast that is paused and (re)considered at their While these programs might seem like good ways of rethinking the own pace. The bigger classes often offer no contact with the profeshumanities, these new initiatives would surely cost a large amount sor, in any case. Hence the number of students in the back row(s) of money, and one has to question why UCLA is pursuing a policy of ‘taking notes’ on their laptops, many of whom are actually polishing eliminating all lecturers due to budgetary concerns as it embarks on their Facebook profiles. projects that require new administrators, faculty, and staff. Further(The same students, no doubt, also wish they were at home, watchmore, the report reveals that the humanities have been kept afloat by ing a popular BruinCast of the same information. This is an online protheir reliance on courses taught by lecturers, but now they are going gram, in fact, that is now so popular it has caused lecture attendance to eliminate their own cash cow: to decrease!). Humanities generating over $59 million in student fee revenue, while In other words, large lecture classes already provide such a poor spending only $53.5 million (unlike the Physical Sciences, which come level of instruction and interaction that we might as well move the up several million dollars short in this category). Writing Programs whole thing online. It is amazing that these thoughtful advocates of alone generate $4.3 million dollars in fee revenue at a cost of only $2.4 the Humanities are actually recommending the destruction of higher million. These profits will increase as student fees increase; they would education and effective undergraduate instruction. A be even greater if we figured in a share of the over-enrolment subBob Samuels’ blog c http://changinguniversities.blogspot.com/ sidies due from the state. In pursuing our vital, non-profit mission of
Killing off a cash cow
MARCH 2010 www.nteu.org.au
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