Flogging a Dead Horse: Enrollments

[David Powelstock]

I promise that this is my last "contribution" to this "thread."

Bobick:
> Somehow I do not think we are understanding eachother here.  All I was
> proposing is that by expanding Slavic Language departments to be more
> encompassing, and seeking to maximize *aggregate* enrollments, Slavic
Language
> Departments could become more healthy.  This proposition depends on the
> assumption that greater enrollment equals greater funding for a
department.
> I.e. if your enrollment dropped 45% in 6 years, then yes you are (and
should)
> be downsized.  If you can get enrollments back up then you should receive
> more funding and be able to hire more faculty members.  How best to get
the
> enrollment up?  Focus just on Russian courses or focus on all your
courses?
> This is where we disagree (I think).

This *is* where we disagree, and is also where Mr. Bobick's lack of
knowledge of our field is revealed.  "All your courses" is right: the
courses that can be offered without resorting to hiring new faculty.  You
cannot convince a dean to hire someone to each entirely new subjects merely
by promising that the students will come.  (Which they probably won't for
(e.g.) Ukrainian, unless you have an ENTIRE Ukrainian program that rivals,
say, Harvard's.  That requires SEVERAL faculty members, probably prominent
ones, across multiple departments.)  Once (and only once) you have the
enrollments up in existing courses, you have an argument for expansion that
an administration can understand.  You build on your strengths.

Bobick:
> As for elimination of faculty and downsizing, I guess you'd need to keep
> (and hire) faculty with skills in greater than 1 Slavic Language, as well
as
> look into other options (hiring lecturers, or using graduate students to
> teach 1st year courses in Slavic Languages other than Russian).

Almost every department with a grad program uses grad students to teach
1st-year language (including Russian).  But they, too, must be paid.  And a
first-year language course does not help much when there is no one to teach
more advanced and intriguing courses in literature, history, and culture.
To do this on a regular basis requires several full-time faculty members.
(To keep hiring visitors to maintain a program ends up being more, not less
expensive than full-time faculty, who can be expected to fulfill other
functions.)   And there are not many of them available in the less
frequently taught Slavic languages.  (I know.  I've been on search
committees for three years.)  Another basic misunderstanding is that you
are imagining a much greater student demand than actually exists.  Even
hiring a grad student to teach a language to a handful of students does not
work out financially.  Students who want to study, say, Ukrainian, have to
find their way to the places that offer it.  To sum up: there are very few
students chasing very few qualified teachers, whom there is very little
money to pay.  In a tight economy, specialization, not diversification is
the way to survive.  I doubt there is a Slavist out there who wouldn't love
to see his/her department teach all the Slavic languages.  The point is, it
can't happen.  At least not now, or in the near future.

Bobick:
At UCSD,
> we had lecturers for several Computer Science courses: often they did not
> have PhD's...

That's fine in a field like C.S., where training can be acquired outside of
the academy (eg in industry), but not feasible in Slavic Departments.
Sure, we can find people to teach first-, maybe second-year language, but
that's not a program.  The student might as well go to Berlitz.  Or better
yet, to one of the centers where the there is a critical mass of the
relatively few students and scholars specializing in that language and
culture.

Bobick:
> I never advocated elimination of Russian *anywhere*.

Nor did I mean to imply that you had.  My point was that Russian has the
greatest demand, and the health of other Slavic curricula in the US depends
to a large degree on the health of Russian programs.  Thus you will find
Slavists on SEELANGS discussing Russian enrollments with great interest.
You will also find Slavists discussing enrollments in other Slavic courses.
 What you will find most of all, however, are Slavists discussing the best
ways to maintain and improve their programs.  These are professionals who
are aware of the constraints they face, even if they do not always make
them explicit enough for an outsider to understand.  What you will probably
never find is a Russianist who would not like to see his/her program to be
broadened to include other Slavic languages and cultures.  But you can't
get blood from a stone.  On this Perot-esque note, I retire from the
calling of cyber-knight-errantry.