With homework piling up and final exams looming, Dartmouth students have one more problem on their minds: getting into Fall term classes. With the deadline for course registration rapidly approaching, oversubscription, the problem of students being denied acceptance to classes due to a limit, is not far from many students' minds.
Disregarding smaller writing and language classes, this year 3 to 3.5 percent of the total enrolled students were rejected from their preferred courses for this reason during the first two "shopping" weeks of the term.
"This is an issue that I've been thinking about ever since I've come into the deanery," Dean of the Faculty Carol Folt said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "In the last five years, that total number hasn't changed."
Since 2000, the economics department has increased its enrollments by 10 percent, its faculty by 12 percent and its courses by 15 percent, yet it remains one of Dartmouth's most oversubscribed departments.
Although the most frequently oversubscribed department is studio art, 80 percent of the oversubscriptions this year have come from the departments of Dartmouth's most popular majors: economics, government, history and psychological and brain sciences. Approximately 10 percent of students who try to enroll in classes in these departments do not get in due to oversubscription, though Folt noted that other popular courses in other departments often draw students for other reasons.
"The reason some courses are oversubscribed is because you have somebody like Peter Saccio teaching Shakespeare, and it's already pretty big, but everybody wants that class," Folt said. "That class is always going to be oversubscribed because we can't have Peter do it more."
Folt noted that in this case, the only solution to the problem is expanding class size, an action that many professors are hesitant to take.
Bruce Sacerdote '90, an economics professor who recently expanded one of his smaller classes beyond its limit, acknowledged that oversubscription is an issue at Dartmouth, and he also noted the problem of requirements.
"You wouldn't believe the number of [professor] recruits we talked to in the last few months in our attempts to alleviate the problem," he said. "But we need to give these '05s the ability to graduate, and so the students understand that they need to take a little bit of a loss on that, and I am completely willing to be a few students over in order to help these students get their degree."
"We're delighted that there's a lot of student interest, and we like to think that this reflects well on the quality of our courses," said Anne Sa'adah, chair of the government department. "Our ambition would be to take all this raw interest in the students who want to take those courses and make sure that that raw interest is going to give them a good education when they get out."
Sa'adah believes overcrowding in the government department has more complicated causes than just student enthusiasm. According to Sa'adah, oversubscription is also borne from a lack of professors and courses, the D-Plan's uneven distribution of students on campus and a set of major requirements that results in some students taking classes that aren't representative of their interests.
"There are a lot of kids who want to take the international relations courses, and it's stunning how many don't understand what international relations is about. We have a number of upperclass majors who have taken the classes and are still clueless," Sa'adah said, noting that the government department is currently restructuring the major so that students may focus their studies on their interests more easily.
"Hopefully [that] will help students chase their interests rather than check off boxes on a requirement form," she said.
"This sounds like we're making excuses, but at Dartmouth we have no evidence that anyone has not been able to get enough courses for their major," Folt said.
"In all the big state schools and some of the Ivies, people are taking five years to graduate now, so clearly, their oversubscription has to be even greater. With our 10 percent oversubscription, people are clearly taking their economics classes -- they just aren't getting the ones they wanted."
While the administration has actively attempted to reduce the problem by adding more courses and teachers, Sa'adah said that reformation has to take place, to some extent, within the department.
"Though a successful capital campaign certainly wouldn't hurt either," she said.
