After the close of course election today at 4 p.m., Dartmouth undergraduates will begin to wait to see which of our courses we actually get into. Who will fall victim to the so-called enrollment crunch this time? The crunch, the subject of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine's most recent cover story, which dubs it a "pressing issue...without a simple solution" ("The Numbers Game," Mar/Apr), has become a talking point for recent trustee candidates and student leaders alike. But the scramble for classes and oversubscription in popular courses is a frustation -- not a crucial problem.
Everyone close to Dartmouth is on the same page about a few things regarding the quality of Dartmouth's academic experience. The College's miniscule (and arguably, among the Ivies, unrivaled) student-to-faculty ratio is a fundamental, sacrosanct element of any Dartmouth classroom, and the College should continue to hire more faculty, especially in popular departments like government and economics. The administration -- which has drawn criticism for the reverse problem, administrative bloat -- is even steadily championing both of these points.
To some extent, the enrollment crunch is a problem without a solution; no matter how many professors we bring to Hanover, certain classes will never have enough seats for the number of students who want to take them, and certain, popular professors will always attract more students than they can accommodate.
But in our haste to criticize the fact that we can't all take every class we want when we want, it's easy to overlook the upside of the issue. The question of whether Dartmouth students are getting "their money's worth" is preposterous. Regardless of which classes students are taking, they are still receiving Dartmouth-caliber instruction, and the ideal liberal arts education should not value one discipline over any other. That is not to say, however, that Dartmouth students should not study what interests them most. In fact, the consequences of oversubscription ensure the sincerity of our academic interests.
In addition to being a check against herd mentality and anti-intellectual academic consumerism, the enrollment crunch teaches Dartmouth students flexibility and tenacity while challenging us to think critically about our course selections. Getting shut out of an economics or government class is a great excuse to explore another discipline; such an opportunity could either redouble one's dedication to popular courses -- ensuring that selection of a major has not been simply a failure of the imagination -- or open one up to new areas of study.
The frustrations of the crunch are painfully immediate, especially given the constraints of the D-plan. But since when is academic growth convenient?
