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When history professor Don Raleigh last taught a first-year seminar at UNC Chapel Hill two years ago, he had 18 students.
That was too many, he thought, for a seminar course intended to provoke lively discussion.
This year, his seminar has 24 students. And it's driving him crazy.
“It's a joke,” said Raleigh, whose seminar analyzes Mikhail Gorbachev and the fall of the Soviet Union. “Everyone's idea of a seminar, in academe, is 15 (students), or, ideally, 10. With 24, it's not a seminar anymore. Everything is sort of compromised.”
Just days into the fall semester, the effects of budget cuts are coming into focus for the more than 200,000 students at the state's public universities. The campus cuts are unprecedented, as faculty and staff try to make do with $171 million less.
At UNC Charlotte, about 180 positions were eliminated as part of the budget cuts, including 18 positions that were filled. Three found other jobs on campus, and the last day for the remaining 15 employees was Aug. 31.
N.C. State, the largest university in the system, is slashing 440 full-time jobs, including 176 that were filled. At UNC Chapel Hill, leaders are working out ways to cut $60 million from the budget this year. To do so, 300 jobs are being eliminated, 100 of which were filled, officials have said.
University leaders say they're trying to shield instruction. Still, with cuts so large, there was no way to leave the classroom untouched.
The effects may not be catastrophic, but for UNC Chapel Hill junior Jarmir Smith, it seems like they're everywhere she looks on campus.
No more handouts
In some classes, professors no longer give handouts because of restrictions on printing, so Smith has to print out materials herself. Some of her professors no longer have teaching assistants.
And then there's the class registration ritual, which has become more difficult as class offerings become scarce.
“I went to try to get one class and there were 200 applicants; the class only seated 50 or so,” said Smith, a journalism student from Erwin. “I'll end up having to take summer school because I can't get all of my classes, which is very expensive. I could spend $400 elsewhere.”
At N.C. State, almost 300 class sections are being eliminated along with 9,750 classroom seats. Those aren't just statistics to the 100-plus incoming freshmen in the psychology department who were all closed out of a key science course. Older students, who were able to register in the spring, had already filled the available seats, said Karen Young, the coordinator of advising and an assistant professor.
Meanwhile, Young is also dealing with a senior who got closed out of a science class she needed to graduate on time in the spring. The student may have to overload her next semester to make up for it.
“We're seeing consequences for new freshmen, graduating seniors and everyone in between,” Young said.
NCSU Interim Chancellor James Woodward said the university aims to protect undergraduate classes, but the budget hit was so great, problems were inevitable.
“No matter how well we manage it, some students will not be able to make good schedules and some number won't be able to graduate on time,” said Woodward, who retired in 2005 as UNC Charlotte's chancellor.
Classes squeezed
Even small classes are being squeezed. For UNC Chapel Hill's College of Arts & Sciences, one solution was to raise the cap on seminar enrollment from 20 to 24 students.
It may not sound like a big deal, but it's a 20 percent increase in a course intended to be intimate. The change in class size even turned into a practical burden for Raleigh, the history professor at Chapel Hill. One week into the fall semester, he had already moved his students to their third classroom.
The first was so small he had to send students to another room to swipe some seats.
“You couldn't have a debate,” he said, “because you couldn't divide the room in two.”
The next room was large enough but had pillars running down the center, making it difficult for students to interact.
Finally, he moved the class to the FedEx Global Education Center, a lengthy walk for many students but a better space. Now, Raleigh is trying to figure out how to fit in all the oral presentations he likes to assign. With 24 students, there may not be time for each one to participate. Raleigh may tack on an end-of-semester pizza party to accommodate all of the presentations.
Raleigh's seminar is not the only one overbooked. As of earlier this week, 28 of 72 first-year seminars were at or above the 24-student limit, said Steve Reznick, an associate dean.
Profound effect
Adding just a few students to a small class can have a profound effect on how the course is taught, said Todd Zakrajsek, executive director of UNC Chapel Hill's Center for Faculty Excellence.
“When you have more people, you have more variability, so as an instructor you have to address more issues,” said Zakrajsek, whose center, which counsels faculty on teaching techniques, has been bombarded with requests for help this fall.
Also, an instructor has to budget time differently — more students, more questions to answer, more e-mails to respond to, more papers to grade. And that likely means less time for each individual.
The class size issue may be a matter of perspective.
Said Abbie Bennett, one member of Raleigh's seminar: “For me, high school classes averaged 30 or 40 kids, so to me, this is intimate.”
More job cuts could be ahead.
At NCSU, Woodward said, as leaders had to act quickly to make dramatic cuts, they made some decisions that make sense for a short-term budget but aren't smart for the long term.
For example, the university had to seize money that normally would have been used to hire new faculty to cover enrollment growth. It's crucial, Woodward said, to return that to teaching positions for the classroom. And that could lead to a loss of more staff and administrative jobs eventually.
The legislature cut about 7 percent of NCSU 's budget, but the administrators are going further, trimming 10 percent because they don't think the state's money problems are over. They believe the revenues the state collects in coming months will be 3 percent to 4 percent lower than projected.
“I don't believe all the shoes have dropped yet (with the state budget),” Woodward said.
