I watch my numbers

The U has this thing where somehow or other funding is distributed throughout faculties based on numbers of enrollment and retention. There are other things built into the system that encourages full-time TT and senior faculty (as opposed to contract instructors) to teach large survey courses (as opposed to small specialist classes). Whether or not this is a good thing or a bad thing is debatable but also beside the point: it is my life now. So I watch my numbers. In November, my large enrollment class was at about a 60. In December, inexplicably, it swelled to around 77. After the first class in January it grew to about 88 and I felt good about myself! And slowly thereafter began the long, slow goodbye. I'm at 79 today and hoping to hold strong but the midterm is coming up so that could signal a grand reckoning.

Thus begins the annual "Is It Me Or Is It Them?" fest.

Does it matter for my job if I teach classes with high enrollment and retention? Yes.

I did an unofficial survey in my class and asked them all what kinds of courses they would want to take (they are mostly second years). Overwhelmingly the response was ancient Rome and Egypt, more military/diplomatic, more Germany/Holocaust. ie/ the comfort-food history favored by the Armchair Generals who watch the History Channel (in Canada, the H Channel actually still has history-related programming, it was kind of shocking to see at first). Some saw the survey as an opportunity to inform me of the ways in which I was teaching our class wrong: too much culture and women and slavery, not enough "real" history.

Of course, this is the issue. If you asked a hundred 20-year-olds what they'd want to eat everyday if they could eat anything at all, it would probably be pizza, McDonalds, and chocolate cake. Heck, you could do the same survey with 8-year-olds and 40-year-olds and 80-year olds and me and get the same results.

The question is: what do we do with this information?

And really, I mis-represented the responses to my original survey because, statistically, the overwhelming response was dead silence - only about a third of the class responded to the survey. Which is actual a pretty typical turnout for any Canadian election.

So, again, what do we do with this information?