Introduction to British Literature: 297 seats remaining." ACES wouldn't ever spit out such a ridiculous thing. Humanities classes, with few exceptions, rarely enroll more than 30 students. But what if the situation were reversed?
Science in higher education faces a strange crisis. The number of post-doctoral fellows almost doubled between 1983 and 2003, rising from 4,777 to 8,163, according to the National Science Foundation's Science and Engineering Indicators 2006. But academia has not kept pace. In 2003, only 15 percent of Ph.D.s held tenure-track positions four to six years after graduation, down from 25 percent two decades earlier.
Other nations are starting to catch up. According to a September article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, China may pass the U.S. in doctorates granted as soon as 2010. Finding Congressional funding for university science education and tenure-track positions, meanwhile, has not been easy. With so many dead-ended post-docs and limited public interest, the United States now faces a terrible prospect: ceding its technological prowess to expansionist third-world countries, many of whom feature dictatorships, nuclear aspirations and other major security threats for the West.
As an English major who regrets not having studied more science at Duke, I state from an outsider's experience that the root of all these problems is very simple: a systemic, cutthroat culture which U.S. university administrators have adopted. It is a spirit that has transformed science from a collaborative enterprise into a brutal weed-out.
For undergraduates unsure of what to study, which course is more appealing: a 300-person biology lecture scaled to a B-, or a 25-person Joyce seminar where everyone gets an A? Aside from grade inflation, the lecture format itself teems with obvious problems. It does not foster chances for professor and student to interact. It does not hold students accountable for attendance-or for staying awake in a dark auditorium. It certainly does not encourage creative thought, with the same basic exams and labs yielding the same canned results year after year.
The two work-around solutions administrators have proposed to engage students-affiliated laboratory sessions, for science majors, and separate survey courses, for non-majors-are insufficient. Lab sessions, in theory, allow students a chance to put lecture into action with their own hands. However, in practice, it is merely another exercise in high stress. Instructors have placed such a premium on obtaining "correct" lab results that students often opt to fake their data rather than admit making mistakes. What kind of science is that?
Survey courses, meanwhile, are viewed by too many students as a one-and-done: a single class, isolated from the rest of one's Duke experience, to eliminate a curriculum requirement. In many cases, there are fantastic opportunities to launch from such a course in many new directions: "AIDS and Other Emerging Diseases," with its clear ties to public health, is a perfect example. But faculty, administrators and students alike must all treat these courses as intellectual steppingstones, not curricular ends in themselves.
The only adequate long-term solution for Duke and other universities is to hire many more science faculty and restructure the undergraduate curriculum to more closely reflect that of the humanities. Instead of having one 200-person general chemistry lecture, why not hire 10 post-doctoral instructors part-time to teach 20 sections? Rather than asking students to maintain a schizophrenic relationship-listen silently to everything Professor X says, and speak only to the TA once a week-it makes much more sense to encourage genuine two-way discussions with reasonably sized classes, as in high school. This approach would also cut down on class time by eliminating the need for a discussion section.
Labs should be reoriented so as to reward students for correctly analyzing their work, perfectly or imperfectly performed-not just for hitting the magic number. Professors seem to be moving in this direction (which mirrors the humanities' approach of supporting a contrarian thesis even in the face of mainstream dissent), but anecdotal evidence suggests not quickly enough.
Grades, finally, should somehow be brought in concert with the ridiculous inflation of the humanities. This onus may lie more on humanities faculty-to return to a sensible scale-than on the sciences. In any event, it is unacceptable for an "average" physics grade to be a C if an "average" history grade hovers around an A-. Again, replacing intimidating science lectures with reasonable 25-person classes would go a long way toward this parity.
There is no doubt that, in the short run, hiring a crop of new instructors and lecturers to overhaul the sciences will be expensive. But America prizes individual freedom in a way that many of the societies pressuring students to pursue science do not. U.S. administrators must help our generation want to learn science, that is, not force them to do so.
Duke has a $4.5 billion endowment: surely there is money available to spend. If America is to ensure future policy-makers who understand science, they must inspire those leaders today. Turning the lecterns over to a cadre of committed teachers, not a handful of overstretched researchers, is the only sensible way to ensure our scientific future.
Andrew Gerst, former managing editor of Towerview, graduated from Duke in 2006 and now lives and works in Washington, D.C. His column runs every other Monday.
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