Preserving Quality Learning
How enrollment growth effects New School
Monday, March 1st, 2010
During a Lang faculty meeting on February 11, New School Provost Tim Marshall said that, despite increases in enrollment, he and other administrators and faculty are committed to maintaining high quality education at The New School, which prides itself on small class sizes.
Enrollment growth has been most apparent at Eugene Lang College, with a 48.5 percent increase in the past five years, and at Parsons, with a 46.6 percent increase in the same time period. In 2004, Lang only had 969 students enrolled, but the school grew to 1,439 students by 2009.
Faculty and administrators concede that this significant increase demands detailed planning on all levels to make sure the college experience is not sacrificed for anyone involved. "A small seminar affords opportunities for individual students to excel and stand out in the class," said Matthew Robb, director of design and management at Parsons, "whereas in a bigger class those students might be less inspired, or relieved since it's easier to hide in the back."
As a faculty member who deals with Parsons's first-year foundation students, Robb has the most exposure in the college to the effects of enrollment surges. Still, he points out that The New School has managed enrollment increases well. "Whenever my program has made a specific request to lower course caps [like maximum enrollments], based on the pedagogical needs associated with a particular course, that request has been honored by my dean's office and other university-level administrative bodies," said Robb.
Joel Towers, dean of Parsons since 2009, has emphasized the special measures he has taken, faced with these increases. "I'd get a sense of faculty perception of student experience," he said, describing his classroom visits while still teaching classes as the dean of design strategies. "I'd ask what they think about class function and quality." He also pointed out that statistics show good retention of students who enroll at Parsons and vowed to do all he can to provide the resources for any class size.
On a broader level, the university has attempted to maintain education quality with specific goals based on statistics and reports by the office of institutional research (OIR). "We set clear targets to maintain selectivity, which are managed by the vice president of enrollment management," said Lang Dean Neil Gordon. There have only been 3 to 4 percent more applicants accepted each year since 2004, so Gordon is reassured that standards remain high for those accepted into Lang. OIR's conclusions and statistics can be viewed through The New School website. The devotion to dissecting student demographics and enrollment patterns are indications to Gordon that every group within the university is in tune and aware of what the OIR reports.
"I don't see the recent enrollment increases—and my program has seen some of the biggest around the university—as an automatically bad thing," wrote Robb in an e-mail to the *Free Press*. "It might make things worse in certain classes; but it might actually make some class activites easier or richer; or it might just be different—apples and oranges. It all depends on the particular case," he added.
"The challenge is to diversify interests, to balance and manage the attention paid to all areas of Parsons," Towers said.
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