A bit late, I’ve posted my syllabi for the Spring ’12 semester.
The info for my grad class, ENGL 614, 20th Century Rhetorical Theory, may undergo some refinements, and largely is intended to fulfill the needs of our rhet/comp MA students preparing for their comprehensive exams, but with my own spin.
I have also revised and updated the syllabus for my version of our sophomore rhet/comp course, ENGL 202 Rhetorical and Critical Inquiry. I haven’t gotten the major assignments posted for this one yet, but will have them up within 48-72 hours. I’ve left more wiggle room in this syllabus than in the past, so some things will be filled in as we go along.
As always, please feel free to crib from here, or from any of my past courses, but I appreciate attribution.
A lot of the students at my institution are painfully aware of the high price of tuition, which is one of many reasons that I am amazed when students miss excessive class sessions. I recognize that in service courses, like Writing and Critical Inquiry, student interest in the class itself is generally less than in the classes they take for their majors. But given the sacrifices many students here make to pay their tuition, I’m always amazed when they skip class repeatedly.
While students were working on an in-class writing exercise today, I decided to crunch some numbers for them. Western Carolina University‘s current in-state full-time tuition is $3183.50 per semester. So, I divided that by 4, because 12 credit hours is the minimum number of hours to be full-time as an undergrad, and thinking that most classes are 3 credit hours. So, after dividing by 4 I come up with the number $795.86, which is essentially the price they’re paying for each class. Then I divided that number by the number of times a class meets each semester, 45 for a three times weekly class, and 30 for a twice weekly class. This gave me a pretty exact number of what students are paying in tuition per class meeting. Excluding fees and housing costs, if a student is taking 12 credit hours at Western Carolina University, they are paying either $26.53 or $17.67 per class, respectively, depending upon whether the class meets two or three times a week.
If a student is taking more than 12 hours–which they should, because that’s where the most value is to be found in tuition–these numbers obviously go down. For comparison, a student taking 18 hours per semester only pays $11.80 or $17.67 per class session, which shows the tremendous value of maximizing hours once you hit the full-time end of the tuition scale. Of course, if over-extending oneself causes a student to fail a class, that value is obviously lost. It’s a balancing act between academics and finances.
I gave the students this information, showing my math. They were a little shocked.
It would be unacceptable to most students to simply skip a $75 cello lesson or $20 yoga session or rock climbing session that they had paid in advance, and if they are aware of the numbers, they might find it just a bit more unacceptable to miss class too.
I’ve had great attendance for the most part this semester, in part because of a newly strict attendance policy, as opposed to my laissez-faire attitude of old. But it might be worth pointing out to classes these sorts of numbers, particularly in apathetically attended service courses. What do your students pay per class session? Do you know? I think we as instructors should be aware of these sorts of breakdowns. How much do you owe students every time you walk into a classroom if each of them is paying close to $20 a day, excluding additional fees, to be there?
