Mcgill to cut back on arts courses

University says it wants more classes taught by full-time instructors

McGill University students in the faculty of arts will have 100 fewer courses to choose from next school year.

Various courses in the humanities and social sciences are expected to be eliminated, bringing the number of total arts courses offered in the 2013-14 school year to 1,100.

Christopher Manfredi, dean of the faculty of arts, made the announcement at a committee meeting on Wednesday.

Manfredi said the decision was made in order to respond to student interest in having more courses taught by full-time instructors.

“We’ve always believed that the quality of teaching programs is better when they’re taught by fulltime, permanent teaching staff, as opposed to part-time, temporary teachers — that’s well documented in the literature on the university pedagogy,” Manfredi said.

He still doesn’t know what courses or programs will be affected by the cuts. Departments will try to identify courses that are not crucial to their teaching programs, he said. But the focus is on cutting courses with an enrolment of 20 or fewer students.

“It’s not the case that courses will be cut, they just may not be offered every year,” he added.

Any savings will be reinvested in activities that support teaching, the university says.

“The idea is to increase the number of teaching assistants that we can hire so that we can provide better support to the larger classes,” Manfredi said. Other savings may be used to support the arts internship program and the student advising program.

Devon LaBuik, president of the Arts Undergraduate Society, said students are concerned about the recent announcement.

“We’ve seen many smaller programs at the school, like the industrial relations program and African studies, come under fire recently, so I think one of our biggest concerns is how this is going to affect the smaller departments, but also how it’s going to affect course lecturers,” LaBuik said.

Second-year industrial relations student Matthew Crawford-Appignanesi is one of many students who will be directly affected by the cuts.

“It’s definitely a tricky spot for me,” Crawford-Appignanesi said. “I’m already having trouble registering for smaller classes, so I can only foresee more registration troubles with that. If I have less interaction with my professors, then that’s going to impact how much I learn, because there’s only so much you can learn from a book. There’s a lot more you can learn by actually talking to a human being.”

Crawford-Appignanesi said everyone he has spoken to so far is opposed to the cuts.

“They have all benefited from the same idea of small classes with more interaction,” he said.

That’s one of the reasons why Lilian Radovac, president of McGill’s teaching union, is worried about the diminishing number of seminar-style courses offered.

“Arts students have been complaining for years that the classes are getting bigger,” Radovac said. “The students are getting less and less individual attention from their instructors, and basically the university has committed to making that problem even worse.”

Radovac said teaching assistants, course lecturers and exam invigilators are all unified in their opposition to the cuts.

“I can’t imagine how the faculty of arts thinks that this is an appropriate response to budget issues. Students will be harmed by this, without question.”