iSchool Academic Affairs maintains the following policy on courses with low - enrollment, in reference to special topics or non-core courses.
A course will be considered “low-enrollment” if fewer than 15% of the seats are filled. Some examples of the application of this principle include:
A typical upper-level undergraduate course is scheduled for 50 seats and would be considered low-enrollment at 7 or fewer students.
A typical undergraduate lecture that meets twice as lecture, once as a small section, is scheduled for 150 seats and would be considered low-enrollment at 21 or fewer students.
A typical masters-level course is scheduled for 40 seats and would be considered low-enrollment at 5 or fewer students.
A typical doctoral course is scheduled for 15 seats and would be considered low-enrollment at 2 or fewer students (please note that this would mathematically work out to 1 student, but we made a judgment that courses should be operating with at least 3 students to be successful).
iSchool Academic Affairs will work with program committees to monitor enrollment concerns. If a course runs
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two consecutive times
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with
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low enrollment,
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iSchool Academic Affairs will work with the relevant program committee to request from the instructor
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:
A plan to increase recruitment of students into the course; or
A plan to revise the course to potentially entice more students into it.
If the instructor
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chooses to provide one of these documents
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, they will work with iSchool Academic Affairs to refine and implement them. If the instructor chooses not to do this, the course will be
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Please note that the definition of “underenrolled” or “low enrollment” varies by type of course:
For undergraduate courses, under-enrolled is defined as fewer than 15 people;
For masters courses, under-enrolled is defined as fewer than 8 people; and
For doctoral courses, under-enrolled is defined as fewer than 6 people.
These definitions are based on patterns of enrollment at each level.
Please note that we do not adjust faculty salaries or teaching commitments based on enrollment. We use the amount of TA support to scale workload in coursestaken out of the regular scheduling rotation. If any instructor wishes to revive the course in the future, they will be asked to prepare a new syllabus and submit a proposal for a revised version of the course.