Why is the Rutgers University administration damaging a highly regarded and fundamental program that teaches writing skills to undergraduate students — something that they and everyone else at Rutgers think must remain a top priority? In the fall of 2024, there will be significantly fewer writing classes at Rutgers than there have been in the decade-plus that I have been teaching for the Rutgers-New Brunswick Writing Program.
Every fall, the New Brunswick writing program teaches up to a third of all 40,000 undergrads enrolled at Rutgers. These cuts will detrimentally affect students’ ability to learn the key writing skills they will need to succeed in both their academic and post-graduate careers. They will also affect their ability to graduate on time, as students will have greater difficulty finding classes that fulfill all of their extremely valuable writing requirements.
Writing is more and more the way that business is done. Students need to know how to communicate in order to make connections and excel in their jobs. At a time when we are all at risk of losing competency in these skills because of the rise of AI bots like ChatGPT, it is essential that we do not shortchange our students’ writing education.
By cutting the number of classes we offer, the Writing Program would be forced to raise the number of students per class to 24. Industry standards put the ideal number of students in a writing class at 15 and say that we should have no more than 20. A writing instructor can spend 30 to 45 minutes grading each draft of a student’s work; with 24 students per class, this is a minimum of 12 hours per week grading for one class. WIth three or four classes, there is no way to do all that grading and fulfill our other duties to our students, the university, and our families.
Do we sacrifice the time we spend planning for classes? Do we give up office hours or other times where we might meet with students? Do we skip writing letters of recommendation? Do we turn our backs on our own families when they need us? Do we give up on committees that work to improve the education of our students? Or do we just not spend as much time giving the written feedback that helps students build these essential skills?
Not only will full-time faculty be forced to try to do more work than we are physically capable of doing, but—more importantly — adjunct lecturers will lose their jobs. There are beloved lecturers who have been teaching for Rutgers for over 40 years who would soon find themselves without an income. Some of our best instructors teach only a class or two each semester, whether because of family obligations or other jobs. Why would the administration throw away a resource like that?
All in all, the changes that the Rutgers administration is planning will mean that undergraduates will get a worse education than our alumni got, and they may take longer to graduate when they can’t find classes that allow them to fulfill their requirements.
While this is happening most drastically in the Writing Program, class sizes are going up and section numbers are going down all over the university. In order to save money — which, with a nearly $900 million strategic reserve, they do not need to d o— the administration is choosing to provide students with a cut-rate education. With 11 employees, mostly in athletics, making over a million dollars per year, President Jonathan Holloway and Chancellor Francine Conway don’t need to inflict these budget cuts and class size increases that will make it harder to fulfill the educational mission of the university.
Please send an email to let Holloway and Conway know that you will not stand for cuts in the quality of education that New Jersey’s students get.
Julie is an assistant teaching professor in the Writing Program and a member of Rutgers AAUP-AFT.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Rutgers University writing program cuts will damage education quality