The economy is taking its toll on a political science department that is losing funding, professors and students.
Enrollments in political science courses this semester are almost 20 percent lower than last Spring, according to numbers compiled by the department.
Members of the political science department cited several factors that may have affected enrollment. Karen Remmer, chair of the political science department, said that fewer courses are being offered this Spring because of unpaid faculty leaves and a limited budget for hiring visiting professors.
“Whereas we offered 101 courses in Spring 2010, we could only offer 87 in Spring 2011,” Remmer wrote in an e-mail Jan. 2. “If we had the resources to increase the number and variety of our course offerings, we would be more than delighted to do so. In the interim, we are concentrating on servicing our majors, which in itself has become a significant challenge.”
Remmer noted that the department’s leadership is still in the process of making sense of the enrollment figures.
Professor of Political Science Michael Gillespie said budget cuts are to blame for the decreased enrollment. Departments in the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences were forced to make significant cuts to their budget since the financial crisis.
“Because of the budget reductions, we don’t have any [visiting professors] teaching for us,” he said, noting that these courses are typically especially popular among students. “We had one person who taught political theory last year who had 100 students in the Spring.”
Scott de Marchi, director of undergraduate studies in political science, cited rising interest in seemingly pre-professional tracks—like public policy or the markets and management studies certificate—as potentially drawing students away from the political science major. Given the economic downturn, many students are concerned with future job security and are thus more likely to pursue academic paths that they believe will maximize job prospects, he said.
“[Those programs] are not practical, but people believe that they are,” de Marchi said. “Markets and management studies is not really going to help anyone get a job, yet a disproportionate amount of people would rather do that than learn a language or applied mathematics.... What [recruiters] would like to see is a set of skills—not a pre-professional degree, but a set of liberal skills.”
Despite the steep decline in course enrollment this year, de Marchi suggested reevaluating the data in several years to see if the change is permanent.
“Duke has one of the best political science departments in the world,” he said. “[The data] hasn’t changed much over the last 10 or 20 years—I wouldn’t over-interpret this year.”
Gillespie said that even though political science as a liberal art is not just preparation for a career but also preparation for life, many students are concerned with job security because of the current economic downturn.
“It’s interesting to me that people in my classes say they want to go into public policy, but when I ask if any of them want to be standard bureaucrats, none of them raise their hands,” he said.
Political science does remain among the University’s most popular majors, however. In 2009-2010, the department had the third highest number of majors of all departments, The Chronicle reported.
After coming to Duke with the intention of pursuing public policy or international comparative studies, sophomore Leah Yaffe said she chose political science because she became interested in political theory, not just a career path.
“To a lot of people who are really interested in entering into politics, public policy is practical, and political science is abstract,” she noted.
The political science major is currently being revised to reflect what students want, Gillespie said, noting that he hopes to add a bachelor of science degree to accompany the current bachelor of arts degree in order to offer students more technical training.
The changes may affect incoming freshman in the Fall, de Marchi said. The department’s chairs have not yet voted on the new degree program.
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