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From The Faculty Chair
There are very few opinions that are as universally shared among the faculty as the view that we are all too busy. The combined demand of teaching, research, administration, proposal writing, thesis supervision, meetings, voice mail, e-mail, fund-raising, and participating in conferences and other professional meetings often takes far more time than we want. These commitments leave too little time for spontaneous interaction with our students or the relaxed, creative thinking that all of us treasure. They also compete for the time we want to spend on our families and relationships outside MIT in ways that may, in the long term, make us less satisfied with our lives.
Most of the faculty I talk to find the demands of their calendars oppressive. They also tend to view this situation as something that is an unintended consequence of the complexity of modern academia and, as such, largely out of their control. Moreover, most of us view this deplorable situation as unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
The increasing infringement of scheduled events on our time is to some extent externally generated. Academic administration has grown more complex in response to an ever-expanding set of regulatory requirements. Research sponsors often require more direct contact and more detailed reports. Electronic communication is an integral part of staying abreast of research in our respective fields and maintaining communication with both our students and colleagues. All of these arrived not as a result of any conscious decision anyone made. However, there are decisions that we, as faculty, have made that contribute to the demands on our time, over which we have some degree of control and, which with some collective action, we can change.
It is my view that one of the best "points of leverage" that can move us back to a better balance in our time commitments is the size of the graduate student body. In 1991, MIT had a total of 4854 graduate students who were in residence at MIT and studying for a degree. (This figure omits non-residential students who require little of our time and special students who are generally taking one or two courses and not writing theses.) In 2000, we had 5566 graduate students (again omitting non-residential and special students), an increase of nearly 15 percent. In that same time period, the number of faculty members actually declined from 961 to 931. Our undergraduate enrollment has declined slightly from 4389 to 4258 during that same time period. Some of our more senior faculty can even recall a time when there were more undergraduate students at MIT than graduate students.
In the case of undergraduate enrollment, we carefully plan and manage the number of students we admit. Each year, the Enrollment Management Group carefully examines a range of alternatives in the number of students we admit, including complex financial analysis of the full costs of various options. This group makes recommendations to the Academic Council to advise the President on admissions goals, and he in turn reviews these recommendations with the Corporation Executive Committee. All of this planning generally results in our actual undergraduate student body size being within 50 of our target, and generally much closer.
A reasonable question is whether the growth in the number of graduate students is the result of conscious policy decisions or an unintended outcome of other forces. Clearly, there is nothing in our governance structure for graduate student admissions even remotely like the Enrollment Management Group. Some of the growth we have experienced was planned. For example, the administration did make an explicit decision to increase the size of the Sloan School, allowing the faculty and student body to grow to reflect the growing importance of key fields in that school. Similarly, some thought was given to the growth in the student body that would result from offering the Master of Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, though the projected number of students electing to take that degree was much smaller than the number now enrolled. Another substantial element in the total growth, however, was the result of unplanned, incremental growth across many departments that, when combined, resulted in considerable growth. To a great extent, the size of our graduate student body is the sum of numerous, independent decisions by admissions committees in the various departments, divisions, laboratories, and centers that have graduate programs. Each of these units is thinking and acting locally.
It is my contention that, as a faculty and as a university, we would be far better off with fewer, rather than more, graduate students. The faculty would be less over-committed, and each undergraduate and graduate student would have more of our time and attention. There would be fewer theses to supervise, doctoral exams to be given, dissertation committees to be on, and students in crisis. Beyond just the reduction in the demands on faculty time, we would have less need for student office space, research funding to support graduate assistants, and competition for our scarce on-campus housing for graduate students. Stated goals such as housing at least 50 percent of our graduate students on our campus would be more easily reached in the next two years, and friction with the City of Cambridge over our students competing with long-time Cambridge residents would be reduced. In addition, unlike earlier times, MIT now bears a considerable part of the cost of each graduate research assistant. We recover only 35 percent of the tuition of each research assistant from research grants; the rest is paid from MIT's budget. In addition, MIT waives tuition during the summer for graduate students who are only registered for thesis or research.
Assuming we do decide to reduce the number of graduate students, the next appropriate question is how, given the high degree of decentralization in admissions and funding decisions, we would actually do so. Moving to a centralized admissions process for graduate students would, in my view, be a cure vastly worse than the disease. Individual departments and other academic units are in a far better position to make admissions decisions than any centralized group could ever be. We clearly need some mechanisms that appropriately balance the strengths and reasonable prerogatives of the diverse academic units with the legitimate collective concern regarding the MIT-wide consequences of having so many graduate students. There may be good reasons why some departments should have even larger graduate enrollments while others should have smaller numbers.
At the local level, we should be careful to ensure that we consciously plan the number of students we admit each year with attention to how that number will affect the demands on the faculty. The deans, provost, and president need to exercise greater authority and oversight on these decisions.
The senior administration has already made it clear that unless there is an explicit agreement to the contrary, growth in graduate enrollment is not a compelling case for additional space, fellowship support, or faculty positions. This puts some pressure on preventing further growth, but does little to push enrollments lower. Departments should consider admissions strategies that will significantly reduce graduate enrollments over time rather than accepting the current numbers. Assuming there is agreement with the dean and senior administration on such plans, these decisions should not result in budget or faculty size reductions.
The number of graduate students in each department is an area of administration where there is no simple formula that can be applied. Even well intentioned efforts at direct control of graduate admission by the senior administration would be a serious mistake. We need a more nuanced strategy that allows for more discussion and negotiation. Departments need to more carefully examine the number of students they admit. We should avoid a mindset that necessarily equates a decline in graduate enrollment with a decline in the quality of a department. Each of us should think more broadly about how many students we should have in our labs and centers in light of the demands on our time, and we need to convey those views to admissions officers at the departmental level. By paying attention to the larger consequences of high enrollments, we can create some pressure for decreasing the number of graduate students at the Institute.
MIT's superb reputation is, after all, built not on quantity but on quality. Decreasing the number of graduate students in a department is a strategy for improving the quality of our students and the quality of their educational experience. It can also provide us all with some desperately needed time for us to focus our attention on being more accessible to all our students.
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