My name is Alex Bradford and I have attended classes at AACC for the past three years. I am a club leader, a student ambassador, and a part time student lab technician doing undergraduate research. I go out of county just to receive my education at AACC because I wanted something better than what is offered in my county. I do these things because I care deeply about this school and the evolving community that thrives here. I feel that I receive a better education here, and I truly believe in the core values; Community and Relationships, Opportunity, Positivity, Innovation and Creativity, and Equity and Inclusion. The new increase of the class size minimum from 12 to 15 is oppositional in nature to each of the colleges core values.
I feel betrayed by this new change. The class size minimum had already been raised from 10 to 12 very recently, and that increase was already impacting classes and affecting me and my peers personally. As a plant science student, I personally found out that less than a week before the start of spring classes last semester that a required course for my program of study had been cancelled. In order to be eligible for the financial aid I was receiving and my job at the college I needed to be taking at least 2 classes, but the course that was cancelled was one of only 2 classes I had left to complete in my program of study. Because of this I had to spend the entire first week of the semester fighting to be able to take an unrelated substitution, which put me behind in my coursework. Not to mention it nearly cost me my chance to graduate on time. Now they say the minimum is 15, and I fear that my entire program of study will be cut.
Research clearly shows that smaller classes lead to a better education. This is one of the reasons AACC is such an educational powerhouse, and they know it. On tours for prospective students, guides make it a point to boast the college's small "17 to 1 ratio", which means that for every 17 students there is 1 teacher. I hear it over and over again being used as a major selling point, and a simple online search of "AACC 17 to 1 ratio" reveals that news organizations have commented on this too! Raising the minimum will obviously also result in this ratio being raised as well, which could make it harder to recruit new students to the college.
The college says that smaller required courses will not be impacted because "exceptions" will be made, but for many highly specialized degree-seeking courses, exceptions were already frequent and necessary due to enrollment teetering on the threshold. Now it will just be easier for the college to not approve these classes because more of them will fall consistently below the new threshold. It will be harder for us, the students and teachers, to fight for every class that deserves to run because more of them will be on the chopping block. Compromise will come at the expense of our most specialized and impressive higher level courses. Leadership at AACC wouldn't have decided to raise the minimum to 15 if they intended to make the same exceptions as before.
In a time where we are already afraid for the future of liberal arts and science programs in this country, it should be no surprise that this change is being met with wild unpopularity by the student body. Through my various positions of leadership I speak with other students very frequently, and it should say something that I have not heard one other student support this change. My peers tell me they are afraid they will not have the same opportunities that I did. They worry that the programs they are most interested in won't be accessible to them because required courses will be offered too infrequently. From teachers I have hardly heard any attempt to defend the increase. Several Incredibly qualified professors I know who could have chosen to teach anywhere have told me that they came to AACC because they really care about teaching, and they felt this school would support that. As a student ambassador, I echo the idea that learning, opportunity, and student growth are important and valued here, because I really believe it. With this new change, I worry these proclamations will be dishonest, and I will no longer be giving prospective students an accurate impression of what the experience at this college will be like for them.
It should be obvious to anyone that this decision was not made for the benefit of the student body. This change is not minor and it does not exist in a vacuum. It speaks to a larger shift that AACC is making away from servicing students in specialized programs, and towards an efficiency based factory-style learning system where fewer teachers teach more students in less time slots. Small programs and classes are the soul of this college, and deserve to be fought for.
Alex Bradford
AACC Super Science Club President