Too Many Majors

Too Many Majors

Chelsea McGuire, who is a chair of Communications department at a university in the southeastern U.S., she has built a successful department, ever since she became chairperson of the department. When Chelsea took over the charge there were 500 communication majors and then over a period of time, they grew to 800 such communication majors. As the majors grew, the department is not at that pace. So, Chelsea has appointed two groups to resolve the issues they are having. Both, the groups identified, analyzed and suggested a solution. So far, Chelsea has engaged the faculty in the decision-making and also respected their input. However, now she believes that this style of decision-making might not work in enrollments management decision. So, she decided on changing her style (Miller, Katherine).

Identifying Issues:

The demand for communication majors was growing and so as the department of Communication, where Chelsea is the chair. The department has introduced almost 300 more majors since Chelsea has taken in-charge. Chelsea wanted to regulate and control the enrollment practice in order to reduce uninterested applicants and give an opportunity for the real interested students. The advantages for the department by introducing this process is getting real communications passion students, filters most interesting students, and also maintains demands for the department. I don’t see this as a problem but as a strength and has given some suggestions where the department can take advantage of accepting more enrollments. They are discussed in problem solution.

Alternatives:

Dr. Walter Stainszewski, the chair of Ad Hoc Committee on Enrollment Management, collected data by conducting extensive research into enrollment management system from few other similar departments and took suggestions on how they managed in such situations of over enrollments (Miller, Katherine). The committee after analyzing, the data they have implemented normative model of decision –making and came up with three alternatives and they are:

1. Many departments have implemented additional course requirements for majors. Such as two years of foreign language or a math and computers. This way they can reduce the inflow of applications for that department and only interested applicants, get the opportunity to do major with them.

2. Some departments increased the GPA requirement as part of the enrollment. So this way the inflow of the applications reduces and the department can reduce the unnecessary applications.

3. Some departments introduced “Application Process.” This process may require some additional paperwork. Thus, only interested applicants apply for majoring, so it reduces the number of applications received.

All these alternatives are to reduce the applications input, but I would like to