APSCUF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE REPORT

CLASS SIZE

November 7, 2006

APSCUF’s concern over the consequences the impact the new Academic Forum has on students and faculty prompted an analysis of classes currently offered. Dr. Cervallos’ letter addressed to the Campus community on September 26, 2006 makes several claims that the Executive Committee found suspect. Thus, a thorough analysis of the courses offered in Fall 2004 and Fall 2006 was conducted.

1. Dr. Cervallos made the following assertions in paragraph 6 of his letter:

It is expected that the courses assigned to these rooms will have allocations below the capacity. KU currently has more than 3,000 active course codes and that in any fall or spring semester 650 to 700 individual course codes are offered in approximately 2,400 sections. For spring 2007, 20 course numbers from 14 of 34 departments will use Forum classrooms. This represents about 3 percent of all unique course numbers offered for that term. More important, this represents only about 3 percent of all sections offered, and therefore approximately 3 percent of all teaching assignments.

A. APSCUF is not quite sure why Dr. Cervallos is citing the number of active course codes or the number of individual course code because this doesn’t give us any useful information.

B. Dr. Cervallos claims that there were approximately 2400 course sections. This is a fairly close approximation. Data supplied to APSCUF found that there were 2264 (Fall 04) and 2284 (Fall 06) sections offered (See Table 1, raw data).

C. Dr. Cervallos asserts that the courses to go into the Academic Forum represent 3 percent of all unique course codes. APSCUF wonders why Dr. Cervallos would report the number of unique course codes. Again, this information does not tell us anything about the effect of the courses chosen for the Academic Forum. APSCUF believed it was more useful to examine the actual number of sections that these classes are of the whole as well as the number of students affected. We found that when examining the data for Fall 04 and Fall 06 that, in fact, the percentage of sections is actually 12.27% and 13%, respectively. In addition, we found that the percentage of students enrolled in these sections were 21.56% and 19.62% for Fall 04 and Fall 06, respectively. Thus, the Academic Forum will have a far reaching effect upon the student body (See Table 1).

D. Dr. Cervallos’ further contends that of only about 3% of all sections (incorrect reporting) and therefore approximately 3 percent of all teaching assignments is false. In fact, APSCUF wonders how the claim regarding teaching assignments was deduced from this information.

2. Dr. Cervallos mentions this false information again in paragraph 13 of his letter, which reads

By increasing the average size of these few courses (3 percent) we will not need to significantly affect the average size of the overwhelming majority of classes (97 percent). It is anticipated that upper division major offerings will be particularly insulated from this national trend.

A. Since 3% is inaccurate and registration has just begun for the Spring 2007, this claim is false on its face. In fact, you can’t make this claim without knowing the future because you do not have the information.

3. More disturbing are the assertions put forth in paragraph 14 of Dr. Cervallos’ letter, which reads

Average class size, hovering in the 21-22 range will not change significantly after the building comes on-line. After the Forum goes on line, average class size will be in the 21.5 to 22.5 range. This is because these sections will be factored into the much larger number of other sections, several of which have already been a similar size for years. Another benefit of this building is that it is expected to free up other spaces on campus that might be used for faculty offices and computer classrooms.

A. Dr. Cervallos claims that average class size is hovering between 21-22 range. ASPCUF found that in fact average class size is 27.83 (Fall 04) for all 3 credit courses and 28.34 when calculated per credit multiplied by 3 (9.45 per credit hour) (See Table 1). For Fall 06 the average class size is 28.8 for 3 credit courses and 29.3 when calculated per credit hour multiplied by 3 (9.77 per credit hour) (See Table 1). APSCUF believes that Dr. Cervallos used a faulty methodology when calculating average class size (See Notes Table 1). In fact, APSCUF was able to reproduce Dr. Cervallos’ claim of 21-22 when looking at the raw data. APSCUF has concluded that Dr. Cervallos could have made this mistake quite easily by leaving in his calculation all 0 credit labs, Individualized Instruction, Independent Study, Practicum, Internships, and Field Research (See Table 2 and Notes). APSCUF removed these course codes from the raw data in order to accurately calculate average class size. This is a sampling problem.

APSCUF also found that by moving these important courses into the new Academic Forum students now have availability restrictions. Table 3 details the number of sections for each course that will run sections in the Academic Forum. We see a significant drop in the number of sections offered – constraining the opportunity and the availability for courses which fulfill General Education requirements. And, interestingly, less students ultimately are allocated for these course (see Total). So, less options and less total number of students can take these courses.

APPENDIX: TABLES AND NOTES

TABLE 1: RAW DATA AND APSCUF SAMPLE

	Raw Data		APSCUF sample		Difference
	Fall 04	Fall 06	Fall 04	Fall 06	Fall 04	Fall 06
T = Total number of courses (sections)	2264	2284	1507	1543	757	741
T1 = Total number of students enrolled	43,847	47,463	40,662	43,762	3185	3701
N = number of courses AF	185	201	185	201
N1 = number of students AF	8768	8584	8768	8584
Average Class Size 3 credit courses only	21.43	22.6	27.83	28.8	29.8%	27.4%
Average Class Size per 1 credit	N/A*	N/A	9.45	9.77
3* (per 1 credit)	N/A	N/A	28.34	29.3
% classes of AF courses	8	8	12.27	13
% students enrolled of AF courses	19.99	18	21.56	19.62
* unable to calculate average per 1 credit hour with the inclusion of 0 credit hour labs

Notes

Dr. Cervallos claimed that the average class size currently is between 21-22. However, we see that this is a false inference given the incorrect sample size. He could have arrived at this miscalculation one of two ways: 1) he calculated just the average class size for 3 credit courses only (see above raw data); 2) he calculated the average class size per credit hour.

1) In the raw data set average class size for 3 credit courses only included all course listing including Individualized Instruction, Independent Study, Practicum, Internships, Field Research courses for 3 credits.

2) Averages calculated per credit hour with the raw data include lab courses for 0 credit hour. One can’t calculate a correct average per credit hour with the inclusion of 0 credit hour courses. See Table 2 for average class size for 0 credit courses.

APSCUF’s average class size is 27.83 and 28.8 for Fall 04 and Fall 06 respectively. This represents a 29.8% increase in the average number for Fall 04 and a 27.4% increase for Fall 06. APSCUF’s average class size is statistically significantly higher than the average of 21-22 report by Cervallos.

The APSCUF sample removed all 0 credit hour labs as well as Individualized Instruction, Independent Study, Practicum, Internships, and Field Research. This reduced the total number of courses by 757 in Fall 04 and 741 in Fall 06. The total number of students was reduced by

TABLE 2: 0 CREDIT COURSES

	0 credit hour courses (labs)
	Fall 04	Fall 06
Total Number of courses (sections)	143	157
Total Number of students enrolled	2258	2848
Average class size	15.79	36.05

The courses detailed in Table 2 are those listed for 0 credit hours. These courses were removed from the raw data in the APSCUF sample.

We see in Table 1 that the APSCUF sample removed 757 courses and 741 courses for Fall 04 and Fall 06, respectively and 3185 and 3701 students enrolled (Fall 04, Fall 06). And, although the 0 credit hour courses only make up 18.9% (Fall 04) and 21.2% (Fall 06) of the courses removed from the sample, they are 71% (Fall 04) and 77% (Fall 06) of the enrolled students removed from the sample.

Thus, the vast majority of the total number of students removed from the sample is due to the removal of 0 credit courses. The remaining 614 courses (Fall 04) and 584 courses (Fall 06) only constitute 29% and 23% of the students enrolled removed from the raw data set. These are the Individualized Instruction, Independent Study, Practicum, Internships, and Field Research.

TABLE 3: NUMBER OF SECTIONS AND TOTAL NUMBER OF STUDENTS ENROLLED

Course	#sections04	#sections06	#sections07	N1 04	N1 06	Total N 07
ARH024	3	3	1	216	265	150
ARH025	6	5	3	498	514	450
ANT010	8	6	3	379	296	450
BUS131	5	6	3	193	282	325
CRJ010	6	7	2	230	265	350
ECO011	11	11	3	481	396	450
ECO012	3	8	3	119	294	450
EDU100	12	13	3	529	583	285
HIS014	8	9	3	273	332	360
HIS015	6	9	2	207	273	240
HIS025	11	10	2	386	349	240
HIS026	13	12	3	448	379	360
HPD110	14	20	6	677	927	786
MAT105	14	16	4	402	547	400
POL010	11	13	4	474	484	600
PSY011	17	16	5	1195	1140	650
PSY110	7	6	5	314	254	325
SOC010	12	13	4	712	800	600
SPU100	9	7	6	434	375	425
THE015	9	11	4	601	651	600
TOTAL	185	201	66	8768	9406	7905

Table 3 details the number of sections as well as the total number of students enrolled for Fall 04 and Fall 06 and the allocation for Spring 07. We see less availability of courses in the reduction of sections and less students to be enrolled in these courses.

Table 4 provides the average class size for all courses in the Academic Forum for Spring 2007. The average class size for Fall 04 and Fall 06 are reported and the % increase in class size from Fall 06 to Spring 2007 is reported. The percentage increases range from a high of 362% increase for CRJ 010 to a low of 22.6% for SPU 100. We are looking at a dramatic increase in class size for all sections.

TABLE 4: AVERAGE CLASS SIZE AND PERCENTAGE INCREASE

Course	Average Class size F04	Average Class size F06	Average Allocation S07	Diff (S07-F06)	% Increase Class size 06-07
ARH024	72	88.33	150	61.67	69.8%
ARH025	83	102.8	150	47.2	45.9%
ANT010	47.37	49.33	150	100.67	204%
BUS131	38.6	47	85	38	80.85%
CRJ010	38.33	37.85	175	137.15	362.35%
ECO011	43.72	36	150	114	316.66%
ECO012	39.66	36.75	150	113.25	308%
EDU100	44	44.85	100	55.15	122.96%
HIS014	34	36.89	120	83.11	225.29%
HIS015	34.5	30.33	120	89.67	295.64%
HIS025	35	34.9	120	85.1	243.83%
HIS026	34.5	31.58	120	88.42	279.98%
HPD110	48.36	46.35	187.5	141.15	304.5%
MAT105	28.7	34.19	100	65.81	192%
POL010	43	37.23	150	112.77	302%
PSY011	70.3	71.25	130	58.75	82.45%
PSY110	44.85	42.33	65	22.67	53.55%
SOC010	59.33	61.5	150	88.5	143.9%
SPU100	48.2	53	65	12	22.64%
THE015	66.77	59.2	150	90.8	153.3%
TOTAL	47.4	46.8	120	73.2	156.4%