Maximum Class Size

The GTFF would like departments to state the maximum number of students that can be assigned to a teaching GTF. This is a pretty milquetoast proposal. We are not trying to set limits, we are just asking that departments set limits.

We firmly believe that as enrollment grows and money declines, there will be a natural inclination by departments to increase the number of students per class. While this is not an ideal situation for any of the teaching faculty, we believe that there is not much difference lecturing to a class of 100 or 150. There is a tremendous difference between grading for 100 students and grading for 150. There is a tremendous difference between having 30 students in your lab and 50 students. There is a big difference between a "discussion" section that actually has numbers to discuss something and having 50 students in your section.

The University has asserted several arguments to counter our basic assertions. They have argued that GTFs are limited to a certain number of hours based on their FTE, so they don't need to worry about the number of students they are assigned. They have argued that the essential mission of the university is to educate undergraduates, therefore it is implausible to think that a department would ever assign a GTF more students than he or she could properly educate within the hours limits. They have argued that, in reality, the number of students per GTF in the College of Arts and Science has been going down(!) over the last few years (the UO was asked to prove this assertion. To date, they have not done so.)

Unfortunately, we feel that these assertions and the UO's flat refusal to even consider that a department be required to come up with their own limits further demonstrates that the UO has no idea what being a GTF at the UO is like.

We hope that our proposal will spark a discussion within departments about the proper limits for GTFs. We recognize that every department is different and a one-size-fits-all approach would not work. The UO, so far, is unwilling to even begin to engage in a reasonable way on this issue.