Since June 10th when tuition fee demonstrations occurred, more and more university students have participated in the protest, speaking out against their tuition fees which cost them an arm and a leg. However, the movement might have originated from the complaints about low quality university education that is not worth such a colossal amount. Even though the tuition fees have doubled since 10 years ago, educational environments have not improved as much. Lectures given on a large scale are a typical example of poor-learning environments in universities.
These lectures are generally for classes which consist of a minimum of 70 students and a maximum of more than 100 students. The core problem of such lectures is that they are too big for one professor to properly take care of. It is really hard for students to interact effectively with their professor one on one in class. Most of the students rarely can receive feedbacks on their tests and reports from their professors. Professors also find difficulties with teaching too many students in one class. They claim that they waste considerable amount of time taking roll call and evaluating middle and final exams, which otherwise, could be used to solely interact with their students. They do not have enough teaching assistants to help prepare for their classes attended by so many students.
Both students and professors who discontent about classes with too many students expect their university administration to improve class quality. They say that universities should increase the number of middle or small scale lectures and should also provide financial support so professors have adequate numbers of teaching assistants for their large scale classes. However, the administrators say that they handle too many tasks such as administration, personnel management, facility maintenance as well as learning environment managements with such limited budgets. Especially for private universities which are mostly financed by students' tuition fees , they cannot help but focus on developing facilities and promoting schools to attract a number of prospective students, instead of improving the quality of classes. Connected with the economic efficiency of large-scale lectures, unfortunately these lectures really hold appeal for them.
In reality it might be impossible to offer students solely small-scale classes. Efforts to ease the problems of large-scale lectures are necessary. Professors could take advantage of many students as good sources for various feedback. Students’ assignments could be examined not only by professors but by their classmates. When all the feedback from a variety of people is gathered, the evaluation of their assignments can be comprehensive and effective. The administrators need to pay more attention to the quality of university education rather than the employment rate of the graduates or facility investment just for publicity’s shake. Furthermore they could make sincere endeavors to reduce the number of students per professor and boost the students’ satisfaction with their classes.
By Park You-jin, Guest Reporter
#311 Student Column
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