Naming Courses

by: Kevin Brawley

Most colleges offer a wide range of classes from English to Applied Mathematics. There are classes that have names that throw students' interests away from taking the course. The Boston Globe has an article about professors trying to find ways to increase enrollment of these courses. For example, Professor Michael Resler of Boston College, changed his class name from "German Literature in the High Middle Ages" to a more intriguing sounding name "Knights, Castles, and Dragons." With this simple name change, enrollment of the course tripled.

With these professors around the nation changing the names of their courses that were once deemed as "boring" by some students, they are now gaining much more students than they originally did. The knowledge gained from these classes can now be spread farther. This way of thinking from professors is seen a lot of times at liberal arts schools rather than technical schools. At William & Mary, a liberal arts school, there are classes named World Cinema Before TV (1895-1955) rather than just calling it "Intro to World Cinema." Georgia Tech, for example, has very dull, to-the-point type of names for its classes such as English 1101, Calculus 1, or Fluid Dynamics. Georgia Tech does not try to make their classes sound interesting because at technical schools there are less options in the classes you take. Students will take the classes they need to graduate regardless of its name. The spread of knowledge is very important in higher education, whether it be from changing a name of a course or not.