I am nerdy. Admittedly, unabashedly, unapologetically nerdy. I took Calculus II at this university as an elective and enjoyed every minute of it. When a guy I was dating gave me a book of Salman Rushdie short stories for Chanukah, I thought I might be in love (with Rushdie, of course – the guy was less impressive.) About a month ago, my roommate caught me at my nerdiest – alone in my room, trying to procrastinate by doing practice LSAT problems. For fun.
Sure, I’m not a nerd in the conventional sense. If my pants are ever too short to reach the tops of my shoes, it’s because they’re carefully cuffed, hipster-style, over a pair of cute Pumas. I’m nerdy in the geek-chic, Seth-Cohen-from-The-O.C, Weezer-wearing-argyle tradition.
But I am conventionally nerdy in that I love to learn. I thrive in an academic environment, lapping up information like an over-eager puppy. I always thought this love of learning would serve me well in college. It might ostracize me from a large portion of the general student population, whose knowledge of physics comes from observing the velocity of beer as it swishes down a beer bong. But I thought it would generally enhance my college experience, both in and outside the classroom.I was wrong.
As a graduating senior, I am frantically trying to build a schedule that will continue to help me grow into a conscientious, liberally-educated adult. I want to broaden my horizons – to take classes unlike the ones I’ve taken a million times before. I want to take advantage of my last chance to learn things I will never again have an opportunity to learn about. Many of my other graduating friends (even those less nerdy) are struggling to do the same thing.
My efforts to expand my education, however, have hit a brick wall: the new BSOS Oversubscription Policy. When trying to get oversubscribed, I was told by the economics department advisor I could not be oversubscribed because I can already fulfill the requirements to graduate within my major. As long as I could graduate (and even if I could not), I wouldn’t be oversubscribed, no matter what I wanted to learn.
In essence, he explained to me what I would learn in classes was a moot point. Learning, he actually said, “was not the priority of this research institution.” What was important, apparently, was receiving a lovely piece of cardstock with my name on it and the president of the university’s signature, so I could frame it and smile at it longingly while sitting in the dank cubicle of my first job. If I could graduate without upsetting the bureaucracy of this university, then I had succeeded. And if I tried to learn something along the way- well, God bless me. But learning is just not the most efficient way to get students graduated at the lowest cost.
This trend is not restricted to BSOS. It is an ill-kept secret among this university’s faculty that their best incentive to succeed – tenure – is not tied to teaching at all. In the words of one anonymous economics professor while handing out the semester’s teaching evaluations: “You can write whatever you want about my teaching. It won’t affect my tenure track at all.” Tenure is based almost entirely on the number of articles a professor has published. To our departments’ tenure committees, 1,000 negative reviews of a professor from hardworking Maryland students mean nothing compared to his ability to publish an obscure article in some minor journal, read by seven people, four of whom are in that professor’s mother’s bridge club.
To me, these experiences represent a pattern of behavior at this university, a pattern in which academic development never comes first. Educational improvements for under-resourced departments (especially those that don’t attract large research grants) go woefully underfunded, while improvements are made to other parts of the school. A new alumni center? Sure. A developed athletics program? Much more important. And I appreciate these improvements, like every other student. But as long as the university continues to cut costs in the area it should be concentrating on the most – educating students – then it will never reach the level of prestige it has been fighting to achieve for the last 10 years. Education must become the number one priority at this university, not just an afterthought or postscript to our college experience.
This oversubscription policy has made me realize, in my last year of college, what this university really needs: a little bit of nerd.
Shuli Karkowsky is a senior government and politics and economics major. She can be reached at mkarkow@umd.edu.
