Friday Fragments

Whoever wrote the rule for F-1 visa students saying that they need at least nine credits per semester to be entirely in-person has never had to manage a community college course schedule.

As local funding has lagged what it takes to run a full schedule, we’ve had to consolidate sections. In practice, that often means sacrificing on-site classes to their online alternatives, since the latter tend to fill faster. We put some limits on that, for obvious reasons, but an increasing number of courses now run only online because we don’t have the enrollments to sustain sections in both modalities at the same time.

Then we get the late requests to add very small in-person sections at the last minute for the occasional student on an F-1 visa.

Depending on the outcome, that’s either an unfunded mandate or a tragedy. If we comply, it’s at disproportionate cost. If we don’t, it jeopardizes the student’s visa. (We find ways to comply, but it’s indefensibly expensive.)

The rule may have made sense when online courses were still the exception. I’m told it was suspended during COVID because it had to be. It’s back, but the ecosystem to which it has returned has changed fundamentally. Now, online courses are often the norm. At smallish institutions, the slate of courses that can sustain multiple sections across modalities simultaneously is much smaller than it used to be. But here we are.

My request: Treat international students the same way we treat veterans. Require one course with an in-person presence, to prevent fraud, but then let them take what they will beyond that. It doesn’t have to be this way.

I’m happy to report that my wise and worldly readers keep stepping up with new aphorisms! A few more submissions of sayings that get them through difficult days:

“Mind reading is a very imperfect form of communication.”

“Never attribute to malice that which incompetence will explain.”

“The easiest way to become the villain at work is to tell the truth.”

“What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?”

“Without art, ‘earth’ would just be ‘eh.’”

“Everyone has to do their own face-plants.”

And my favorite of this batch …

“Morale is at an all-time low, and always has been.”

At a previous institution, one curmudgeon used to trot out the “morale is at an all-time low” every six months or so, or whenever a new idea came up. It’s one of my professional regrets that I never asked him for his polling data.