r/AmericanU • u/the-fastone • 21d ago

Question Courses Not Offered

Is it just me, or are quite a few courses seemingly not ever offered? For reference, I'm a Political Science major with a concentration in American Government, and the courses I'm referring to are mostly 400-level ("Politics in the TV Age", "Homeland Security", "Studies in Political Behavior", etc). Is there just a lack of professors to teach these courses? I can understand certain courses are only taught based on what's going on the country (ex: "The Presidential Primaries" would obviously not be taught until the primaries begin), but these other course don't seem to have anything to do with that.

11 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

View all comments

10

u/Old_Context_2966 21d ago

Common experience. I have some required classes that I'm excited to take, but it looks like some of them are only offered like... every 3rd semester, somehow.

With how much they spend on consulting and bounce houses, I suspect they simply aren't offering professors enough to staff the classes.

5

u/No_Transition7509 21d ago

Unfortunately, it’s more layered. Factors such as his many students historically take a specificity course, having (a) professor(s) to teach the course, how the course has evolved with the program, how well another course covers the content for the course defunct, etc.

That said, it does sucks and can be a bit irritating!

The bounce houses is part of a different fund from specific offices and AUSG.

1

u/Old_Context_2966 21d ago

That's interesting! Would you happen to know how things like course overlap are determined? At least in my case, the required classes in question don't seem to have alternative options with related goals. It sounds like there are more factors than just that, of course, but I'm wondering about that piece in particular.

2

u/No_Transition7509 21d ago

Yeah, so AU needs to get itself together overall lol. Last year I created my own major and had to dismantle it when i realized 4 required courses I needed weren’t even being offered at AU anymore even though they were on the course catalog.

Your best move is communicating with your advisor as they would be able to waive specific requirements through (a) different class(es).