This story about attracting more students simply by changing a course's name from something blah ("Victorian Novels") to something a bit more snazzy ("Sex, Lies, and the Cinematograph") isn't really surprising. Part of it stems from the corporatization of the university: if you need more students (customers) to take your course (to buy your product) so that the school does not pull your class from the schedule (so that the company don't take your product off the market), then you need to entice the young ones (the people who have lots of money/the people who have parents with lots of money/the people who are going to be saddled with lots of debt for a really long time). Even I am teaching a course now that I could have just labeled "The Gothic in Literature and Film," but I named it "MONSTERS!" (yes, with the caps and exclamation point).
But I do wonder sometimes if this kind of marketing of classes can get out of hand. I think that posting innovative (but accurate) course descriptions and using fun course titles are fine strategies for filling classroom seats, but when I was asked this past summer to film a short video describing a seminar I would be teaching this fall, I found it slightly odd--it seemed too much like I would be recording one of those old-school video personal ads ("My course is about . . . and I like candlelit dinners, long walks on the beach . . . "). That's not the kind of relationship I want to establish with my students! Even watching some of the videos of other professors confirmed my impression: you could see one or two instructors had dressed up a bit more than normal, and several could not hide a slight sense of embarrassment beneath the veneer of confidence. Not that I'm criticizing or even mocking those teachers who decided to participate, but the context of the videos themselves made me uncomfortable. And since most of the professors were simply reading from cards or had memorized the same course descriptions that were already sent to students in email/text form, I wasn't sure that the videos were not just redundant--or were not just encouraging students to choose their courses according to the "hotness" factor of the instructor (cf. Rate My Professor's creepy little chili peppers).
Speaking of which, I would hope that students do not always correlate the attractiveness of the teacher with the quality of the teaching. I mean, don't get me wrong: many of us can better appreciate being lectured to on the Napoleon's nostrils/adenosine triphosphate's merry travels/the white whale's blow hole if there's a pretty face at the front of the room. But surely learning is not predicated upon the presence of eye candy? If a professor is "hot" yet cannot put together a proper lesson plan, cannot articulate clearly his/her expectations for major assignments, does not clarify the basic concepts of the course, etc., then I sincerely hope that "market forces" don't intervene so that participants in the course nevertheless give him/her more positive evaluations than the instructor who does achieve those goals but may have bad (or no) hair, may not have six-pack abs, or may not resemble Angelina Jolie or that twit Edward from that ridiculous Twilight movie. Students sometimes complain that they are unfairly assessed, but isn't beauty an unfair criterion for evaluation of teaching?
Then again, maybe it's time for plastic surgery . . . *sigh*
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