Seniors Assail Undergraduate Education at UCLA Campus

A group of UCLA seniors got together on Wednesday to deliver a forceful message to the university’s faculty and administration: Undergraduate education at the Westwood campus is vastly overrated.

The seniors complained that most classes are large and impersonal, that professors seem far more interested in research than teaching and that the 19,000 undergraduates believe they are ignored on the huge campus.

“UCLA prides itself on being among the top five universities in the nation, but that is strictly based on graduate programs,” said Swati Adarkar, a senior who organized the forum. “Teaching undergraduates is just not valued here.”

Wednesday’s forum, which included a discussion with university administrators, followed a weekend retreat of two weeks ago in which 75 students put together a series of recommendations for improving the undergraduate program.

Rarely Challenged

Adarkar and other students said they were rarely challenged during their four years at UCLA.

“The typical experience here is that you sit passively in a lecture hall with 400 students. You take notes for 10 weeks, have two multichoice exams and get a final grade,” said Adarkar, an honor student. “You are not forced to think. You don’t have to write, and you don’t discuss anything or question the professor--all the things you would expect to do in a college.”

Most UCLA departments are stocked with the top-ranked professors, the students said. And university administrators reminded them that the Westwood campus draws many of California’s brightest high school students.

But both the seniors and the administrators admitted that the tenured professors and undergraduate students rarely see much of each other, at least until their third or fourth year at school.

“That’s what’s so unfortunate and unfair,” said Jill Jones, a senior from Manhattan Beach. “You hear about all the fantastic professors, but you never get to know them.”

In her first two years, Jones said, her smallest class “had about 100 students. The largest had about 500. In fact, most of them were nearer 500.” A political science major, Jones said she had three classes in her junior year that had fewer than 25 students, but most had 80 or more.

“What counts here is research, graduate students and the prestige programs like the medical school. They make it very clear that undergraduates don’t count,” said Lee Travish, another senior who chaired a student task force that called for more required writing assignments and at least one seminar class for freshman.

Despite the harshness of the criticism, several faculty members and administrators said they agreed in essence with the student’s complaints.

Research Has Priority

“I think most everyone realizes that the undergraduate education doesn’t get nearly enough attention here,” said Stanley Wolpert, professor of history. “The faculty will tell you that their research is their top priority. But the university has never insisted that teaching be given at least equal value.”

In the last year, three major reports--from the National Institute of Education, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Assn. of American Colleges--have criticized the quality of undergraduate education, calling for more emphasis on liberal arts, more attention to teaching and smaller classes that require writing and discussion.

The UCLA students said the criticisms in the reports applied directly to the Westwood campus, but faculty and university officials expressed little interest in making changes.

“These reports said the universities like UCLA need to critically evaluate their undergraduate programs, but it was the students here who had to initiate the discussion,” Adarkar said.

Want Small Seminars

When the students held their retreat, organized with the aid of UCLA Vice Chancellor William Schaefer, they divided into four groups: liberal arts, teaching, skills and proficiencies, and learning environment. All four focused on the same suggestion--that students should have at least one small seminar class in the freshman year.

Such a class would have fewer than 20 students, would be taught by a tenured professor, and would require intensive reading, writing and discussion, the students said.

UCLA Provost Raymond Orbach said Wednesday he was “personally in favor” of the freshman seminars.

“But it’s a question of trade-offs,” Orbach added. “We have tried to keep small classes in the upper division (junior and senior years) but at a price of large classes in the lower division (freshmen and sophomores). We can present this to the faculty, but it’s really up to them. They have to think it’s a good idea and want to do it to make it happen.”