Colleagues,
I am seeking to gather data about enrollment trends in writing majors, broadly conceived (writing and rhetoric, professional writing, technical writing–not creative writing) for reasons that you could likely imagine. With the pressure to slim down on humanities and social science majors and combine majors, questions are emerging about the popularity of writing majors. In addition, the advent of AI seems to have led some administrators to imagine writing majors might not be needed in the future. I will avoid editorializing. What we need is information about enrollment trends.
I would greatly appreciate it if you’d be willing to have whomever leads your UG writing major take this survey about your enrollment trends.
This is NOT a survey for research; I will not publish or present about it. I will aggregate and anonymize the collected information to write a report that summarizes enrollment and trend lines. I will happily share this summary with anyone who needs it.
Can you pass this survey along to the right person?
My apologies if someone already has this amazing data in a report somewhere that I couldn’t find. When I asked recently about writing majors, it seemed that our professional organizations no longer keep track of this information (which seems like a problem to me, but one outside my locus of control).
Thanks so much.
Elizabeth Wardle
University Distinguished Professor
Howe Distinguished Professor of Written Communication
Director of Howe Center for Writing Excellence
Miami University (OH)
Co-President for Voter Services, League of Women Voters, Oxford (OH)
liz