The add/drop period for the spring 2024 semester began on Jan. 22, one week before the start of the semester, and ended on Friday, Feb. 9, two weeks after the start of classes. In the 2022-2023 academic year, the University reported that 17 percent of classes offered during the academic year contained at least 30 students. This semester, after the add/drop period ended, 196 of the 1397 courses with at least one enrolled student, or 14 percent, had at least 30 students.
At midnight after every day during the add/drop period, The Daily Princetonian recorded the enrollment numbers of each course that had at least 30 students. During this period, students may use TigerHub to change their course selections.
These large classes, on average, each lost five percent of enrolled students since the beginning of classes on January 29. Six classes had their enrollment drop by more than 35 percent.
Professor David Bell, who teaches HIS 212: Europe in the World: From 1776 to the Present Day wrote in an email to the ‘Prince’ that he noticed the drop in enrollment in his class, which began with 47 students and currently has 14.
“It’s not a course I teach regularly, but the last time I did so, four years ago, nothing like this happened… perhaps student tastes have changed, or my first lectures didn't go over well,” Bell wrote. “I think it's important that students be able to ‘shop’ courses, but the practice does make it harder to arrange precepts.” The course has a rating of 4.36.
Louisa Gheorghita ’26 is one of the nine students who dropped HIS 294: Science and Medicine in the Early Modern World, which had 27 students before classes began. Gheorghita dropped the course after the first lecture.
Speaking of her initial interest in the course, Gheorghita said, “I’m planning on getting the European Cultural Studies certificate... [The description] talked about alchemy. It talked about science and medicine in the early modern world, and this has long been an interest of mine.”
“It was the presentation of the course on the first day that made me not interested in it,” she continued. “It was more of the anecdotal, contextual information that to me was not very intriguing and I feel like it wasn’t super relevant.”
Gheorghita is a staff News writer and head Photo editor for the ‘Prince.’
Of the original 36 students enrolled in MAT 378: Theory of Games, only 19 remained by the end of the add/drop period. Nick James ’27 dropped the course at the end of the first week.
“The syllabus for the course is just really fast paced… The class just seemed to be very linear algebra based,” James said. “Because Xiaoyu He is very ambitious with the course, I think that also intimidated a lot of the class too.” He, the instructor of the course, is a postdoctoral research fellow in mathematics.
For the most part, the largest classes this semester have historically maintained high numbers. The largest class this semester is POL 396: International Organizations, taught by James Raymond Vreeland, which currently holds 420 students and has grown each year since it was first offered in Spring 2020 and has always been close to its enrollment cap.
POL 332: Topics in American Statesmanship: The Art of Statesmanship and the Political Life, however, was not previously close to its enrollment cap until this semester. The course currently has 255 students enrolled, nearly 7 times the enrollment that it had in the most recent semester it was offered, Spring 2023.
In contrast to dropped courses, where 29 courses decreased by at least 20 percent, no courses increased in enrollment by more than 25 percent. The highest percent enrollment occurred in POL 240: International Relations, taught by Christopher Blair, where enrollment increased by 10 students, a growth of 21 percent.
Although the add/drop period for this semester has ended, students are permitted to drop classes through Friday, April 5 for a $45 fee.
Alexa Wingate is an assistant Data editor for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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