Dear Provost Starnes,

WCU has accepted a record number of first-time freshmen for the Fall 2026 semester: 2,385 students. In today’s precarious higher education landscape, news of an unexpectedly large incoming first-year class should come as a welcome surprise for faculty and staff alike. Record enrollment should signal record revenue for WCU, and we would anticipate faculty, staff, and administrators sharing in those benefits.

Instead, professors of some Liberal Studies (LS) courses learned over the summer that administrators responded to this unexpected enrollment by increasing class sizes. Our analysis found that the average LS course capacity increased by 13% year-over-year, with the highest increase being 125% year-over-year, with a further course growing by 42 seats. These increases have pushed class sizes even further outside disciplinary standards, and the decision arrived without meaningful faculty input or any additional material support.

The decision to increase course capacities violates the AAUP’s principle of shared governance, an essential component for a thriving working environment, of which WCU is usually proud to provide. Per the AAUP’s Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities, “The faculty has primary responsibility for such fundamental areas as curriculum, subject matter and methods of instruction . . . and those aspects of student life which relate to the educational process.” WCU faculty should possess primary decision-making authority about course capacities, given their impact on methods of instruction and aspects of student life related to instruction.

Professors teaching first-year courses—many of whom are fixed-term, non-tenured instructors—face the daunting task of doing more teaching labor with no additional support. Faculty teaching these courses should have been consulted to determine how to sustainably accommodate these new Catamounts while maintaining the rigor and value of our courses.

Upper administration is already aware that instruction quality will drop due to this increase of class sizes, and we contend that, had faculty been allowed a voice in these discussions, better solutions could have been reached, such as compensation to cover the increased time required to instruct/assess each additional student, renegotiation of our work plan to remove some service and/or scholarship requirements, the informed option to teach overload courses, and/or the hiring of adjuncts. Administrators could have worked with faculty to reach a mutually beneficial outcome. Instead, they chose the path of least consultation and compensation, despite anticipated revenue increases from student tuition and fees.

We cannot forget that faculty’s working conditions are students’ learning conditions. Although these increased course capacities have been promised as temporary, these first-year students’ experience isn’t temporary. First-year seminars and LS courses at WCU aren’t thousand-person auditorium affairs. Here, a love for our subject matter is paired with personalized relationships and mentoring opportunities from professors around the university. Students report that WCU is a place where they feel like more than a number. We are a school where teachers know students’ names and take an interest in them as both a person and scholar.

With first-year courses crucial to retention and degree completion, it is a mistake to haphazardly stick additional students into any given class without consulting the experts who, year-in and year-out, make WCU an attractive place for faculty to work and students to learn. We call on WCU’s administrators to honor the principles of shared governance and collaborate with LS faculty to make course decisions that maintain the reputation of WCU as a good workplace and a place of academic excellence.
Therefore, we are calling on you to:

1. Support affected faculty by providing additional compensation of $100 per student added to each affected Liberal Studies section.

2. Send a university-wide email to all faculty stating that Spring 2027 course capacities will revert to Spring 2026 levels.

3. Send a university-wide email to all faculty stating that the University Curriculum Committee will decide future course capacities, with disciplinary standards as the primary criterion.

According to an NCSECU podcast, in 2025 Forbes named Western Carolina University “the third best workplace in the nation and the best in North Carolina.” People come to Cullowhee for many reasons, but stay because we value the education and experiences we provide our students. We are also aware that unsustainable working conditions directly affect our ability to show up for those students.

We assert that the measures listed above will begin to address the strain faculty are experiencing due to the course capacity increases and will assure faculty that their voices and needs are taken seriously while realigning WCU with AAUP’s shared governance principles.