Recent Events Draw Students to Political Science

Friday, January 26, 2001

As the nation waited - and waited - for judges and poll workers and sundry others to determine the next president of the United States, Julie Carrier stayed glued to CNN. "I also thought it would be interesting to know more about the troubles President Bush was going to have with the Senate and House so equally divided," said Carrier, who is taking a "Congress and the President" class this semester. "I think there are two reasons," Munger noted. "One is the interest generated by the election and the controversy after the election. That's why some of the American politics courses are oversubscribed. Munger said enrollment numbers in political science courses do tend to fluctuate. For instance, during the 1980s, there was a lot of interest in comparative politics because of the Iran-contra affair, concerns about the Soviet Union and threats of war. Today, enrollment is up not only in the American politics courses, but in international relations classes as well. "The big deals now are more a product of the late '90s - international economic systems, globalization - and there is more of an 'inter' rather than comparative national perspective in the reason why people become political science majors." Interest at the course level often is affected by current events, Munger added, "so impeachment had an impact in 1998, and this election and the new administration have had an impact now." The department was also fortunate, Munger said, because it arranged new courses for this spring, like "Legislative Behavior" and "Race and Politics," even before the election occurred. "It was just luck," Munger said Lucky or not, the proof is in the numbers. This spring, 1,263 students are enrolled in political science classes; last spring, the number was 1,027. Adam Siegel, a first-year student majoring in math and economics, said he decided to enroll in Munger's "Congress and the President" class partly because of recent events. "I had Dr. Munger during my first semester and really liked him as a professor. But, secondly, I took this course because of my interest stemming from the election. With the Senate divided 50-50 and with a new president coming in, there's no better time to take this course than right now." Al Eldridge, the director of undergraduate studies in the political science department, agrees with Siegel. "I personally think, based on my 30 years teaching here, that Duke students take particular courses because of two primary factors: the content of the course and who is teaching the course. Courses that have interesting/challenging content and are being taught by good/dedicated teachers draw enrollments. Having said that, I must also say that this is an exciting time to be teaching domestic and international politics with a new administration coming into office, and hopefully that sense of excitement is conveyed to and is shared by our undergraduates." Munger said he expects the recent election will prompt changes in the curriculum. "We're likely to have changes in our 'Voting and Elections' class, which up to now has been kind of dry and mostly institutional. We talk about theories of voting and different ways of adding up votes - proportional systems, majority-rule systems. We're probably going to change that course to make it a little more practically oriented because there's a lot of interesting questions that remain about voting fairness. What kind of voting machines are better than another? Whose job is to make sure that it works? This is the perfect chance to make it more relevant." Munger added it may be another year or so before it can be determined if this recent interest translates into more political science majors. "We have a lot of instructors in this department that are very committed to teaching, and it is always recognized by the students, but there's also a general level of interest that I haven't seen before. Now it seems like people are actually interested in politics. We'll see how long that continues."