enrollment caps in writing courses

[sinenomine]

My institution is looking to increase efficiencies by running full sections of courses and are looking at the size of writing courses (freshman composition). I've taught at a university where these courses were capped at 24 students; where I am now, they're capped at 15. For those of you teaching composition, what's the maximum enrollment for your sections? Just trying to get an informal sense of what others are doing.

[Parasaurolophus]

I don't teach comp, but can tell you that their caps are the same as everyone else's: 35, and courses enrolling below 27 are at risk of cancellation. 0_o

[mbelvadi]

My institution is looking to increase efficiencies by running full sections of courses and are looking at the size of writing courses (freshman composition). I've taught at a university where these courses were capped at 24 students; where I am now, they're capped at 15. For those of you teaching composition, what's the maximum enrollment for your sections? Just trying to get an informal sense of what others are doing.

Our English 101 freshman comp class, which is very writing intensive, used to be capped at 20 but somewhere along the pandemic, it was increased to 25 and is still there although we are back to F2F.  Be aware that such caps are what economists call "sticky downwards" meaning it will be very hard to ever get it back down once it's raised.
We are a small comprehensive public university in Canada, with ambitions to growing more grad programs but still mostly undergrad.

[RatGuy]

During Fall 2020, we dropped our FYW course caps from 24 to 18. With max 6 students in class due to COVID protocols (.25 capacity), that meant that students met once a week during MWF section. At least, that's how they arrived at 18. For a variety of reasons, admin agreed to keep that number moving forward.

[Larimar]

OnlyGameInTown CC caps the freshman comp courses at 20. Any section with enrollment less than 12 is at risk of cancellation.

[Morden]

Our writing courses are capped at 32; they need to have 16 or will be cancelled, but they are always 32 with waiting lists.
They used to be 25 a long time ago now, and when they gradually crept up, we noticed that there's less and less we can do to help the weaker writers.

[dinomom]

our writing courses aren't capped per se, but all first year seminars are capped at 15. many of these are writing courses.

[Wahoo Redux]

I believe all our writing courses (comp, creative, business) are capped at 25.  They are in danger of being killed with less than 19, depending on students' graduation requirements registered for those classes.

[Hegemony]

Our are capped at 24, and those who teach Comp are adamant that this is really too many for good writing-intensive teaching. The fact that cash-strapped places have high caps is no reason to emulate those caps; in fact the reverse.

[Ahania]

Ours, too, are capped at 25, and often go above that since we are hard-pressed to add additional sections due to lack of faculty and so people over enroll their classes, even when warned that by doing so, they are implying to admin that the caps could be even higher.

[Ruralguy]

At my SLAC writing and language courses are capped at 15. It was a little lower, but some years ago we needed to reduce sections taught by adjuncts, so, we raised the cap by 1 or 2. I could see that happening again.

[sinenomine]

Thanks, everyone -- I appreciate all the voices!

[rhetoricae]

Not sure if it's too late to chip in, but I will. :)  I teach FYC at a community college - our caps are 25, except for developmental/remedial writing, which are capped at 20.

[fishbrains]

Our caps for freshizzle writing courses at my CC went from 17 up to 22 and now they're at 25, even for remedial courses. Most instructors have gone from assigning 5 essays down to 4 essays per semester, but we can't even suggest that we've lowered the academic rigor of our courses. Maybe they will at least let us paint our offices in shades of gray.