Sam Ellens stopped going to his communications theory class after the third lecture. That didn’t stop him from getting an A+.

The third-year radio and television arts student bluffed his way through both his mid-term and his final exam, having scarcely looked at any of the readings. He even wrote his 2,000-word term paper on Noam Chomsky’s film, Manufacturing Consent, based on six quotations he found on Wikipedia.

“The only thing I lost marks on was participation because I was never there,” he said.

Ellens came to Ryerson intent on getting a university degree with an emphasis on hands-on experience. But, like many students, he found his academic classes just got in the way.

Whether at the Hub or over beers at the Ram, Ryerson students have long joked that the school’s academics are a distraction to their practical education. In a new Ryersonian informal survey, more than 80 per cent of students said their electives and academic courses take a back seat to core or practical classes. Scores of students have even joined a Facebook group that lists the “easiest” classes at Ryerson, where they share stories of getting great marks without ever buying a textbook, and other ways to beat the system.

What’s more, some faculty members admit to reducing course loads and readings because they know students’ interests are elsewhere.

“The best part of Ryerson is the practical, project-oriented classes,” Ellens said. “For the most part, there aren’t too many theory classes worth taking. They’re just not that important.”

However, Ryerson’s administration maintains its blended educational model is uniquely designed for the 21st century. There are few universities that offer students the ability to go from a class on how to do something to a second class on why. BIRD cont’d . . .

“I think students in your generation love the idea that you can have the intellectual experiences  . . .  but you’re not in retreat from the world doing it,” said Alan Shepard, provost and vice-president academic.

But it seems students aren’t sticking around in all their classes long enough to get the academic message. And if they think Ryerson’s applied reputation is enough to get ahead, they’re wrong.    

A legacy of hands-on learning

From the beginning, Ryerson wanted to be different.

When the Ryerson Institute of Technology welcomed its first 250 students in 1948, it was designed as an alternative to most established post-secondary options. With a stated desire to shorten apprenticeship periods down to two years from six or seven, the RIT became a haven for returning veterans of the Second World War looking for a place that offered hands-on learning and a ticket to a job after graduation.

And while the school has had official university status since 1993, its identity has remained focused on offering students a place to learn with their hands and their heads. This legacy of experiential learning has become the backbone of Ryerson’s tripartite learning system: core degree, professionally related and liberal courses.

This emphasis can be a gift and a curse for anyone looking to take on the job of overhauling Ryerson’s academics. Since he started in 2007, Shepard has spent a lot of time deciding whether or not to fiddle with a system that works.

“There’s a false dichotomy in improving our academics and our hands-on learning. I don’t think they’re opposed,” he said. “The beauty of Ryerson is that it’s managed to fuse them together.”

And with the number of students who apply to Ryerson as their first choice jumping by record numbers in recent years, the school has been wildly successful getting students to come here. But holding their attention once they get to Ryerson, beyond their core practical classes, has become a problem.

Are we studying to live or living to study?

Jamil Frig had already finished three years of business courses at Humber before he transferred to the Ted Rogers School of Management. He desired more than a diploma; he wanted a well-rounded education, and he thought Ryerson’s burgeoning business school was the place to get it.

His opinion quickly changed while trying to select his electives.

“Looking at the list, I said, ‘This is all just a waste of time.’ I came here to learn how to be successful in the real world, the business world. How is a 14th-century art history course going to help me with that?”

In January, Frig started the Ryerson Bird Courses and Easy Upper Liberals Facebook group, which catalogues classes where he says “you can just show up, BS your way through it and pass.

Frig, who has crowned himself the president of “Students who don’t give a shit about liberals and electives,” thinks the school needs to revamp its academics to be more relevant for students.    

“I would really like Ryerson to push to have more liberals that were valuable. They need courses like Mandarin, language courses that matter for a career,” he said.

If Hamed Afshar knew about Frig’s group, he’d have a few pointers for its members.

The second-year engineering student took Everyday Geography last year. It was his first elective, but he figured out pretty quickly the classes were “optional.” He showed up for a handful of classes and ended up with a B+. “I was satisfied,” he said. “(The class had) nothing useful. Nothing useful to engineering.”

History professor Peter Wronski can empathize. But Ryerson’s degree programs have tied his hands in how much he can cover in his lectures.

“The courses at Ryerson are easy,” he said. “Reading assignments are much easier.”

Wronski, who has also taught at the University of Toronto, says history students there read three times as many books. He and several other professors in other disciplines have admitted to assigning fewer readings because electives at Ryerson are designed to be more generalized.

Still, his students don’t seem to mind.

“They’re thinking, ‘It’s liberals, it’s electives, it’s not important,’” he said.

What’s more, attendance and participation accounts for 15 to 20 per cent of the final grade in Wronski’s classes. This is common in the history department, but by no means the highest. Students taking HST-540 History of Espionage or HST-723 The Material Cultures of North America have 30 per cent of their mark based on participation in seminars.

The Ryersonian also went through more than 100 course outlines from popular elective disciplines such as English, sociology and geography and found most included a participation component of between 10 and 15 per cent.

In many classes, this amounts to nothing more than a student (or their friends) signing their name on a sheet of paper. 

Wronski isn’t surprised that students take advantage of easy participation marks, and doesn’t blame them when they’re forced to shove history to the bottom of their to-do piles. “If historians make a mistake planes don’t come down, like in aerospace,”

Ryerson’s inferiority complex

Despite the reputation Ryerson has gained for its hands-on teaching, some say the school’s legacy has also become a stigma.

“Ryerson’s biggest problem is we have an inferiority complex (that) we’re only an applied school now, just now getting academics,” said Neil Thomlinson, the chair of the politics department.

“We already have academics.”

He says the school has a strong academic pedigree, with students consistently winning awards at the National MBA games, the model United Nations and other scholarly competitions. However, he said there is reluctance among many students to venture out of their comfort zones.

“It’s just not acceptable for people to take their entire fucking curriculum from one department,” he said. “That’s the part a lot of the programs and students have a hard time understanding.”

President Sheldon Levy says other department chairs have also expressed concern with the school filling up students’ schedules with too many core courses for accrediting reasons.

However, Levy and Shepard both agree that Ryerson’s future lies in properly integrating the two divides.

If students don’t take the opportunities offered to them, that’s their loss. And with more people changing jobs more often, it’s clear that the practical skills learned at Ryerson must be paired with a willingness to grow and learn. 

“I would urge people to take the long view,” Shepard said. “Almost everyone who graduates from Ryerson today will have multiple careers.”

Brenda Cooke has been a professional headhunter for more than 30 years. Her business, First Choice Personnel, matches up prospective employees with permanent, full-time jobs. It used to be expected for people to have the same job for 10 years or more, but now it’s just seen as strange.

Expectations are also different when it comes to education.

“University is almost like what (high school) was back in the day, it’s expected. Most employers still look for someone who’s had book learning, not (strictly) time in the field.”

The future

There’s a human-sized ice cream cone in Shepard’s office. Aside from the spinning discs, it’s one of the last vestiges of Sam the Record Man. The cone is also a reminder for Shepard of his mission. As is the case for the area once occupied by Sam the Record Man, that will shortly become a student haven, the cone represents another kind of rebuilding. Namely, Shepard’s goal to grow Ryerson’s academics, while respecting the location’s history and character.

“I have no interest in dismantling Ryerson’s historic, hands-on learning,” he said.

Shepard’s new Academic Plan for 2008-2013 is a 26-page report that emphasizes five priorities including growing research, reputation enhancement and “teaching excellence” in academics.

However, there is no magic formula for changing the school, and Shepard refuses to commit Ryerson to either scholastic or experiential learning. Every program is different.

“Curriculums aren’t like the Ten Commandments. They’re living, breathing things,” he said. “Often, electives are places where students get to explore new things.”

Unfortunately, by the time the full impact of the Academic Plan can be seen, students like Frig and Ellens will be long gone.

But Levy hopes that students who have become disenchanted with the reality of university will broaden their horizons and give Ryerson a second chance.

“You take away the periphery and you keep narrowing and narrowing, eventually you become a trade school,” he said. “We’re not here to teach you how to use the widget of today, that’s not a university education.”

In the meantime, Frig won’t be shutting down his Facebook group any time soon.

“If there were better courses, I wouldn’t have started the group. It’s really up to Ryerson to make it better,” he said.