Last week, campus officials tried to stem the outcry about the difficulty many undergraduates had in getting into required classes. “This is insane,” said one student, a senior, “I just need to take Diff. Eq. to graduate, that’s all. But I can’t get in because no one else has taken it either, and I lost the last-name lottery this year.”
Work is still in the preliminary stages, but solutions are being proposed. One such proposal is to make the deadline for becoming a graduating senior more strict. “We’re absolutely flooded with supposed ‘graduating seniors’ every semester,” said assistant to the registrar Nancy Campbell, “so it might work to move that deadline back a few decades. Plus, that would give us more time to process the paperwork.” While students pointed out that predicting one’s graduation date even a month before the next semester’s classes are posted is challenging enough, Campbell and other officials responded that the complainers “simply lack long term planning.” Campbell explained, “If they’re so worried about graduation date accuracy, they should have considered joining one of the larger majors on campus, where essential courses are offered every semester. They chose to go into a less predictable field; now they face the consequences.”
Currently, the most popular solution is to admit more students, a move which would increase revenue, and thus alleviate these concerns. Said student life advisor Mary Pride, “This might also help decrease the strain on our residence halls. On-campus housing is bursting at the seams, but if we just had a bit more money, we might be able to fix it, make it better somehow.” More students at Mines would also increase the efficiency of the system, since more classes would fill to capacity. “Of course, the core courses fill right up on the first 3 days of registration,” said Charles Provan, student flow analyst, “but there are still these pockets of reserve space that are wasting school money. Ideally, it is better to have students who are incapable of registering for any classes if it means that all these gaps are stopped up.”
The school is asking for student and community input about these and other proposed plans, though turnout is expected to be slim. “Fortunately,” said Provan, “the students who feel ‘oppressed’ or put upon by our current policies – the angry ones with nothing to contribute to the discussion – will be too busy refreshing Trailhead looking for waitlist openings to attend.”
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