Adviser's woes

This week I have had to come to the conclusion that there is something that everyone at an American university dreads more than finals, midterms, or grading: Advising and registration. Some people may dread it because computer systems will have glitches or go down. Others may despise the fact that the people you need to talk to about overrides and exceptions are always unavailable. That's not what gets me, those are all bureaucratic nuisances I can handle (albeit with steam coming out my ears). No, it's the complete and overwhelmingly insane complexity of trying to assess which classes students need to take when. It's no wonder that freshmen are encouraged to bring their parents during their July orientation. I argue that all students should be allowed to bring their parents to advisement and registration - sometimes when I get especially tangled in a student's schedule, I wish my parents could be there.

Now I know all of my Dutch readers are going to think, well sheesh, how hard is it to figure out what classes students need to take when? And all I can say is: I know! In Holland, you receive a "student handbook" that perfectly delineates which class you're supposed to take when for each of the four years (or however long you chose to stretch it into) it would take you to graduate
Unless you failed, say Statistics A, and weren't able to take it successor Statistics B, it was all very easy and clear-cut. Although we do have a student handbook, and a class-checksheet, and a course catalog, and various online resources, I still long back for the simplicity of scheduling in Holland.

The main issue with American colleges and universities is that when students come in, they don't start taking classes for their major right away. Freshmen (or first year students for the Europeans among us), unlike their undoubtedly much luckier European counterparts, don't come in, and start with mind-numbingly dull classes like "Introduction into Mass Communication", "Basics of Communication research", and "Statistics A". No, American freshmen still have to take a litany of so-called core classes; i.e, classes in English, math, foreign languages, humanities, and sciences. They are not even allowed to start on their major classes until they have completed a sizable chunk of these core classes. And this is where the confusion commences.

For freshmen it's actually not so bad. They receive their first advisement during their orientation, where the university signs them up for all the core classes according to the classes and exams they have taking in high school. So your basic freshman might take the following five classes: Engl 1101, College Algebra 1111, Chem 1151, Fren 2001 and Hist 1111. Every single core class offers several sections, so getting a conflict-free schedule is a cinch.
It's at the sophomore level that the craziness starts. In order to stay on track, they may need to take three Mass Communication (Comm) classes in their first semester, but because they failed Engl 1102, they're not allowed into Comm 2001. This class is a prerequisite for all their other Comm classes, and not allowing them to register for it would put them a year behind, since Comm 2001 is only offered in the fall. You can see how well that would go down with everyone. So then you, as the adviser, have to consider, will you allow them into that class, and go through all the tedious paperwork of filing an override, or do you let them pay for their mistakes? Or maybe they need to take a PE class (I kid you not), didn't realize this until a day before the end of registration, and the only section that is not full is the one that collides with Comm 3349, another class they have to take if they want to get into any of the higher level production classes. And on and on it goes.

Sometimes the university doesn't help either; upper level courses are only offered once a year, so if a student forgets to register for one class, they will need to wait a year to take it again. A small mistake, but which can have disastrous consequences if you're looking at graduating. One of my students, for instance, saw her graduation get postponed from December to June next year because she didn't realize that Comm 3310, a major requirement, is only offered in the Spring. Another issue we face is that the university in all their wisdom decided that advisement is no longer mandatory. Before last semester, students had to come in to see their advisers once per semester, and determine which classes they needed to take. This would help them figure out what, when, where, and why, and would make sure they stayed on track for graduation. Now that students can register for classes without talking to their adviser, many lose sight of what they need to take and when, and so we have people like another one of my students who can't graduate in December because he failed to take the required number of foreign language courses. And that's when students suddenly do come and talk to their adviser, and I'm stuck explaining that, no, you can't graduate while missing three credits, and no, we can't offer Comm 3310 in the fall, our schedules our full. It's the pits.

Besides going to an entirely European situation where to get into a four-year program you have to have passed a national exam, and so no core classes are needed, I'm not quite sure what to do. For now, I just have the perfect Euro-American solution: drink lots of tea to keep you calm, and lots of Mt. Dew to keep you focused.