During pre-registration, students are asked to balance core and major requirements, their personal and academic interests, and the schedule logistics. It is natural to expect that you may not be lucky enough to get the only discussion section not offered on Fridays for Comparative Political Systems, or that a sought-after English seminar is filled up. But what happens when Georgetown must cancel your first-choice class, only a few weeks after advertising it to the entire student population?
The pre-registration period can be a stressful experience for students. It is often held during one of the busiest times of the semester – wedged between midterms and finals. Hoyas are expected to plan ahead – foreseeing unpredictable work and internship schedules – to navigate around sometimes elusive course descriptions and to schedule a brief and hopefully fruitful meeting with their deans. After investing their time planning for the next five months of the academic year, most students hope they’ll be lucky enough to be enrolled in their first choice classes – or at least their alternates. Some students, however, are faced with cancelled classes that leave gaping holes in their schedules.
Granted, there are legitimate reasons for cancelling a class. A professor may need to take an unexpected leave of absence, or student interest may be nonexistent.
Regardless, those students whose schedules are left incomplete because of class cancellations should be compensated for the inherent disadvantage of their situation. Students may avoid registering for a class if it is likely to be cancelled, and would probably not make it their first choice. Georgetown asks its students to plan far in advance – taking numerous factors into consideration – when pre-registering. Students should be able to expect the same of the university.
If a professor or a department knows that a particular class runs a high risk of cancellation, it should be advertised accordingly. This candor would allow students to make better-informed decisions; simply put, they would not be forced to gamble their schedules away on risky classes. While a professor’s sudden incapicity to teach a course is unfortunate, there are several other solutions that could make the process fairer. Students pre-registered for classes that are subsequently made unavailable should be informed of the cancellation as soon as possible. If the decision to cancel a class is made during the pre-registration period, students should be given the opportunity to select a different class.
Students faced with cancelled classes that were not cut until after pre-registration closed could also be given access to a second pre-registration period or an early add-drop period. Either solution would allow them an equal opportunity to enter valid classes or – in the case of an additional add-drop period – to add onto waitlists, thereby avoiding the stress of having to wait until the beginning of the next semester. Needless to say, under this system, students with cancelled classes should only be allowed to fill the gaps resulting from the cancelled class, not to completely re-arrange their schedules. This would ensure that those students enjoy a fair chance in pre-registration without giving them undue priority over those who are already on waitlists or enrolled in a course.
Students who pre-register for classes that are eventually cancelled are given short shrift as they enter the coming semester. By enabling these students to replace cancelled classes before the rest of the student body begins the add-drop period, the university would make the entire pre-registration process less stressful and more equitable.
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