The fall 2012 registration cycle was met with unexpected issues, such as fall semester classes not being posted on the registration list for students to see.
This prevented students from being aware that certain classes were being offered, and were then unable to register for that class.
“I guess that there was some kind of glitch in the registration system where our classes didn’t show up. It wasn’t just my class, but there were other faculty who would normally have two or three times the students in their class and all of a sudden they have eight and ten students,” said Maxwell Center director Dean Kazoleas, Ph.D., who teaches international public relations at Cal State Fullerton.
Kazoleas’ class was one of the courses that did not show up on the registration list this fall.
“Everything was scheduled and set, and all of a sudden, and it was like July or something, the secretary goes ‘We just added your international PR class and I need the textbook for it,’ which I had already sent in before,” Kazoleas said. “It never clicked that it was somehow not added… (The class) didn’t become visible, or didn’t come out in the system, until summer when most students had registered.”
However, according to Rommel Hidalgo, Senior Director of Information Technology infrastructure services, the issues came from the department and was not a glitch on the IT side.
“There were no glitches in the system itself. It looks like this was a scheduling or processing issue within the department,” said Hidalgo. “Classes are scheduled months in advance, many months in advance. So for a class to be added really late, that has to do with the processing.”
Each department, not IT, sets up and schedules their own classes for the semesters, according to Hidalgo.
Hidalgo said there could be a lot of different possibilities that could have contributed to the system glitch and that it might be due to faculty contracts that were pending processing.
With impending budget cuts around the corner, these glitches come at a bad time for faculty and students, said Kazoleas. When deciding what to cut, classes with limited students in them are viewed as unwanted and unnecessary, and can therefore be cut to save money.
“Basically we’re about to face some big cuts,” said Kazoleas. “I mean, we’re already operating on a budget that’s equivalent to 1995 where we had 30 percent less students. We’ve got more cuts coming and this is a bad time for that to happen. Because now people will be saying let’s look at the courses with low enrollment, and those courses had low enrollment.”
For students, these cuts of classes could mean a change in their schedule and possibly having to push back their graduation date.
“There’s a computer science class I really need to take next semester. If it just suddenly disappeared, I would freak out,” said Andrew Holmes, an advertising major.
Holmes said glitches like these would affect his graduation schedule eventually by having to switch when and what classes he would have to take to get his general education finished.
“Many students don’t want to run the risk of changing their schedules, so they may not be getting classes they need to make progress toward graduation. Students may not have the classes they needed,” said Kazoleas.
Although registration issues such as this could have major effects in the future, smaller classes sizes allow for a better classroom environment.
“It’s good and bad. It’s good in the sense, it’s always better when you can have more time with each student,” said Kazoleas. “But at some point we’ll be held accountable for generating credits given the number of students and faculty that we have and we may not do it now.”
Even though the registration error may have caused many students to miss out on a certain classes, the error helped out others who may have not been able to get into certain classes because of their registration date. Students like Holmes, a transfer student with less credits, have a later registration date.
“I’m not sure I would have gotten into the classes I did as easily. And, I was actually pretty surprised that these classes were so small,” said Holmes. “Going from community college to a four-year, you always see on TV shows and movies the huge lecture halls and the second class I had was literally under 20 people.”
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