The Academic Affairs Commission has recently proposed changes to the enrollment policy for undergraduates. However, most of the proposal calls for unnecessary or logistically difficult changes to the current policy.
While some of these changes are reasonably justified, most of the changes seem, in practice, to benefit only a small portion of upperclassmen who should have taken a few lower division classes as underclassmen and are now competing with underclassmen for spots in those courses.
The changes would essentially be as follows: during priority enrollment, students would only be able to enroll in six units as opposed to 10. Then, four units would be available to students during their first pass. This portion of the proposal would essentially make priority enrollment more meaningful for students.
Next, freshmen enrolled in the Freshmen Cluster Program would only have priority enrollment available during winter quarter instead of winter and spring. This would allow students to fulfill their Writing I requirement by the end of winter quarter and be eligible for Writing II credit in their spring seminar.
Finally, Advanced Placement (AP) test units would no longer be counted when enrollment times are being assigned since appointments would be assigned based on when a person plans on graduating rather than a person’s academic standing.
The Academic Affairs Commission hopes these proposed changes will help the general students enrolling in classes.
“We want to level the playing field,” Academic Affairs Commissioner Addar Weintraub said.
While this goal may be a positive one for the campus, the current proposal of changes does in no way “level the playing field” in practice.
For instance, the part of the proposal that deals with the Freshman Cluster Program during the spring is not only unnecessary, but also takes away an important aide for freshmen in that program.
“It seems to me, from what I hear, that there are a number of students who use priority pass to get into the spring seminar of their choice,” said Dr. Gregory Kendrick, director of the Freshman Cluster Program.
Kendrick also said giving freshman priority enrollment allows them to get used to putting together their own schedule without the help of an orientation counselor.
While this may be more important for students during the winter quarter, freshmen in the program should be allowed to keep priority enrollment during spring quarter so they can get into the seminar of their choice and use that as a block around which they can build the rest of their schedule.
Finally, the proposed change would most likely do little to change anything within the enrollment process. Right now, students are grouped into enrollment groups based on their class standing. After that, individual students receive their enrollment time randomly within that group’s enrollment time.
For instance, if the enrollment block for sophomore students was from Monday to Friday, some students will randomly have their time on Monday while others, by chance, will receive Friday. The new proposal looks to make it so that all freshmen, based on graduation date, enroll within the freshman enrollment time. However, even this change may do little in practice. If one sophomore is randomly assigned to enroll on Friday and a freshman is randomly assigned to enroll on Saturday, then not much has changed.
“I’m not sure what the big difference would be because of the randomness of the appointments,” University Registrar Anita Cotter said. “The appointments are random within each class level.”
Furthermore, it will be extremely difficult to implement any enrollment change that entails assigning enrollment times based on a person’s expected graduation date.
“Saying when someone is going to graduate is hard to predict,” explained Cotter. “Trying to determine what year someone is based on anything besides standing would be logically difficult.”
Thus, it seems that the proposed changes will do little if implemented. Its true that limiting priority enrollment to six units may allow more students to get into the classes they want using priority enrollment. However, most of the changes will only serve to help a small number of upperclassmen in the spring who can benefit from the fact that freshmen in the cluster program no longer receive priority enrollment.
Contact Margolis at mmargolis@media.ucla.edu if this affects you at all. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu