A Case Against Preregistration

In just a few weeks, thousands of undergraduates at George Washington University will set their alarm clocks to wake up at dawn for the ghastly semiannual ritual known as preregistration. Students will battle it out on the web for seats in coveted courses for the spring 2003 semester. Churchgoers will pray, computer geeks will hack and others will simply hope for the best. That same day, undergraduates at Harvard College might be asked by a relative or a friend what courses they plan to take the next semester. Most of us will simply reply with a sigh of relief, “I’m not sure yet.”

Our Faculty of Art and Sciences (FAS) administrators appear to be crafting a plan to impose upon faculty and students some new deadlines for course creation and selection. While details of the plan are still unknown, the spin from University Hall, as reported by the Crimson, is that shopping period won’t be going anywhere. I hope that Dean of FAS William C. Kirby proceeds with caution, or he might just be shopping for disaster.

In all honesty, I must commend this administration for having some valiant goals in mind. It seems to want improved teaching fellows, better planning for larger classes and more thoughtful advising in the course selection process. However, the pseudo-preregistration system that is in the works may very well accomplish none of these goals. And in the process, the new culture of course selection will only cheapen and further commodify a Harvard education.

First, I am deeply skeptical that such a plan can actually produce better estimations of the final class size than what is possible today. Instead, preregistration will give faculty members a count of students interested in their course, allowing them to hire and train exactly the number of teaching fellows they think they need. Let’s suppose that the course in question focuses on Islam, a field of study that has seen a surge in academic interest among undergraduates across the country in the past year. A faculty member teaching this course who may be unsympathetic to those who did not preregister and may simply start the new semester with an enrollment cap and the same number of teaching fellows, with those who preregister receiving top preference.

As in many other colleges of our size with preregistration, an excruciating number of Harvard courses will likely have enrollment caps. This restriction allows faculty members to complete the hiring of teaching staff before a course begins. However, most of these other colleges have very restrictive add/drop policies and almost no shopping period. In our quirky version, however, you will still be able to shop, add and drop with ease. Look at your Plan of Study you filed in the spring of freshman year. My guess is that it may look almost nothing like what you have actually taken. Harvard students simply have no qualms about changing courses, or even changing concentrations for that matter. The result of this entire exercise will be a new generation of courses with enrollment caps, and, undoubtedly, strategic preregistration by undergraduates in order to obtain priority in lotteries for courses they likely will not take.

Courses most likely to be lotteried may actually have preregistration estimates that are inflated, while small courses not expecting more than a handful of students might be bombarded by the masses. The Core office, which administers some of the largest courses at Harvard, is now able to predict enrollments with surprising accuracy based on when the course was last offered, how many students may still need to fulfill the specific requirement, and how many other courses are offered in that area. University Hall can also provide predictions to faculty members. Whether those faculty members choose to listen to them is another issue. Many computer science concentrators have told me they could probably write an algorithm based on CUE Guide scores and other factors like what the Core office uses to make accurate estimates. I am simply unconvinced that the proposed pseudo-preregistration will yield more accurate numbers than is possible today.

Finally, in no way will preregistration be a band-aid solution to the teaching fellow woes at Harvard. University Hall and students need to think bigger about these issues. Do most of these courses with sections actually need to have mandatory section attendance by every student? One faculty member and alumnus openly admits, “I never went to bloody section when I went here, but if I can get the money for another TF, of course I will hire another.” Maybe this is one of the many reasons for the shortage and late preparation of teaching fellows.

Harvard today is flexible and does very well in adjusting to the changing academic interests of its undergraduates. Anything that might change this dynamism will be a real loss. Let’s hope Harvard takes the high road by truly investigating better ways to improve the academic experiences of its students.

Rohit Chopra ’04 is a government concentrator in Adams House. He is chair of the Student Affairs Committee of the Undergraduate Council and is a student member of the FAS Committee on Undergraduate Education.