With course registration just over a week away, students are scrambling to make their dream schedules.
For students with fewer credits, those schedules often include classes with the most popular meeting times and professors, which are likely to fill up before students with fewer credits get a shot. That has led some students to ask a student with an earlier registration appointment to hold an electronic spot for them in a crowded class – a tactic that some schools and colleges at the University have banned.
Advisers at the College of Engineering, which has a policy against holding classes, said they’re not concerned about the method, although some students admit to taking advantage of the system.
LSA senior Bob Rosenberg, a political science and American culture student, said he once asked an older friend with an earlier registration date to reserve a seat for him in History 230, called “History of College Athletics.”
“It was pretty simple,” Rosenberg said. “He dropped the class and I picked it up.”
That class, taught by American Culture Lecturer John Bacon, examines America’s obsession with college athletics and the role college sports have played in American culture. The course holds just 50 students, split into discussion sections of about eight students, making it harder for students with later registration dates to enroll.
While Rosenberg took the class because “it seemed pretty cool,”