By Kim Ji-young
Right before the beginning of every semester, Ewha students are busy making up new timetables. It is not an easy job to choose which courses to take because students have to carefully take into account their personal interests and course evaluations. However, more serious problems lie elsewhere when class registration period starts.
One major problem most students cite is Ewha? online registration system. Because registration is on a first-come-first-served basis, some popular classes become full almost instantly when registration begins. What disturbs students more is that system errors occur frequently when all the students try to log in at the same time. Chung Yeon-hui (French Lang. & Lit., 2) said, ?his semester, error messages continuously showed up on the screen instead of a message that indicated which courses I had registered for. It was very annoying because I was uncertain about whether I had succeeded in registering for the courses or not.?The problem of registering for courses does not end with the technical problems. One problem is class size. Students can change their classes during the first week of the semester, and during this period, some students who couldn? get into the class by online beg professors to let them in. Usually, the professors accept their requests, but this often crowds classrooms. ?bout 20 more students than the enrollment limit get into the class by asking the professors. Students?concentration drops and the atmosphere of the class is unpleasant,?said Cho Hwa-yeon (Business, 2).
Other problems occur because of competition for class registration among majors, double majors, minors, and non-major in some departments. Since the school requires 24 credits of non-major courses to graduate, and promotes minors and double majors, there are many students, regardless of their major, in the classes of popular departments like Business Administration. So, while some non-major and double major students succeed in taking these major courses, some of the majors in these departments fail to register for their own major classes.
One Psychology student who wishes to remain anonymous, said that there are a small number of classes in Psychology because there are not many Psychology major students. However, too many other major students who are interested in Psychology register for these courses, and hinder Psychology majors from taking their own major courses.
The same problem has occurred in Business Administration, and Business majors have asked that some sections to be reserved only for them. A few reserved sections have opened since last year; however some students still complain that it is hard for them to study with the professors they want. ?ome good professors teach classes for non-majors, and if students exceed the enrollment limit in those classes, Business majors are asked to transfer to a section reserved for major students,?said Kim You-jin (Business, 2). Double and non-majors also express discontent. ?t is unfair to be asked to drop a course which we registered for online just because we are not major students,?said Kim Hyo-sun (Consumer Science & Human Development, 3), who is double majoring in Business Administration.
Some students blame the school? policies for the registration problems. ?t? good that the school encourages double majors; however, I think they should prepare for registration problems by examining the student demands for courses more thoroughly before registration,?said Kim.
Others point to more fundamental problem arising from students?own inherent tendencies. Park Cho-rong (Journalism, 2) says that students nowadays mostly want to take easy courses to get good grades. Moreover, many students tend to double major in a major which seems helpful for them in their future career. ?hat is why there is an overconcentration in some departments,?said Park.
The Dean of Academic Affairs, Lee Sang-ho, says the office did survey students about which courses they planned to take each semester until last December. However, since there were too many differences between survey results and actual registration, the survey is not done currently. Lee said, ?hen we establish more sections of some popular courses, part-time lecturers are assigned to the extra classes. Then students who took the course expecting to study under a specific professor are upset. And if we enlarge the class size, quality and efficiency of education goes down.?The manager for the Information and Communications office, Chung Hwa-kyung said, ?lthough we mobilize as many people and as much hardware as possible, having servers go down or work at a slow speed are inevitable since all the students log in at the same time.?Meanwhile, online registration program of Sookmyung Women? University (SWU) may offer a model for Ewha. An Academic Affairs Department staff member at SWU, Chung Hei-jin explained that SWU? registration system allows all the students who wish to take courses, to pre-register. Then, after considering circumstances, the staff decides how many students will be able to actually register. Who actually gets to register is then decided impartially.
?f not all the students can be registered for the course, there is a priority order to deciding who will be registered or cut off. First, departmental majors have priority, followed by double majors and minors. When those conditions are equal, registration is granted in order of the school year,?said Chung. After two weeks, students can check which courses they got registered for.