On Sept. 7, Park Yeon-woo (alias) received a text message from the school just before going to bed. It was a message notifying the cancellation of the politics course that she had registered for which orientation for the class had already been completed. Confused, Park sought an explanation from her professor the next day, but he was just as perplexed, as he too was notified by the text message the previous night.
Though Park was given an additional registration period to add more courses, she had no choice but to find a substitute from a narrow range of available courses, resulting in a rather unorganized timetable.
Many students like Park have made complaints regarding the additional course confirmation and drop/add period, which was given to those whose course got cancelled. The delay of starting the service for additional registration was one of the causes of their grievances.
“Though the school notified me that the registration site will open at 1 p.m., I could not get an access to it until 10 to 20 minutes past 1 o’ clock,” described a freshman in the Division of International Studies. “The situation was very stressful because I had come out during class to register, but the site failed to open on time, ending up wasting about 30 minutes.”
Another inconvenience that frustrated students whose course got cancelled was that they could only add courses and not able to drop any other courses during the additional registration period.
“Unlike how the school informed students beforehand, I was not able to drop any courses during the additional ‘drop’ and add period,” Park said. “This was completely irrational, because it meant that I could not rearrange my schedule. I was already upset about my cancelled course, but not being able to register for other courses because they overlapped my former time table made me much angrier.”
Confirmation and drop/add period causes inconvenience
In addition to the problems of the additional confirmation period, the changed deadline of the regular confirmation and drop/add period for this semester caused trouble for some students as well. The confirmation period deadline was forwarded from 5 p.m. to 3 p.m. Since the semester began on Thursday, Sept. 1, students whose courses that started after 3 p.m. on Wednesday could not test out and confirm whether to take the course.
In response to such complaints, the school clarified the reasons for the changes of the confirmation period.
“We have to determine the cancellation of courses with the courses’ corresponding majors/departments after the deadline, but getting confirmation after 5 p.m. had many difficulties, so we decided to move up 2 hours,” explained Lee So-ra from of the Registar of the Office of Faculty and Academic Affairs. “We still enabled students whose first class started after the deadline to discuss with the professor and make changes with the course registration as an exception.”
About the unavailability to drop courses during the additional confirmation period, Lee added,
“Just as last year, the additional confirmation period was proceeded without being able to drop courses, as it might bring the cancellation of other courses as well.”
The school also wished to clear some misunderstandings regarding the changes of the confirmation period and standard for the cancellation of courses.
“Unlike how some students claim, the changes in the standard for the cancellation of courses were applied from the first semester of this year,” Lee said. “The standard was revised to enhance many liberal arts courses’ competitiveness and to create new courses that meet the needs of society, all to provide better education to students.”