The AACSB evaluates a business school to determine whether it is providing top-quality education. Receiving high evaluations in all 21 sectors, the School of Business acquired its accreditation.
One of the criteria is to limit the number of students enrolling in each class, and the professor cannot open any extra seats. Students majoring in business are displeased with such regulation.
“Business majors must complete at least 63 credits within the major to graduate. Limiting the number of students enrolling in each class makes it hard for me to take necessary classes,” said a business major student who wished to remain anonymous. “I cannot guarantee I will be able to graduate as I had planned.”
However, not all students are against this constraint.
“I prefer these small classes and stand behind the restriction on the number of students,” Shin Won-jung (Business, 2) said.
The school cannot create a new division of a class as they please for two reasons; a policy regulating classes taught by full-time professors and a limit in classes holding more than 80 students.
“Dividing a class is not impossible, but there are regulations. First of all, a certain percentage of courses offered must be taught by full-time professors and there are not enough professors to teach more courses. Second, there is a limit on the number of classes that can hold more than 80 students for class quality reasons,” said Kim Eun-gab (Business), the dean of the School of Business.
What makes problems worse is the high number of double-major and minor students in the department. Statistics show a total of 878 business majors, 883 students double-majoring, and 358 business minors.
“I don’t mind people double-majoring or minoring in business. Yet, if business majors are not prioritized, it would be frustrating,” one anonymous student said.
As rules cannot be changed, the department is searching for an alternative that would ease the discomfort of students.
“We are working to introduce a system that prioritizes course registration for business students. Business majors will be given priority to register for required business courses a day before the official course enrollment,” Kim said. “The current ‘business major class system’ will be abolished. We anticipate to enforce this system from fall semester of 2012.”
Ko Min-seok
minseok_ko@ewhain.net