<p>Nrdsb4: Having had a kid attend NYU and one attend Brown (the latter has a shopping period), I am one who feels that the student at NYU should have handled the situation differently because it is not a shopping period system and should have at least arrived at the start of the class or contacted the professor about observing the class as he was considering adding it to his registration. </p>
<p>(as conversations go, however, there is some discussion on the merits of shopping periods, even if it doesn’t pertain to the original post)</p>
<p>mousegray: I don’t think it is a matter of loving your professor…choosing classes is about every aspect of the class, which can include the teacher.</p>
<p>When I was an undergraduate, we “shopped” by signing up for extra classes and then dropping the least favorite(s). At my school, all full-time students paid the same tuition for anywhere from 12 to 18 credits. So, you could sign up for 18 credits without laying out any extra money, then drop as many as six credits (typically two classes) without losing full-time status. As long as you dropped within the first two weeks, there was no record and no financial penalty. And, of course, we wouldn’t buy the books until we knew which classes we were going to keep.</p>
<p>In my experience, mantori, that’s been the norm. It seemed to work for me and my kids.</p>
<p>OT in relation to an earlier post–I’ll confess; I hate the word “consumer.” I hate that image–consume, consume. Like herbivores munching on grass. I don’t want to consume an education; I want to experience one.</p>
<p>Some things puzzle me about this shopping period, (also OT). Does this mean that everyone who wants to can take a class? Does a prof get any say about whether it’s a ten person seminar or a two hundred person lecture? How does the school adjust for classroom space, books ordered, materials created, etc? I don’t mean these questions to be challenges; I’m sincerely asking. Marite has refered to a class going from something like 30-something students to 200+. That’s just odd to me; it seems like it would become a different class. Obviously, H’ers are used to it, but for me, I’m really curious how they pull it off semester after semester.</p>
<p>Yes! Marketing people often refer to “consumers” in the same manner they would “cattle”. Not with contempt exactly, but rather a kind of impersonal detachment, as if those people are another species whose ecological function is to have things sold to them. It sickens me.</p>
<p>That perfectly elucidates the icky feeling that I get when I hear from the people ardently defending a student’s right to come and go as they please.</p>
<p>aibarr…well, the student doesn’t have a right to come and go as she/he pleases if the school hasn’t set up its policies in that manner. The school sets the policies as do professors. But some colleges afford the right and encourage the practice of observing/visiting a variety of classes the first two weeks of each semester before committing to the final registration. So, if the college gives them that right, I don’t see the problem. If the college doesn’t have that set up, it behooves the student to check with a professor first before visiting and frankly, arriving at the start of the class, unless pre-arranged differently.</p>
It must be somewhat similar to the icky feeling I get when I hear people talk as if college professors are minor deities and the heavens tremble when students have the temerity to question them.</p>
<p>College life is a rehersal for real life later. Even though a class is not the same as a business meeting, if a student is used to think it is acceptable to come and go as he pleases than he may act the same later on in his professional life - until someone slaps him in the back of his head. The class we are talking about here IS a MBA course, where most students are preparing to go into the business world.</p>
<p>“Does this mean that everyone who wants to can take a class? Does a prof get any say about whether it’s a ten person seminar or a two hundred person lecture?”</p>
<p>No, it doesn’t mean that. Unless it’s a course required for a major (in which case everyone in the major has to be allowed in), the professor gets to decide in advance whether to cap enrollment, and at what number. The enrollment cap is listed in the course catalog. If way more people show up than the cap allows, the professor can decide how to choose who gets in: usually a random lottery, seniority, or previous coursework. If you apply to and get into a lotteried class, you aren’t allowed to drop it unless there’s an emergency.</p>
<p>The usual pattern at Harvard is that a famous professor will teach one uncapped course each year, and then some seminars that are limited to 12 or 15 or whatever. So everyone gets a chance to take a class with Prof. Famous, but not everyone gets to take his seminar. If you’re majoring in his field, you will almost certainly get into one of his seminars by senior year.</p>
Actually, I think this is completely relevant to every school, including NYU. There does not need to be an identified shopping period in order for it to happen. Dropping and adding classes is the most common method for students to shop and would never even be noticed by their classmates. Students often over enroll in order to drop a class they don’t like at the beginning of a semester. Does that really never happen at NYU?</p>
<p>My family members and I have attended and/or teach at colleges all over the country. Not one of these schools had an official shopping period. Every school had pre-registration months in advance. And at every school, shopping was still the norm during the first week or two of classes.</p>
<p>For those who haven’t experienced shopping, students do not usually come and go as they please during class. It would be relatively rare to have overlapping classes and the need to attend both during the same time slot. On those rare occasions when students do find it necessary to check out two classes at the same time, they sit near the back and quietly enter or leave as needed. Nobody notices. The lecture goes on as usual. And the pressure is on the students to finalize their schedules as soon as possible since they are responsible for all homework and material from every class they are simultaneously taking. </p>
<p>It is common for schedule revisions to be made at the beginning of a semester, even for students who registered months in advance. It’s really no big deal and I’ve never met a professor who even gives it a thought.</p>
<p>To add to Hanna’s explanation:
Some courses are capped. Tutorials, undergraduate seminars are capped at anywhere from 12 to 15. If the enrollments exceed what the TFs can handle, then the prof may hold a lottery (though I believe that seniors and majors may get priority). Others try to accommodate all students. That was the case with the class that ballooned from 35 to nearly 300. It was new, so the registrar’s office had no way of estimating how many would want to enroll.
This is the downside to the lack of pre-registration at Harvard. But from the prof’s blog, it appears that it’s not only the students who like the shopping period. So do many of the profs themselves. I suspect that eventually, Harvard will try to combine some kind of pre-registration with shopping period.
A friend of mine who teaches at a LAC tells me he teaches the most popular course in his department. Enrollments are limited by the size of the room (which is a bit of a relief, since he has no TA). Every year, he has to turn away half the students who shop the class.
If I remember correctly, your D and my S experienced a form of shopping as they tried to get into classes that had caps. Your D was more persistent than my S–she got into the class she wanted, my S did not and had to take a class that he did not really want to take and was at too high a level for him. And, of course, having failed to get into the class he wanted, he was late in joining the class he did not truly want. It did not make for the most pleasant or successful semester.</p>
<p>Yes, students tend to register for five and then go to each class and figure out which one to drop. I’ve done this. I’ve also based my entire schedule around a single class, usually a very popular class (a video game class, a ‘politics of computer hacking’ class) and just prayed that the class would stay open during enrollment. </p>
<p>This semester, I actually registered for a class two weeks into the semester. I’d missed two weeks, but I caught up quickly and am pulling an A right now.</p>
<p>What you are describing sounds more like typical add/drop period to me, which I imagine almost every university has.</p>
<p>That is in contrast to the “shopping” policy described at other schools, particularly at Harvard (am I understanding they do not have pre-registration?).</p>
<p>The incident described in the OP is sounding less and less to me about the shopping concept as it is about the student in question deciding in advance that he could waltz in and out of classes at will. Not a bother to some profs, but unacceptable to the one who asked him to leave and come back another time ON time.</p>
<p>Marite–yes, D was unusually persistent. And unfailingly polite the whole time. I think that not getting a class you want is quite different from not being able to choose between two classes at the same time. When she ran into the latter, then obviously she chose one; no manner of shopping was going to let her choose both.</p>
<p>Both my kids often over registered, and both dropped classes. It never seemed to require them to drop into and out of class sessions, quietly or not.</p>
<p>When did consumer become a bad word? I think students are the customer/consumer. In fact, I think a large part of the problem in public education today – K-12 – is that big districts lose sight of that fact. Private schools seem to know it a little bit better because they feel it when a student leaves. I sit in endless meetings in our urban school district and once in a while I say, “What about the students?” and (jokingly but behind the joke is some truth), I hear “Did you think it was about the students?” It’s imperative, in my mind, that everyone working in education, whether it’s preschool or college, remember that it really is about the students – that they are the customer/consumer and that they are PAYING (or that their parents are, even if it’s through taxes) customers. A consumer is a person who purchases goods or services. There is nothing wrong with the word and there is nothing wrong with using it in regards to education.</p>
<p>OT, but I was a prolific add/dropper at college. I often over-registered with the intent to drop one class.</p>
<p>To this day, I still dream that I’ve signed up for a class, decided to drop it, and quit attending. It’s finals week, and I realize that I never did actually drop the class. Now I’ve got to take a final exam after never attending class, never turning in homework or papers, and I realize I’m going to get a big fat F and blow my GPA.</p>
<p>I think we had a thread not long ago in which people recounted their academic (and other) anxiety dreams; for some of us, those dreams continue 30+ years later!</p>
<p>mimk–I’ve always disliked the word. I hear “consume” (devour, destroy, use up, etc) no matter what the context. I also don’t like to define people by their actions, as if our main role in society is to purchase. But, that’s just me.</p>
<p>Education exists for the students. Absolutely. However, the fact of paying does not change their role. The role of the student is to learn, and hopefully, to contribute to the greater body of knowledge. It’s true that money is often necessary to facilitate that role, but that it doesn’t in itself confer some right of power–I paid, therefore i’m in charge. Yuck.</p>