<p>I’ve looked at course catalogs and been impressed with the offerings. But my prof friend says that they don’t offer all courses all the time. Some classes are only offered online. So I wonder if anyone had suggestions as to how to verify which courses are offered when (if ever) at a college.</p>
<p>(Frankly, this is even a challenge at the HS, where they claim they offer courses that they don’t.)</p>
<p>It depends on the school, but sometimes they will not require a password to look at the course schedules for the current or upcoming semester. A course schedule will give you an idea of how many classes of a certain type are offered every semester–so you can see if, in a typical semester, there are twelve English classes offered, or only five.</p>
<p>Just about every department has a undergraduate advisor. In some cases, that person is a regular professor, sometimes it is an adjunct professor, and occasionally it is a stand-alone professional position. In all cases, that person should be able to discuss with you how often each course is offered. Send an e-mail to the appropriate person and ask how often particular courses are offered.</p>
<p>Sometimes an upper-level course may be offered only if enough students sign up for it, in which case it will be hard to give you reliable information. Quite often, specialty courses are offered on an every-other year basis, and a student needs to be aware of that ahead of time.</p>
<p>If you’re concerned about your major, you might talk to someone in the department about your concerns. The department should have someone available that knows the depth and breadth of offerings including the history of offerings over time.</p>
<p>try going to the registrar’s web page and look for links to the course offerings – often you will not only be able to check the current offerings, but ones for recent past semesters as well.</p>
<p>The course offerings are useful to see what they offer but you also have to factor in the number of seats available and the relative level of demand. There may also be priority systems in place for courses so that upperclassmen get priority for courses over freshman and sophomore students.</p>
<p>It isn’t cheating. Schools have a complicated process for how a course gets approved for entry in the school catalog. Once there, it usually isn’t removed unless they’re very sure that the course will not be offered.</p>
<p>For example, a school may have a course in the Archeology of Oceania. If they have relatively low demand for the course it may only get offered every two years. If the one professor who’s specialty is Oceania is on sabbatical for the year, the course won’t be offered. If the professor is there, but they are short other positions in the department, they may need the professor to teach a core undergraduate course, or the professor may have an administrative assignment that is in lieu of teaching two courses. Sometimes a course description will include restrictions on when the course is offered (“even numbered years”) but more often, not.</p>
<p>What you need to look at is the schedule of classes. That should be easily available either on-line or via email from the department.</p>