Course selection period can be a rough time for students as they attempt to strike a delicate balance between hard and easy classes. They try to put together the ideal schedule by avoiding 8:50 time slots and bypassing Fridays while still fulfilling requirements. But the situation is exacerbated by the fact that many of the courses listed online don’t include up-to-date syllabi or even a course description at all.
Given the importance of the decisions at hand, it is not unreasonable to ask that all professors post syllabi or at least a short course description and a list of required reading by the time pre-registration begins. This information is important because it provides a concrete idea of the class’s substance and workload. If a student is deciding which section of Intro to Philosophy to take, for example, knowing the booklist is key. One professor might be teaching Hobbes and Locke while another might focus on Kant and Nietzsche.
Plenty of courses are listed online without any information at all. There is no syllabus or description for the government class “Religion and Politics.” Nothing about the class is listed either on the Registrar’s list of classes or the Government Department site. The English Department web page does a relatively good job: it lists paragraph descriptions of almost every class, which often include the required literature. But these descriptions aren’t on the Registrar’s site, so most students probably don’t know they exist. Ideally, all syllabi would be posted on the Registrar’s web site, so that students don’t have to search through department sites or faculty profiles to get find information.
Another reason instructors should get reading lists to students early is so they can buy books before the next semester begins. Arriving on campus a day before classes start, students have very little choice but to buy from the bookstore unless they wish to risk falling behind in class as they wait for internet purchases to arrive. If students have a list of required reading in November, they not only have time to shop online but also to buy from friends, saving a lot of money—instead of dropping $400 a semester at the campus bookstore.
With a yearly tuition of $33,552, a full course load at Georgetown translates to an investment of over $3,000 per class. But all too often students base their decision on little more than a catchy course title, a few sentences and a smiley face on RateMyProfessors.com. If teachers posted their syllabi (or at the very least required reading) online during pre-registration, students would better find classes that genuinely interest them. And they would save a few bucks, too.
