Take a walk through Georgetown’s campus, and it is quickly apparent that students are busy—with clubs, jobs, internships, and, most importantly, classes. Planning ahead of time keeps students from being overwhelmed by their commitments. Unfortunately, the University Registrar’s policy of posting class schedules only days before preregistration makes it unnecessarily difficult for students to plan their next semester effectively.
When class schedules are finally made available, students are struggling with midterms, papers, and extracurriculars. Finding the right courses and professors under such a tight deadline becomes difficult, especially for upperclassmen who want to make the most of the limited time they have left at school.
University Registrar John Q. Pierce said departments must submit their class schedules to the registrar by September 25, while class schedules will be posted by the registrar on October 26, a week before pre-registration begins.
“The issue has never come up before,” Pierce said, referring to how long it takes the Registrar’s Office to post schedules.
Assigning classrooms is a complex process, but the registrar could cut down on the lag time between September 25 and who-knows-when in October.
Spring schedules are already available at George Washington University for undergraduates, demonstrating that it is not impossible, even for a university with more undergraduate students to accommodate than Georgetown, to have schedules up earlier in the year.
The gap between when professors submit their schedules and when the registrar releases a course schedule to students is far too long. Finding enough classrooms and scheduling classes should be easier now than ever, considering the recent completion of the Rafik A. Hariri Building, which opens up a lot of Walsh, Car Barn, and Healy classrooms that formerly held McDonough School of Business classes.
There is still time left this semester for the registrar to kick into gear and make spring class schedules available to students early.
If the GWU registrar can have class schedules up, there’s no reason why GU undergraduates should be left waiting.
I was just looking at MyAccess hoping the schedule would be up…I guess I’m wasting my time.
Georgetown benefit from a consulting firm’s examination of its core business processes. There’s a lot of broken processes and a lack of leadership in an overly bureuacratic institution. It’s time Georgetown remembers that it serves a customer base paying through the roof. It’d be nice if the school’s services took that into account and didn’t hide behind the ivory tower reputation.