WWYD: My daughter's college professor is constantly cancelling class

[kamik86]

This is the part that's crazy to me-- registration by alphabet? We do it by credit hour, so that those closest to graduation who have the least options for classes register first. IMHO, there are better ways to handle the problem you discuss that human discretion and penalties like you describe. No one could sell their seat, because when they drop a class the seat goes to the waitlist, so they have no control over who gets their seat. You've made me really grateful for the way we handle things . . .

I agree this is an issue for the student, not the parent. If the student is bothered, she should contact the department head, or associate head, or whichever admin handles these issues. I would not assume the department knows. The department SHOULD know, but often we don't until students bring it to our attention. Things have to get pretty bad before students complain about no class -- I've only had it happen to a significant degree twice in ten years.

This is how my school did it as well.

First it was by year (which were defined by a certain number of credits) a few groups got the privilege of being bumped up a year (The honors program, the NTID students because they could only take the classes with interpreters provided, etc). After that it was first come first serve online. So you got up on your day at 6 AM to do classes and ranked them in order from which ones would be hardest to get (hey reminds me of what some do for ADRs now lol). There were even discussions on what the best ways to do it was. You could go by phone but that system was slow. The normal online system was ok and worked for us that were bumped up a level. However the fastest if you knew how to do it was to ssh directly into the server that does the registration without the web interface. Harder to use but if you knew what you were doing MUCH faster.

 

[smiths02]

This is the part that's crazy to me-- registration by alphabet? We do it by credit hour, so that those closest to graduation who have the least options for classes register first. IMHO, there are better ways to handle the problem you discuss that human discretion and penalties like you describe. No one could sell their seat, because when they drop a class the seat goes to the waitlist, so they have no control over who gets their seat. You've made me really grateful for the way we handle things . . .

I agree this is an issue for the student, not the parent. If the student is bothered, she should contact the department head, or associate head, or whichever admin handles these issues. I would not assume the department knows. The department SHOULD know, but often we don't until students bring it to our attention. Things have to get pretty bad before students complain about no class -- I've only had it happen to a significant degree twice in ten years.

It was credit hour and declared major for our priority in college.

I would make no sense for someone not to graduate on time because they could not get a required class while the freshman whose mom and dad don't call gets to take the class.

 

[PastryLover]

WHAT????
Are these plots from some Reality College show?

This, and more, occur at schools with highly privileged populations on a daily basis.

This is the part that's crazy to me-- registration by alphabet? We do it by credit hour, so that those closest to graduation who have the least options for classes register first. IMHO, there are better ways to handle the problem you discuss that human discretion and penalties like you describe. No one could sell their seat, because when they drop a class the seat goes to the waitlist, so they have no control over who gets their seat. You've made me really grateful for the way we handle things . . .

I agree this is an issue for the student, not the parent. If the student is bothered, she should contact the department head, or associate head, or whichever admin handles these issues. I would not assume the department knows. The department SHOULD know, but often we don't until students bring it to our attention. Things have to get pretty bad before students complain about no class -- I've only had it happen to a significant degree twice in ten years.

Alphabet within grade level. Second-semester seniors first and so on down to freshmen.

 

[PastryLover]

It was credit hour and declared major for our priority in college.

I would make no sense for someone not to graduate on time because they could not get a required class while the freshman whose mom and dad don't call gets to take the class.

Freshmen would not have met pre-reqs to take senior courses. The situation I described most often applied to Junior year courses within the sciences, where laboratory sections were strictly limited to 16-18 students.

 

[pryncess527]

Alphabet within grade level. Second-semester seniors first and so on down to freshmen.

I assumed as much, but I still think that is insane. And totally unfair to those with names lower in the alphabet. At the very least, they should do A-Z in the fall, Z-A in the spring, etc. and swap back and forth. Still pretty crappy for those in the middle.

We do it by credit hour. Not classification, literal credit hour. Someone with 121 credits registers about an hour before someone with 120. It eliminates the need to consider last name, because it creates groups small enough in the first place. We can further use pre-reqs and class-specific restrictions to ensure those with higher need (for valid academic reasons, not petty punitive ones) can get the classes they need.

I can not wrap my mind around registration officials at a University penalizing students for the actions of their parents in this way, and feeling smug about their decision to do so.

 

[VandVsmama]

My general thoughts re: your situation:

1. How frustrating that so many classes have been cancelled for this course!
2. Perhaps the professor has some extenuating circumstances that has caused so many classes to be cancelled. For example, the professor or a close family member might be ill.
3. Ideally, it would be great if the professor could have made arrangements ahead of time for someone else to do the lecture in his/her absence. However, sometimes the circumstances are such that you can't plan for that in advance.
4. If your daughter is concerned about the cancelled classes, then technically she should be the one to contact the college/university about it. First place to go would be the professor him/herself. Then go to the department chair. Like another person said, this is practice for life in the real world and that's how you should handle a concern in the work place. Follow the chain of command.
5. The amount of $$ one is paying to take the class has no bearing on the situation. I know that you're not saying this out right, but it is implied in your post...just because you're paying more for your DD to take the class compared to the tuition that an in-state student pays doesn't mean that it's more of an imposition for your DD that so many classes have been cancelled.
6. I would never expect a refund nor would I ask for one. This isn't like going to the shopping mall or to Disney World or Disneyland where you can make a complaint to management & get a free night's stay out of it or something like that.
7. Usually, there is a deadline to drop a class & get your tuition back for that class. It is often very early in the term. If that date has come & gone, then your DD should do #4 in order to get her concerns addressed.
8. If your DD has been skipping classes a lot already for this course, then you really have no leg to stand on, so don't do #4. The likelihood of a college student admitting to his/her parent that he/she was skipping class is zero to none.
9. There are times in life when frustrating things happen that are totally beyond your control and this is one of those.

FWIW, between getting a BA and, later on, an MBA, I've had my share of situations in which I wasn't really getting my money's worth. Here are a couple of situations as food for thought:

• Sophomore year in college - took a Shakespeare class in the English department. I love Shakespeare. The professor was an alcoholic and everybody knew it. He's drink from a water bottle in the big lecture hall, but everybody knew that there was vodka in the water bottle and not H2O. You could smell it. He missed class a couple of times and we never got an explanation & 1 of his pretentious grad students taught on those days instead. The substitutes were, honestly, a waste of time.
• 1 of my MBA classes - it was an evening MBA program, so you could work full time & go to class at night once or twice a week. This was an 'e-commerce' class and the professor was really self-absorbed & pretentious. 1 of the required books we had to read for the class was a book that he wrote that had just gotten published & it was all about Webvan...a company that has long since been out of business. The professor was a real idiot & would preach about how a "new economy" was brewing that wasn't going to be based on companies actually producing any earnings. I quickly learned to just spew his stupid rhetoric back at him in order to get a good grade in the class. It was a total waste of time & $$, but it was a required class in the MBA curriculum at the time.

 

[RangerPooh]

I truly don't understand this. Registration has never worked like this even back when I was doing it with pen and paper. With the use of computers now, it certainly doesn't work like this. If a class holds 35 students then one by one those seats are filled until 35 people close the class. After that there is a wait list. There isn't some maniacal wizard sitting behind the curtain rubbing his hands together while deciding which students have the privilege of taking the class that semester! Why have registration at all? Why not just allow faculty to choose? The fact that adults would put together a list like that tells me a lot about the school and makes me think the "crazy" parents may not be the problem.

At both of the universities that I have worked at, registration was done by credit count. Seniors down to freshman. With advance priority going to Honors, athletes, disabilities, and veterans.

One of the jobs that I had was managing the manual wait list for the major that I advised for. So if there was 35 seats and all were full then students would need to contact me to get on the list. I usually had wiggle room of 5 seats that were to be used for graduating (that semester) seniors who didn't get in for what ever reason. I would then go down the list based in the date they contacted me for enrollment, giving priority to certified majors who needed the class for a requirement over minors. It was the fairest way.

 

[mnrose]

No, it did not fall under anti-discrimination laws, which we all took very seriously. I assure you that IT would have rejected the request if it did. They could not even allow the "Black Students" mailing list requested by the Black Student Union.

Like it or not, when 40 students request seats in a classroom that accommodates 35, five students aren't getting in. You can't have it be "first come, first serve" because registration dates are staggered by last initial, meaning we'd have a classroom full of kids A-L and M-Z are out of luck. So, we registered at our discretion and chose to reward students who showed personal responsibility.

It is NOT illegal to discriminate based on "overbearing parents." You can't discriminate based on race, ethnicity, sex, religion, and probably a few more I'm forgetting, but I am absolutely certain that this "overbearing parents" class isn't in any anti-discimination law. People misunderstand the word discrimination. It is perfectly legal to discriminate based on any number of factors, UNLESS the factor is one of the relative few specified in the laws of our country or your state.

 

[Missy1961]

I worked in a registrar's office for a number of years.

All offices (financial aid, bursar, registrar, deans, department chairs, etc) had access to student files. We requested that IT add a field for us called M&D - Mommy & Daddy. Each time a parent called in for something their adult child should be handling, we put an X in this field. At registration time, priority was given to those students with no or few Mommy & Daddy Xs, as we felt it was a nice reward for those who took responsibility for themselves & their own education. M&D was reset each semester to allow for personal growth.

One of my coworkers moved across the country and began working in the registrar's office of another school. She called me, laughing, and said, "they do M&D here as well!" (Not under the same name, but the same idea.)

If your daughter is "timid," it is because you have allowed her to be. Let her fight her own battles. She is probably already marked as "that kid" with "that mother" - don't dig the hole any deeper.

I really hope you're pulling our collective legs. Because that is totally wrong and totally unfair to those kids. Especially if mom & dad are doing it without their permission or knowledge.

 

[Missy1961]

I assumed as much, but I still think that is insane. And totally unfair to those with names lower in the alphabet. At the very least, they should do A-Z in the fall, Z-A in the spring, etc. and swap back and forth. Still pretty crappy for those in the middle.

We do it by credit hour. Not classification, literal credit hour. Someone with 121 credits registers about an hour before someone with 120. It eliminates the need to consider last name, because it creates groups small enough in the first place. We can further use pre-reqs and class-specific restrictions to ensure those with higher need (for valid academic reasons, not petty punitive ones) can get the classes they need.

I can not wrap my mind around registration officials at a University penalizing students for the actions of their parents in this way, and feeling smug about their decision to do so.

I'm with you - these methods just don't ring true for me.

 

[PastryLover]

I really hope you're pulling our collective legs. Because that is totally wrong and totally unfair to those kids. Especially if mom & dad are doing it without their permission or knowledge.

You may not like it, but that's how it was. If you would like to believe that I've made it up, feel free to do so if that's what you prefer.

 

[cabanafrau]

It is NOT illegal to discriminate based on "overbearing parents." You can't discriminate based on race, ethnicity, sex, religion, and probably a few more I'm forgetting, but I am absolutely certain that this "overbearing parents" class isn't in any anti-discimination law. People misunderstand the word discrimination. It is perfectly legal to discriminate based on any number of factors, UNLESS the factor is one of the relative few specified in the laws of our country or your state.

Use of the word discriminatory was not used to imply anything under the tentpole of protected classes under federal regulations. I'll absolutely stand firm on my opinion that restricting a student's access to resources based on the actions of others they have neither knowledge of or sanctioned can be legally actionable, whether or not the IT department sanctions the coding necessary to keep the tally or not. Matter of fact, putting the coding in place to keep the tally for this purpose is precisely what's going to make it possible to bring legal action.

Hypothetically it would be possible that if I am a student at this illustrious bastion of higher learning and I'm aware that there is a maximum number of 65 slots available for theoretical chemistry 302 in the next academic year. I need this course to graduate next spring to accept the internship I've been offered at a national laboratory and I am aware that at least 96 candidates in the program are all in the same queue that I am to get the class. I happen to be in the building that houses the registrar's office and overhear some clerks discussing how they keep a surreptitious tally of students whose parents place calls to the university on behalf of their child. I then begin compiling a list of my fellow students requesting a place in the course, enlist the assistance of friends and family to help my cause by placing calls to the school on their behalf for various and sundry petty reasons and I've locked down my guaranteed place in the course, ensuring my timely graduation. I had to do whatever I had to do to get around the limited resources, no harm, no foul.

 

[HM]

When I was in school, our SS# was our school ID. The last four digits were used as our 'lottery' number for registration. If your number was 6111 and the first lottery number was 5000, you got to choose early but if you were 4990, you were among the last. The starting number changed each semester which allowed people to have semesters where they were early and some where they were late. It all seemed to work out.

My DD's school has some sort of method of when you can log on to make your choices. I'm not sure how students are prioritized. I do know that most semesters she has to go to a professor or two to ask to be in their class, as she encounters full classes when she registers and needs the class.

 

[pumpkinmomma]

My goodness, that sounds unkind.
Thankfully many parents understand that it's inappropriate for them to be over involved. Others don't. Maybe one parent has helicopter blades circling (annoying) but others many have more serious problems. Some students may be doing the best they can to work hard and get out of a bad environment.
I would love to see colleges use brief, snippy, businesslike replies to parents who are out of line. Maybe even a prepared script-three or four brief sentences about the law and why the student needs to handle xyz. That would be much kinder than giving students downgrades because their parents don't respect boundaries.

And back to this thread, the student in question has no idea that mom made contact with the school. That's awful to me. It would be even worse if in addition she got demerits from the college behind her back, too.

They generally do have a script for what to say to overbearing parents. The college I taught at had training on FERPA an general suggestions on how to deal with parents. The problem is those few parents that won't take no for an answer and insist that because they are paying, they have the right to know everything. Those parents are impossible to reason with, and no amount of snippy comments will shut the down.

 

[gwynne]

They generally do have a script for what to say to overbearing parents. The college I taught at had training on FERPA an general suggestions on how to deal with parents. The problem is those few parents that won't take no for an answer and insist that because they are paying, they have the right to know everything. Those parents are impossible to reason with, and no amount of snippy comments will shut the down.

Certainly true about the highly entitled. But, for solid legal reasons setting firm boundaries is the only option.

 

[Callie]

I hope the school that did the stupid Mommy/Daddy thing took into account the situation. The only time my mom ever got involved with my college was when I had a housing situation. I'd tried to address the issue by myself, but it didn't get any place. My roommate had been caught smoking in our apartment after I had made it clear that I was high allergic to that. She continued to do it, and they wouldn't kick her out. My mom got involved to help get me out of my contract with the university housing. I'd be irate if I hadn't been able to get into a class because of that!

 

[cabanafrau]

Certainly true about the highly entitled. But, for solid legal reasons setting firm boundaries is the only option.

It's not only entitlement. There are plenty of college students out there with a mentally ill parent unable to abide within guidelines. My daughter had a roommate one year in the dorms who has a mother with some hefty mental illness problems. The girl is also a friend of my daughter's and frequently asks advice from my daughter, so much so that mom didn't like it and forbid her daughter to live with mine the following year, insisting she move in with the daughter of one of mom's friends. Her daughter is getting set to graduate in May, has a job lined up out of state and is in the midst of legal proceedings against her mother regarding financial actions mom took against her daughter's interests. Total mess. I have no doubt the university has received much communication from this mom. I have every confidence they acted appropriately on behalf of their student.

 

[nugov2]

Holding a student accountable for their parents is ridiculous. Having a section to make note of these ridiculous parents is even worse. Unprofessional and a huge embarrassment for that school. I can't imagine a reputable college would allow that type of record keeping.

Calling a college to complain about classes being cancelled is not a good idea. Not something I would do.

 

[already]

Some courses are in such high demand that students were registering for seats they did not need and then selling their seat in a desirable section or with a favored professor to other students for hundreds of dollars. They would meet, pay, and then drop/add simultaneously. To combat this, those courses required manual registration.

That couldn't happen at my child's not so privileged school. There is an automatic waitlist so if a person drops the first person on the waitlist moves up into the class. It would be impossible to sell a spot in a high demand class because there would be a waitlist that would take the dropped spot.

 

[NewRVLady]

You may not like it, but that's how it was. If you would like to believe that I've made it up, feel free to do so if that's what you prefer.

tell us the UNI-you aren't there anymore-right?