I think our University administrators have forgotten what it’s like to be in college. I guess it’s easy for someone who already has a degree to determine how long it should take to decide whether to drop a course. It’s probably also easy for someone who is long past their college days to forget what it’s like to be struggling in a course with 250 people, an instructor unwilling or unable to help you and no convenient or cheap tutors available. And for those of us whose tuition dollars help pay administrators’ salaries, the withdrawal policy for classes is yet another way they show their lack of concern for student welfare.
The policy dictates that students with up to 29 credit hours are allowed three W’s. After a student completes these first 29 hours, the student is allotted one W for each 30 hours after that until the student earns more than 119 credit hours. After a student reaches that point, he or she is allowed only one more W. Unused W’s do not roll over from one tier to the next.
Keep in mind that students are only given six days at the beginning of the semester to decide whether to keep their current schedule before the W policy goes into effect. This short time period means you’re lucky if one of your classes meets three times before the drop date.
As someone who will be a senior next semester, I speak from personal experience when I say there are many classes that seem like a good idea to take the first or second time you meet. It is usually only after a few weeks when reality hits that you’re stuck in a class you can’t pass.
Why do administrators care how many W’s students have on their transcripts? According to the University Registrar’s Web site, “an excessive number [of W’s] reflects negatively on a student’s record and involves substantial cost by way of tuition, books, room and board and lost opportunities.”
It is true that students who are applying for graduate, law or medical school shouldn’t have an excessive amount of W’s. Why is it up to the University, however, to decide when I am allowed to receive a W? It should be my choice whether I decide to drop two classes this semester. I also doubt the University truly cares if I spend more money in tuition, books, room and board if I have too many W’s. Especially considering the new First Year Residency Requirement, the University is sending the message it wants us to give it as much money as possible.
When Student Government UCFY Sen. Ben Clark recently brought the policy up for debate, Assistant Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs Jeannine Kahn said the policy’s goal is “to make students aware of how important it is to plan their schedule.”
This goal is reasonable, but to properly plan your schedule, it requires in many cases to visit a counselor in your college. Considering the wait time for an appointment with a counselor in some colleges is up to a month, it isn’t always easy to receive proper advice. This goes back to the fact that if administrators invest more time and energy in serving students’ interests, it would be more effective in working toward the betterment of students’ educational career than another policy that looks better than it actually works.
Chancellor Sean O’Keefe has argued the W policy, like many of the Flagship Agenda’s policies, helps the University “mirror more closely the benchmark standards used by national peer groups that we’re measured against.” Take for example, however, the University of Alabama, one of our Southeastern Conference peers. Alabama only allows students about a week to decide whether to drop a course without receiving a W, but it doesn’t place a limit on how many W’s a student can receive. This policy is almost identical to the old W policy here.
Change isn’t always a good thing, and the W policy is proof. There are many ways administrators can amend the policy to better their students, such as keeping the limit of W’s at seven, but allowing students two weeks to decide to drop a class. The policy could also be amended to allow unused W’s to rollover. The current restrictions discourage students from pursuing multiple minors or challenging themselves with difficult classes.
This policy, like many of the Flagship Agenda, does more to promote the University while hindering students’ academic and personal growth. The University seems to forget that it is a state school, meant to serve both Louisiana and out-of-state students seeking a higher education, not the administrators. A university that realizes the importance of its students and creating policies that benefit solely them and not the school’s image has its priorities in line. It is those universities that provide a valuable degree to its graduates, not those that made its students struggle all in the name of image.
—Contact Laura Bratcher at [email protected]