There are at least two reasons students drop classes. The first is that after attending one or two classes, they realize the class is not for them. Either because it seems like too much work or because the subject matter is not what they expected, they decide the class is not worth their while. For these students, the current system is sufficient. They should be forced to decide quickly whether they want to continue in a course or leave, opening a seat in the class for someone else who wants it.
The current system does not serve students dropping classes for the second reason. These are the students who did not initially get into their first-choice classes but were admitted off a waitlist. Unless these students banked on their ability to get into the class from the waitlist, they registered for a back-up course. They always intended to drop this course if they were admitted to the one they wanted, and taking both would put them over the number of credits they want or need.
These students, if they did not get off the waitlist until after the drop deadline, are stuck in their second-choice classes even if they add their preferred ones. It’s not hard to imagine this happening. If a student already in the class waited until the drop deadline to drop it, it’s very likely. Even if the spot was open for a few days, it could have been offered to one or two other students who decided not to take the class after all. The student on the waitlist who wanted the class wouldn’t be offered the seat until it was too late to drop his backup.
The size of the waitlist can give students some idea of whether they will make it into the class, and most professors take care to encourage students to drop classes as soon as they can to make room for those on the waitlist. This guessing game still leaves some students unsure of their ability to join a class at the time of the drop deadline, which forces them to stay enrolled in their second-choice courses.
This is not a problem that can be solved simply by collapsing the two deadlines into one. Though the University is right to suppose that students need to add classes after others have made the final decision whether to drop them, those same students who add new classes likely also need to drop some. The current system does not allow for that. What is needed, essentially, are two drop deadlines.
After the first drop deadline, which should remain roughly as it is, the University needs to allow students who are adding courses in response to other students’ leaving them to drop their own backup courses. And it also should allow anyone on the waitlist for the courses those students drop to do likewise. The result should be a second drop period, during which students can only drop a course if they are simultaneously adding a course for which they have been on the waitlist. In other words, students should be allowed only to swap courses rather than drop a course outright. This should not be technologically difficult. Allowing this for one or two weeks after the drop deadline — and making it advertised policy to do so — should accommodate everyone, including the students the current system fails.
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