By now you have all received the email from CSULB explaining how registration will be working for next semester.
Unlike previous years, there will be a temporary cap on enrollment, which will limit initial enrollment to 13 units. Students will be able to register for additional units eventually, but not until the end of summer on August 3.
This seems to be a way for the school to evaluate the classes that are most important to people and get rid of the ones that have low numbers. Students will not be able to play around with their schedule before finalizing it. Instead they will be forced to choose which classes are most important to them and hope that the other classes they need still exist come August.
This is troubling for multiple reasons. Seniors who are trying to finish school in the next year will have trouble making sure they get all the classes that they absolutely need before walking, adding an extra stress builder to an already stressful time. Also, if class sections start getting cancelled, it will be difficult for students who work part-time or full-time to fit their work schedules around school.
The school also seems to be hoping that students take summer or winter session in order to make up for the unit cap. However, this can be expensive and detrimental to students who rely on those breaks in the school schedule to work or get an internship. Plus, not all classes are available during winter or summer, especially major-specific courses that seniors need to take.
It is ridiculous for the school to ask us to wait until August before we know what our official school schedule is going to look like. At a school like CSULB where a lot of people commute, it is extremely important to know what your schedule is going to be. Also, with tuition as high as it is now, most students would actually like to know when they will be finishing school, and how many more semesters they will have to pay for.
If voters don’t approve tax increases in the upcoming election, CSULB will be subject to nearly $27 million in budget cuts. This would cause major damage to the school, and may even cause enrollment to certain majors to be indefinitely suspended.
College is a time when students should be allowed to experiment with their schedules without worrying if a certain major, or a certain class will be cut.
This new unit cap forces students to pick classes without the ability to change their mind later.
Almost as if it was a cruel early April Fools joke, the CSU also recently announced that it has approved a 10 percent salary increase for two new CSU presidents during the same budget meeting in which they announced possible enrollment freezes and faculty reductions.
Existing CSU presidents and other faculty have not had pay increases in years. Some of them have even had their pay decrease.
This shows how low of a priority the students are in this situation. The fact that anybody is getting a raise in such dire economic circumstances is ridiculous and unnecessary.
The primary goal of the university should be its students, and we have continuously been shown that this is not the case.
