“$46,000 a year for what?”

Course registration is always a stressful time of the year as students scramble to gain acceptance in to the four classes that they desire to take for the next semester. Since our first year, this process has always been a letdown and I have never enrolled in more than two of the four classes that I have wanted to take. I thought that, as a senior, this process would change as our class picks first and has the best opportunity to take the courses we want, but I was wrong. This course registration has been more of a disappointment than ever, as I am now unable to take certain classes at any point during my college education. I have spent the past four semesters trying to enroll in a certain class and this semester marked the last opportunity for me to do so, but to no avail. I emailed the professor of the course before registration expressing my interest and problems with previous registration, but received no response. After emailing the department head, I was told to “attempt to add the course during the drop add period as the morning section is typically not full.” By the time it was my turn to register, the waitlist for the class was 20 and 17 students respectively for the two sections.

 By the end of senior registration, the waitlist was 33 and 30 students respectively. While I was monitoring the two sections of the same class, I determined a senior needed a lottery pick of the first three rounds in order to find a seat in either of the two sections; my pick was the eighth round. This course is one of the few at Colgate that has direct real-world applicability, and the knowledge from this course would be invaluable to any student. As the waitlist is already around 40 students for the two sections, over five percent of the senior class will be unable to take this class and gain necessary knowledge that is an asset for the real world. While a liberal arts education is supposed to prepare you to read, think and write critically, it is also meant to prepare you for post college life. As we spend $46,000 a year for our education at Colgate, I find myself asking: how well it is preparing us for our future? Job interviewers have routinely asked me about my knowledge on the course’s subject matter that I have been unable to take for the past two years. I find it rather frustrating that a course that is general and readily available at most universities the first year cannot be taken here at Colgate by over five percent of my peers.

Contact Robbie Babus at [email protected].