Registration problematic at FIU

Moises Fuertes/Staff Writer

The road toward higher education is an arduous one to follow, yet one that is meant to pay off in the long run. Students come to FIU in hopes of acquiring a degree which will help them lead better lives and, for the most part, this is what a university is meant to help its student body achieve. At FIU, however, the student body must deal with clunky registration programs that, at their best, actually aid in registering the student body for courses, yet at their worst, delay students from graduating on time. I’m talking about Panthersoft and its course registration section.

Since I transferred to FIU after acquiring my Associate of Arts degree, I have seen errors in the prerequisite section during the registration process in certain courses every semester. While this on its own isn’t completely irritating, combined with the potential of class cancellation, it certainly becomes a huge problem.

This is unacceptable, quite frankly. It’s irritating as a student to do everything on time, contact my advisor, select my courses, make sure I’m on track toward graduation, only to find that a course I needed has been canceled due to insufficient students enrolling for it.

According to the registration office at the Biscayne Bay Campus, 75 percent of the class capacity is what the University looks for when deciding whether or not to cancel a course for a semester. There are, of course, variations to that.  The Multimedia Production II course currently holds six students, and it is still being taught. Similarly, capstone courses like Advanced Multimedia Production tend to be taught regardless of the number of students that are assigned, since the students taking a capstone course usually graduate that semester.

Courses build upon one another. As such, many have prerequisites. By the time we are all reaching the end of our undergraduate careers, our choices in the courses we can take naturally become limited. This is where the above issues become a huge problem. If one of these last courses is canceled, they have the potential to set back a student a semester, or potentially a full academic year, if the course in question is a prerequisite to another course.

There are some ways I believe the course cancellation issue can be resolved, at least in the case of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. SJMC is situated at BBC. Naturally, most courses are offered on that campus. The first step, I believe, is to have more courses taught at the main campus, Modesto Maidique Campus. As the campus with the most circulation of students, courses at MMC tend to fill up much faster than those at BBC.

The second step is to make sure there are no errors in the prerequisites shown in Panthersoft, as this delays the entire registration process for any student wishing to take that course. Finally, the third step is to have the student take action and make sure they are constantly checking the courses they need to take and whether or not one of the courses he or she enrolled for is dropped.

Perhaps the best advice I can give students is to memorize his or her advisor schedule. Students can also contact your advisor through email in the My_eadvisor section on Panthersoft. I’m fairly confident your advisor will do everything he or she possibly can to fix any problems.

moises.fuertes@fiusm.com