Editorial: Block schedule won’t work

Every year, the students’ biggest complaints involve parking, financial aid and advising.

But the University has taken it upon itself to try and fix the latter, saying its new block enrollment program is a direct response to students’ concerns about available courses, class times and graduating in four-years time.

“Register for classes once. Never have to register again. All your classes always guaranteed so you can graduate in four years.”

These are the promises that have been made by the new program that started this semester with a class of freshman.

In this program, a student is guaranteed a seat in the classes they need to stay on track for graduation and their courses are preloaded every semester, according to Academic Affairs.

It sounds great. No more dealing with lines. No more dealing with being on hold. No more waiting to speak with an advisor while every other student is frustrated with registration.

This sounds like a great idea that is almost too good to be true. And it may be just that.

The University wants to be like a conveyer belt in a factory. The conveyer belt continuously pushes students down the line and advisors are trying to keep up with the line.

With an unmet goal of a 300:1 student-to-advisor ratio, the University may be adding more pressure to its advising team rather than alleviating the workload.

It is nearly impossible on the surface for each advisor to be able to handle the workload they would have placed in front of them. In the block program, advisors are also responsible for their students outside of the cohort.

But while this program may seem like more work than its worth, it could be a long term solution to the advising problem.

It’s a concept that students have dreamed of, and if they all hop on board then they can avoid the hassle of registration and advising can avoid the headache

The first day working on the conveyer belt in a factory is considered the roughest, but once you find a rhythm and get accustomed to the speed of the belt, the process becomes a lot simpler.

We applaud the University for taking student concerns into direct consideration and attempting to tackle them. And as all new programs, it will have kinks to work out.

We believe that trying it out this semester with these four programs is the best way to approach it, but this project needs to be revisited over the summer to see how well it performed.