It’s everyone’s favorite time of year again. No, I’m not talking about Thanksgiving, or even Christmas. I’m talking about class registration. Okay, I’m totally kidding. Registration is by far one of Tulane’s biggest downfalls. Classes fill up fast, leaving plenty of stressed out and frustrated students walking around campus.
I remember when I visited Tulane as a prospective student last year, they talked about how Tulane is one of the few major research universities in the country where it’s highly unlikely that you would be in a large lecture hall or even have a class taught by a TA. Our school definitely prides itself on having such small, intimate classes, and that’s something I think most people here value. But the small class sizes are overshadowed by the fact that there are only a few sections of each class, leading to little scheduling flexibility, or worse, not being able to take the classes people need at all. One of my friends isn’t even registered for any classes! She’s waitlisted for every class she needed to take. The waitlists this year are also out of control – many of them have over 20 people waiting.
Tulane is no longer a back-up school for many applicants. People dream about going here, and the largely increasing class sizes over the past few years prove it. The Tulane administration needs to compensate for that by either hiring more professors, or at least opening up more sections of classes. It’s not fair that many students are waiting in limbo and facing anxiety because of the limitations the school places upon us. But we, as students, have to speak up for ourselves. We can’t keep complaining about it, thinking that things will magically get better the more we bring it up. This isn’t going to change unless the administration is aware of it.