A new policy employed through Tufts' Student Information Systems (SIS) to enforce prerequisites in biology, psychology and economics classes has raised a number of student concerns.
The system, implemented for the first time during this month's registration cycle, allowed SIS to remove students from courses for which they do not meet the prerequisites. All students removed from a class were notified by SIS via email so that they could find replacement courses.
The system is designed to help ensure that students are only registering for classes for which they are prepared, Dean of Undergraduate Education James Glaser said.
"It is not in a student's best interests to take a class without the prerequisite," he said.
In the past, professors would weed out students who were not qualified for high-level courses by looking at student transcripts, Glaser said. Since the Federal Education Records Protection Act (FERPA) took away professors' rights to look at the transcripts of their students two years ago, there has not been a viable method for screening students.
The university selected the three departments participating in the program because they have the most prerequisites, Glaser said.
Some students experienced difficulties with the pilot system during registration.
Sophomore Alice Rosenthal-Erickson, an economics major, had trouble registering after SIS dropped her from a class even though she met the prerequisites with Advanced Placement (AP) credit.
"It was a big hassle," she said. "I had to go down to Dowling [Hall] to get forms to add the class."
Rosenthal-Erickson also took issue with the automated e-mail SIS sent her.
"The e-mail I received was automated, so I couldn't even reply to it," she said. "It told me to go talk to the professor, but it turned out the professor doesn't even start at Tufts until next semester. The next day I got an e-mail saying that it was a mistake."
Economics Department Chair Enrico Spolaore believes that the pilot system will be beneficial. "It prevents students from registering [for classes] when they are not ready and it allows us to see problems in the system," Spolaore said. Economics as a department "has a pretty clear sequence of classes you need to take," he said, adding that he believed it was in students' best interest to follow the outlined track.
In an e-mail sent to students on Nov. 6, SIS warned students to make sure that all AP, International Baccalaureate credit and other pre-matriculation credits were on their official transcripts.
Freshman Beau Brace said that he worked with his dean to ensure his AP credits met the prerequisites for the economics classes he wanted to take.
"It makes it overly difficult for students who have a lot of AP credit because we have to go the extra lengths to make sure they're on our transcript," he said. "The system is unnecessarily penalizing us for doing well in high school."
Not all students had difficulties with the system.
Economics major Chris Albano, a junior, did not find the system restrictive. "I don't think [the new system] is so bad," he said. "If you are going to register for a class that you don't have the prerequisites [for], all this is going to do is make you talk to the professors. [It's] not going to close the door."
Spolaore acknowledged the potential administrative issues that could arise from the new system, including difficulties with transfer credits or outside experience that could not be entered into a computer system.
"That's why the pilot program is good; we can fix problems so that in the future that doesn't happen," he said.
Psychology Department Chair Robert Cook said the registrar's offer to participate in the pilot program was in line with the department's efforts to reorganize course offerings. "We have been trying to organize our curriculum to better serve the students over the last several years," he said in an e-mail. "This program seemed a natural step in this progression."
To help prevent administrative problems, students can still go to the appropriate professor to plead their case. "If a faculty signs a student into a class with a paper form, then the student's in the class," Glaser said.
Phoebe Hanley, a freshman, saw the pilot program as the beginning of a fairer registration process. "Obviously [administrators] should trust the students, but there are going to be kids who cheat the system," she said.
Saumya Vaishampayan and Katherine Sawyer contributed reporting to this article.
