Registration woes
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With the spring semester well under way, now seems a good time to mention a perennial thorn in the student body's collective side. Registration at Hopkins has been a nuisance for years, and we haven't seen much in the way of improvement.
The problems begin with the web registration system itself. How many Hopkins students have awoken on registration day at 7 a.m. only to find that the online sign-up has already buckled under the flood of users? Merely attempting to sign in can take upwards of half an hour. The server that runs registration is a single machine somewhere in the bowels of the University that absolutely cannot function by modern Internet standards.
In fact, the current system was supposed to be a temporary remedy when it was set up years ago. However, the long-term solution, a piece of software called ISIS that was not even written when the University purchased it, proved even more inadequate for the task. The result is that a putative band-aid has become a permanent fixture of frustration. Indeed, it is nothing short of surreal that the great Johns Hopkins University still relies on an online system that closes at 9 p.m. It would be sort of quaint if it didn't leave users utterly enraged.
Existing add/drop procedures are also showing no indications of positive development. Because there was no add/drop from Feb. 2-5 and all add/drops since then required a complex appeals process, a relatively painless add/drop option was only available from Jan. 22-Feb. 2.
We think a restructuring of the first weeks of the semester is in order. The University used to have a longer add/drop period, but cut it to a maximum of two weeks. We would like to see the University reconsider that policy change. Students need more opportunity to "shop around," as it were. Too often, students are unable to fully assess their course options. Merely reading a description online is not enough to decide whether a course is appropriate, but students are hamstrung by the brevity of the add/drop period.
We would also like to see the return of the add/drop reminder signs posted around campus. Sometimes we students are a little oblivious -- an attribute that is particularly widespread as we attempt to adjust to the beginning of the semester -- and the signs were a simple and effective way of ensuring that no one could be ignorant of relevant deadlines.
Hopkins is full of more or less intractable problems, but registration isn't one of them. The system absolutely can be made better, and we hope it will. An online registration method that doesn't induce ulcers isn't too much to ask, and from an educational perspective, a shopping period that gives students the chance to select the right classes is simply good sense.
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