EDITORIAL – Online scheduling a necessary upgrade

While Pitt’s Office of the University Registrar has vaguely committed to introducing online… While Pitt’s Office of the University Registrar has vaguely committed to introducing online course scheduling in October 2009, we’re not convinced that the University believes online scheduling is a necessary upgrade.

In an interview with The Pitt News, university registrars made nonspecific commitments about moving toward an online scheduling system next year, only stating that moving scheduling online was “high on their list,” and emphasizing that our current system, in which departmental advisers schedule alongside students during advising appointments is at least “better than standing in line.” It’s almost as if they were saying, well, our system is pretty outdated, but at least it isn’t the worst one in the country. Way to set the bar high.

We wonder if the University has any idea that online scheduling and add/drop is a popular, if even expected system at major universities. Of U.S. News ‘ World Report’s rankings of the top 100 national universities, Pitt and Purdue University are the only two universities that lack an online course registration and add/drop system. And many of the remaining schools on the list have utilized online scheduling for more than a decade.

As a university that prides itself on scientific and technological advancements, it’s embarrassing that we don’t yet have an online scheduling system. Technologically, allowing students to register online isn’t even much of an upgrade. Currently, our advisers utilize PeopleSoft to register students’ classes online. It’s really just a matter of granting students access to a feature that PeopleSoft already has.

Of course, overhauling a system like scheduling is going to take more than just granting students greater access to PeopleSoft. Allowing students to schedule online will mean reorganizing the advising system and, potentially, having to scale the add/drop department. And, with add/drop finally moving online, the University can finally do away with those pesky green add/drop forms, which, incidentally, still aren’t accessible in the add/drop office.

We believe that advisers play a valuable role in the academic process at Pitt, and switching to online scheduling doesn’t have to result in less reliance on academic advisers. Students should still be required to meet once a semester with an academic adviser, and their ability to schedule online could be withheld until they do.

In fact, we believe that allowing students to schedule online would improve the advising system, as advisers would be less overwhelmed with scheduling appointments and would be able to grant more time to meeting with students throughout the semester.

Pitt has successfully managed to transfer most of its services online. We purchase sporting event tickets online, CourseWeb manages most of our classes and we even pay tuition on the web. So what’s stopping us from registering online?

We call on Pitt administrators to commit fully to implementing online registration by next fall, and to acknowledge that online scheduling, much like systems that allow us to get course information and pay tuition online, is essential to running an efficient university.