It’s that time of year again. It’s time to plan and schedule classes for the upcoming semesters. Whether it be fall or summer, everyone hopes the classes they want are offered in these semesters forthcoming. Unfortunately, many classes are not offered depending on major.
It’s a sad reality that for many students, their major’s core classes are not offered the during semester they need them. For example, as a philosophy major, I need to take a certain class in order to graduate on time.
However, after speaking with my advisor, I found out it will not be offered until my last semester before I graduate. Many students face similar problems in their own majors, where required classes for their degree are not offered. Regardless of what your degree is in, some required classes are not offered when you need them and in certain cases, must be taken in a sequential order. Saint Xavier University needs a better system of planning classes.
In other words, required courses should be offered every semester. They should not be offered only in the fall or only in the spring, but they should be offered every semester in order for students to get their degrees on time. Some students would be able to graduate in the fall semesters, but find they have to come back during the spring to complete their Senior Seminar since this is the only semester it’s offered.
Therefore, their last semester is filled with classes that are unnecessary and unwanted. I’ve even been in a situation where I have registered for a class and it gets cancelled two weeks later because the department could not find a teacher.
There is a simple solution to these problems. SXU needs to hire more professors in order to handle having Senior Seminars and major core classes in both the fall and spring semesters for students. In turn, the academic departments could open up more seats in a classroom or more sections of a class.
Waitlists are a great tool for keeping your place in the section in case someone drops the class, but it would be more beneficial if class sizes, especially the core classes, were slightly bigger or there were more sections to accommodate students.
However, I can’t discredit the school entirely. They do a great job of making sure the general education classes are offered every semester so students can get their general requirements done. Students would appreciate it if they could extend this to the required classes as well. I love academic planning on the mySXU portal. It’s simple, easy, and aesthetically pleasing.
However, it could be improved if we could see what classes were going to be offered in the upcoming semesters. That way, students can plan out their schedules far in advance, and make the jobs of advisors much easier.
SXU needs more teachers so required classes can be offered every semester, and SXU needs to publicize the classes that are going to be offered in upcoming semesters. This way everyone can be a little more organized and a little more planned.
Emily Rubino
Opinions Editor