By Katelyn Needham/ editor-in-chief
Students can now register for fall classes in April and sign up for summer classes later this month after TCC made changes to its registration system.
The new summer registration is now March 27, and the new fall registration start date is April 17. The process for registration will remain the same through WebAdvisor.
“I’m excited about these changes,” enrollment and academic support services vice chancellor David Ximenez said. “They provide students more time to register, and they allow students to register for their fall courses before they may leave TCC for summer break.”
TCC administrators believe signing up for fall classes in the spring will be easier than doing it in the summer.
“Previously, we had fall class registration dates starting in the middle of June after most of the students who are taking the summer off are already off campus, and it is very inconvenient for them,” NE Campus president Allen Goben said. “We wanted to remove that inconvenience and make registration easier.”
The payment dates for both semesters have also changed. Students can delay payment until May 4 for summer classes and until Aug. 3 for the fall.
“Doing this minimizes the number of students who are dropped and have to re-register,” Ximenez said. “It allows students more time to arrange their tuition payment, whether they pay with financial aid, TCC’s payment plan or with their own funds.”
Goben and Ximenez co-chaired a task force that looked at similar institutions and compared their registration and payment dates with TCC.
“There’s no particular college we have modeled after,” Goben said. “But there are the ‘Big 10,’ which are the largest community colleges in Texas. We got all the data from when they started registration. We are working to be more consistent with that group.”
The date and payment changes were made in an effort to benefit faculty, staff and students. It was designed to spread out the workload for faculty and to increase the rate of student success at TCC.
“A lot of students that are here in the spring semester, for example, if they lock in their schedule for the fall, they will come back,” Goben said.
Department deans and support staff had to work to set up the process to change, Goben said. This change was something that has been in the works for a year, he said.
Both Goben and Ximenez hope to see an increase in enrollment with the new registration dates.
“I think the change is good, but you can’t procrastinate about it,” SE student Breanna Fawks said. “I think with the change, a lot more people will be coming. Now I think this change will help me because I will have more time to get everything done. It’s one less thing I have to worry about, and there is less pressure.”
