A few weeks ago, TCC bought a program to design a schedule for students.
Since the school has increased tuition twice in the last few years, it’s nice to see money coming back to help students. But it’s hard to see how this program will help most students.
Designing a schedule and registering for classes isn’t hard. For most students, all the tools are available online.
All they need to do is sit down for a few minutes and figure out how they want their days to go. For those who can’t do the job online or don’t know how, counseling centers are set up on every campus to help them sort it out.
What’s worse, the program was designed for single-campus schools and can’t be altered. So the program doesn’t understand that SE and TR Campuses are half an hour away from each other.
Unschooled use could result in a schedule that’s physically impossible to maintain.
The college spent $12,500 on this program. That’s after the this-won’t-work-for-multi-campus-schools discount.
It’s like a bad Christmas present — we appreciate the thought, but this doesn’t help.
By and large, students don’t need this because they can make their own schedules.
TCC stresses preparedness, and, frankly, students should be prepared.
They should know what they want out of college before they come here, and they should know what they want to register for to get that.
Further, students don’t need this because if they can’t make their own schedules, they need to learn how. Knowing what a routine will be and knowing how to decide what it will be is a pretty important part of life in general.
When students transfer out to four-year universities, there’s no guarantee they’ll have a tool to help them schedule classes. And a more expensive college means a bigger financial risk attached to a botched schedule.
Priorities are turned around the wrong way here. The more thought students put into college, the better they do, and that starts with scheduling.
The college doesn’t necessarily need to make students put more thought in, but it shouldn’t be making it easier to put in less.
Look, we appreciate that TCC is thinking about us. We really do.
But next spring, students may run into that one guy who has to shoot nine miles down I-20 in 10 minutes to get to class on time.
That’s just silly.
