Meena: Spring 2024 course registration has dawned upon us and the leaves haven’t even changed color. With much dismay, students will have to pre-register for their spring semester courses from November 1st to 15th for the first time since Harvard updated its policy. The traditional and beloved Shopping Week, allowing students to “shop” or sit in on however many courses they want before officially enrolling, is permanently gone. Prior-term registration takes away from the quintessential liberal arts Harvard transformation and experience—it is an absolute detriment to students.
Kaia: And yet, same-week registration was never truly bliss. Beginning with Spring 2024 registration, students will enroll in courses the semester before, with a limit of registering for four. Still, students can openly add/drop courses during the first week of the semester and can without instructor permission until January 29th. If they choose to, students can mimic Shopping Week with this add/drop period. After February 5th, students will need to pay a fee and require instructor permission to add/drop a course until the final deadline, February 20th. However, students will not be able to adjust their courses from November 15th to January 22nd.
While students enjoyed such benefits of in-term registration, professors and teaching fellows struggled under the pressure of unclear enrollment numbers, leading to difficult decisions for predicting an accurate number of required appointments for specific courses. For TFs, stress became increasingly common, as noted by one graduate student in a 2019 report by the Committee on Course Registration:
“I have had a horrible experience as a TF with Shopping Week. The course I was originally assigned to teach was half the size they guessed, so I had to scramble to find another course. As a consequence, I was incredibly stressed for 2 weeks and got almost nothing done.”
In a statement by the Committee on Course Registration faculty members further emphasize the consequences of such stress. “This uncertainty undermines the teaching mission of the College.”
Meena: Now, students are forced to pick classes months in advance. Planning for the next semester on top of the never-ending midterms and work only induces stress for students and diminishes the care and thought students can put into course registration. 89% of students surveyed voted that Shopping week is less stressful than pre-registration, according to the official undergraduate response to the policy, published by several students of the college. Last-minute decisions can hurt students who do not have the bandwidth to put their best effort into course applications or even begin to think about the GENED lottery. First-years in particular are still only just discovering their passion; choosing classes only halfway into the semester cuts their exploration in half. Without a sufficient period of reflection and in-person experience with unfamiliar courses, first-years may not have a full opinion of what subject matters truly interest them, leading them to be locked down by their original course choices from pre-term registration.
Kaia: If one looks closely at Harvard’s implemented policy, students are still granted extensive flexibility when changing courses. Mimicking Shopping Week without any stress on the side of TFs and other administrators, in the same way, students were free to attend as many courses’ initial class meetings as desired during in-term registration, pre-term registration still allows students to attend and drop any course within the first week of classes. Faculty from courses without an enrollment cap are expected to grant supportive academic resources to accommodate newcomers. When looking at numbers from Fall 2021, a period with both high undergraduate enrollment numbers and pre-term registration, 403 courses held an enrollment cap; 352 remaining courses still had space after the registration deadline, and only 40 courses were at capacity. This piece of evidence alone shows that students are still able to join courses with limited space, even when compared to pre-pandemic in-term registration.
Meena: Despite the flexibility, pre-term registration still presents an undeniable barrier to many students pursuing language, music, and arts-related concentrations. To fulfill their requirements, these students typically must register for a fifth course. However, under the policy, students may only pre-register for four. Additionally, classes quickly fill up. It is not as simple to assume that every class will be an easy option to switch to, whereas all classes are open during Shopping Week. It’s not the status quo to simply join a class five weeks late, and students will inevitably face difficulties in doing so. It is less appealing to sit in on multiple lectures at the beginning of the semester when most students are not doing the same. Instead of exploring brand-new classes or instructors, students may simply gravitate towards popular or ‘gem’ courses, which will hurt the educational experience for all.
Kaia: In any case, it can be hard to satisfy every course registration scenario. As long as an add/drop period remains at the start of each semester, granting students the flexibility to alter their course schedule, Harvard’s pre-term registration is the same as peer institutions, including Yale, Dartmouth, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Columbia, and Princeton.
Meena: And yet, the uniqueness brought on through Harvard’s Shopping Week and same-week registration is not only what distinguishes itself from other Ivies, but what makes the Harvard experience much more enjoyable. It is daunting for students to attempt to change their schedule weeks in, particularly when they must pay a fee. Students will be much less confident in their course selection and be forced to depend entirely on the Q-Guide. When students become apathetic to their classes, their overall engagement and participation only plummet.
Kaia: Still, through pre-term registration, students can be confident in their course selection. Contrary to a stressful week full of “shopping” for possible courses, students now have time to reflect on their decisions over a stress-free winter break. Further, while students comprise the vast majority of the college, support for our professors and graduate students, a crucial and defining feature of our institution, should not be ignored. It is the Professors and TFs who must deal with the unfair burdens.
Meena: Harvard’s renowned quality of teaching is its liberal arts education. It’s part of Harvard’s magic for students to end up concentrating in a completely different field after loving one class, which pre-term registration inherently discourages. Registering for courses now confines students; there is less incentive to change courses set months ago as opposed to last week. With pre-term registration, students might follow a path they think is right for them or even be pressured into by parents or peers. Now, it might not even feel worth it for students to face the foreign process of adding/dropping courses.
Students might not even discover the right course for them by simply searching keywords in the vast course catalog. Harvard is centered on following curiosity and embracing growth, not falling into the persistent trap of restrictively planning one’s future pre-term. It is students’ own qualities of education that are hurt by pre-term registration.
Kaia: Considering the quality of education being tainted by maintaining an inefficient period of same-week registration, a Harvard student’s experience with a liberal arts curriculum would already not be of the utmost quality. As most colleges utilize pre-term registration, including the above list of peer institutions, such a general norm should be evidence enough of the immense benefit brought on for administrators and students through pre-term registration.
Meena: There is a reason for Harvard’s uniqueness—pre-registration takes away what makes Harvard so special.
Kaia: Harvard’s uniqueness shines through the expectation of a renowned educational quality and teaching experience. When disorganization and stress amongst administrators and TFs are the norm, how can this be the case?
Meena Behringer ’27 (meenabehringer@college.harvard.edu) and Kaia Patterson ’27 (kpatterson@college.harvard.edu) have absolutely no idea what classes they want to take next semester.