Beginning in the Fall 2007 semester, students may be required to pay a $20 fee for classes dropped after the third class day to discourage students from over-scheduling then dropping classes after registration is closed if the Student Government Association Senate and the President’s Cabinet approve the proposal, Lawrence Howell, Associate Provost of Academic Affairs, said.
Howell said the purpose of the proposal is to encourage students to enroll in only the classes they need. Some students schedule 15 or 18 hours but only plan to stay in 12, he said. He calls this “class shopping.”
“The goal is primarily to make classes more available to students,” Howell said. “We end up with a lot of classes that are full, and then on the fourteenth class day, they are available. But it’s too late for students to get into them. From the research we’ve done, there appears to be a lot of class shopping.”
Academic Affairs has already approved the proposal, which is an increase to a $5 drop fee that is currently in place but was never enforced, but the University of Louisiana System Board of Supervisors must also approve the increase.
“We don’t want to punish people that don’t do well in their classes and have to drop them,” Howell said. “That is not our intent at all. It’s so students take the classes they need and not extra classes they don’t plan to finish.”
Although the solution involves a fee, Howell said, the fee was never considered as a way to make money for the University. He said the hope is that little money will be generated from this fee.
Howell said he encourages anyone with an alternative idea for reaching the same goal to speak up.
Ramona Mire, business sophomore from Thibodaux, said it should be a student’s right to decide if he or she needs a class or if he or she should drop it due to a heavy class load.
Other students generally disagree with the fee.
“I think it is kind of ridiculous,” Scotty Tougas, freshman from Brooklyn, Mich., said. “They are adding fees for everything. First it’s the athletic fee and now this? It feels never-ending.