New policy best for registration

The new "drop, swap and add" policy, which was officially put into effect this week, is a change for the better.

Students who put off making any final decisions about their schedules until the clock strikes midnight on the last day of the registration period are being forced to become more proactive, which is something that everyone can benefit from.

The ability to drop and swap classes ends today, but students will have  until Friday night to add those classes that were dropped at or before 11:59 p.m. tonight.

The option to drop a class during the last few moments of the registration period, leaving an open seat that can never be filled, has been eliminated. It forces the "If we can wait, we will," attitudes of many students to be put to rest.  Those who eyeball a class every half hour in the hopes that someone will change their mind will  finally be able to sign up.

According to Dennis Dulniak, the University Registrar, even if students have class on Friday or Saturday and are unable to attend the class at least once before the four day drop/swap period is over, they still have until the next business day after their first class meeting to drop it. The only catch is that they have to go the Registrar's Office and drop the class in person rather than online. Simple enough.

The biggest downfall to the new policy is that when students drop a class after the drop/swap period has ended, the course gets counted as a withdrawal, and the student has to pay for the class, according to Dulniak.

UCF students should take comfort in knowing that the late registration fees and add/drop policies of other Florida universities are considerably more drastic and have the potential to cost students larger sums in the end.

For instance, even while their registration periods are ongoing, students at the University of South Florida and Florida State University must pay a $100 late registration fee for every class they sign up for after classes begin, according to university Web sites.

Students at USF have five days to add or drop classes from the day they begin, but students at FSU  have three days before their schedules are set in stone. The University of Florida, conversely, gives students two days to finalize their summer schedules, but is generous enough to grant five in the fall, according to the UF Web site.

UCF will be the first Florida university to implement a "drop, swap and add" policy that gives students four days to drop and swap, followed by one additional day to add classes.

This new policy may even help bring UCF's student-to-teacher ratio down. As classes become fuller, the university will receive more funding through tuition. This increases the likelihood that more professors will be hired and class sizes will be reduced.

According to the Princeton Review, UCF has the highest student-to-teacher ratio of any Florida university at 29.9-to-1.

This figure can easily be overlooked when considering UCF has approximately 50,000 students enrolled and is the sixth largest university in the nation. But UF, which has a student population exceeding UCF's, has a lower student-to-teacher ratio of 21:1.

Despite class sizes, however,  it's always going to feel overwhelming when registering for classes at a university with a student population nearly a fourth of the size of Orlando. 
Whether students are making their decisions four days or five days into their new class schedule, they will be dropping, adding and swapping until the last second.

Breaking up the monotony and giving students an opportunity to add that final class after everyone else has had their say will help them graduate that much sooner.