Demand high for political science
By Jennifer Gottesfeld
June 29, 2008 10:28 p.m.
A decision to change the political science policies to restrict priority and first-pass enrollment to students and pre-major students was passed and then revoked all before the first day of fall priority enrollment ended, according to the political science department.
“The decision to change the enrollment policy was made quickly because enrollment was looming, and if something was going to be done, it would have to be done right away,” Professor Michael Thies said.
The decision was revoked later that day when students of all majors who had priority enrollment began calling the political science office, complaining that they were being denied from enrolling in classes that they were able to get into before, Thies said.
For students who are planning on graduating in spring 2009, this was a problem because students were not able to get into classes that they need to graduate.
“We realized pretty quickly that the goal was admirable, but this was not the way to do it,” Thies said. “The unintended consequences would hurt more than it would solve, and if we do change things we need to announce it and let everyone know so that students, especially students expecting to graduate, will know the changes ahead of time.”
The political science department has been discussing a number of potential changes to help their students get into the classes they need. Currently, open enrollment has made it difficult for political science students to do so, Thies said.
“The basic story here is that we have a huge number of majors for the size of our faculty, and our courses are in very high demand by non-majors who are taking our classes to fulfill their major requirements,” Thies said. “If they choose political science classes in their first pass, there isn’t enough room for our majors.”
This story is very familiar to Michael Scheckles, a fifth-year political science student. Scheckles transferred in 2006 as a political science student only to find that he could not enroll in any political science classes his first quarter at UCLA.
“I tried to sign up for political science classes and I couldn’t. I tried to crash classes when the quarter started, and they were all already full,” Scheckles said. “And I only get into one political science class my second quarter.”
Scheckles will have to stay for the summer as well as the first quarter of a fifth year to complete his political science major requirements because he had so much difficulty getting into the classes he needed.
There are many ways to alleviate the problem, Thies said. Some believe that priority and first-pass enrollment should be limited to political science students and pre-major students, though others say that getting rid of the political science minor would alleviate the demand for classes by non-major students. Some students and professors believe steps should be taken to make the major more difficult to get into, while others stand by allowing anyone to take classes in the political science department.
One of the costs of making it harder to get into the political science program is that it could potentially hurt transfer students who may not have been able to take all the prerequisites at their community colleges. Transfer students make up about half of the students with the major, and changing these requirements could potentially force them to choose a five-year track to graduation, Thies said.
“But, we’ve decided nothing,” he added. “A lot of people disagree. Short of having fewer majors or more faculty, I’m not sure if this is going to be solved.”
