Ben Powell: UCLA should update ECP policy

Every quarter, students in the College of Letters and Science are expected to meet a set total number of units, as dictated by the Expected Cumulative Progress policy. To meet this total – 42 by the end of freshman year, 86 by the end of sophomore year – new students are expected to enroll in between 13 and 15 units per quarter for their first two years, a more than reasonable expectation given the plethora of five-unit general education classes.

Students can build up a unit reservoir by taking more than the required number. Still, during their third and fourth years, students who take the minimum number of units are expected to enroll in 15 or 16 units to continue meeting their total benchmark. Since most upper division courses are only worth four units, some students have to take four classes per quarter.

If students do not meet the per quarter or total unit requirements, a hold is put on their account. This can present a problem for seniors applying to graduate school, internships or jobs that require transcripts.

However, it is still possible, and sometimes preferable, for students to graduate on time without meeting the expectations of the policy. As such, more flexible guidelines might be the solution.

The counseling department, UCLA Academic Senate and Undergraduate Students Association Council would do well to review the policy and ensure it is working in the best interests of students and the university.

In 2005, a task force under USAC analyzed the problems surrounding ECP. In a survey polling UCLA students, the task force found that more than half of students reported that the policy had affected their academic quality of life, and concluded that the data suggested ECP might have an effect on students’ willingness to take an intellectual risk or pursue new academic interests. However, no change came of the survey.

Under the ECP guidelines, I recently learned I was five units shy of 148 units, the required number of completed units by a student’s 10th quarter at UCLA. And as far as the counseling department was concerned, I wasn’t on track to graduate.

But the thing is, this “shortage” wasn’t exactly a shortage. I knew I was not in any danger of graduating late; I had planned out my classes so that I could successfully graduate in four years. Because of the holds on my account, I was forced to send my transcripts to graduate schools late as I was unable to get an appointment with a counselor before the deadline. For a senior trying to get admitted to law school, this seemed an undue burden. While students have the option to petition for exemption from the policy after their first two years at UCLA, this option may not be widely known, and for seniors, a more adaptive policy would be well-received.

ECP is a policy that began in 2001 as a way to assist undergraduates in “(making) steady progress toward earning their bachelor’s degree,” according to the College Academic Counseling website.

Corey Hollis, director of the College Academic Counseling department, said that at the time, UCLA had one of the lowest numbers of full-time enrollment students in the University of California system. The state of California considers full-time enrollment to be 15 units, and in order to be fully reimbursed by the state, UCLA had to bring up the number of units its students were taking.

The ECP policy was created as a way to ensure that students are as close to the state’s full-time enrollment cap as possible, but despite the intent, the ECP guidelines present several problems for students.

Adding to the inconvenience of the hold an “ECP Shortage” designation confers on your account is the difficulty in making an appointment with the College Academic Counseling office. Because appointments must be scheduled in person for the same day, students with early classes, work or other obligations are all but out of luck.

Moreover, conflicting policies can easily mislead students about their progress toward graduation. For example, 12 units per quarter is considered full-time enrollment by the Financial Aid Office, but would be insufficient to meet the benchmark held by the College of Letters and Science.

Students subject to the policy should be made more aware that even if they are considered full-time, they may still be at risk of violating ECP guidelines and not graduating on time, since students cannot reach the total minimum unit count of 180 by taking only 12 units a quarter for four years.

According to Ilinca Filimon, a New Student Advisor for the office of New Student & Transition Programs, new students are told about ECP requirements on the first day of orientation, but often that’s where exposure ends.

More than eight years after the creation of the USAC task force, the ECP policy remains unchanged.

At the very least, UCLA should audit the policy to determine current students’ attitudes and update it to best serve the students it monitors.

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