End Shopping Week

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences is considering changing to an early registration system starting as early as spring of 2020, moving away from the current "shopping week," a period at the start of each semester during which students can sit in on courses before enrolling. It’s about time. While shopping week may allow undergraduates to obtain slightly more information about courses, it is simply not worth the costs borne largely by graduate student teaching fellows.

Every semester, graduate student TFs face problems caused by shopping week. Because there is no way to determine the final student enrollment for courses, it is impossible to accurately predict where TFs need to be assigned. In my department, this has resulted in at least one TF needing to be moved after shopping week in every semester I’ve been at Harvard. In my first semester teaching, this happened to me, where after spending weeks preparing for one course — meeting with the professor and other TFs, preparing readings, planning sections, and doing other administrative tasks — I was forced to move to a new course with only two days to prepare for my first section. Not only was this a problem for me, but my students also had to deal with the change.

Additionally, the lack of ability to plan can lead to more serious labor issues. Some TFs that aren’t guaranteed teaching can lose their funding if their assigned course ends up under-enrolled. In another example from my department, a TF agreed to take on a section of another course — along with a corresponding pay increase — in addition to two sections of her assigned course. But when her first assigned course was under-enrolled, one of her two sections was removed along with her pay increase, leaving her teaching two sections of two different courses, while being paid the same rate as any other TF.

There are also downsides for professors. When one course I was assigned to ended up over-enrolled, our department had to find two additional TFs and a new classroom that could accommodate the class size in less than a week. The professor, meanwhile, had to alter her course to reflect the change from 40 to over 100 students, while working with the new TFs and a less-than-ideal classroom. Professors also cannot expect students to complete work — or at times even show up — during shopping week, making planning difficult.

Students are also adversely affected by shopping week. Lotteries for courses often don’t occur until the end of shopping week, and sections often cannot be planned until two or even three weeks into the semester. This makes it difficult for undergraduates to plan their schedules, especially for those who have jobs or are engaged in extracurricular activities.

All of these problems are completely avoidable with an early registration system, something that many other universities in the United States have. Here is how the system works, for example, at my alma mater, the University of Virginia. The course catalog for the upcoming Fall semester is released in March, allowing students ample time to search for courses and read posted course syllabi and course reviews. Registration begins in April, with more senior students signing up earlier, while incoming first year students sign up during a mandatory meeting with an advisor during their orientation (and some space in certain courses popular among first years is reserved).

Nobody is locked into place, however, as students are still allowed some flexibility to change courses during an add/drop period in the first two weeks of the semester. The difference is that the burden is on the student, where in order to change courses, the new course must have space and must fit their schedule. Students are also responsible for any material and assignments missed due to joining a course late. Data from other universities, meanwhile, shows that while there is plenty of student movement in the add/drop period, the overall numbers for most courses do not deviate significantly from the early registration period.

During the period between early registration and the start of the semester, however, necessary adjustments can be made. If a course is over-enrolled, there is time either to set up a waitlist or lottery, or to find a larger classroom to accommodate more students. Whether a class is under- or over-enrolled, professors have time to adjust the design of their courses, and TFs can be properly assigned.

There are too many benefits to be gained from early registration to offset a very small cost. The uncertainty that comes with the shopping week — particularly for graduate students — is simply not worth keeping this unique Harvard feature. It’s time for shopping week to go.

Jeff D. Williams is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in Music in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.