Registrar shirks blame for room and grade troubles

Twenty thousand grades had to pass through the Yale College Registrar's office at the end of fall semester—no small task. And though the grades were released to the Internet in real time as they were entered into the Student Information System, there were complaints that the grades took too long to be posted.

ANDREW HEID/YH EAST OF EDEN: The registrar moved to a new office, but whether better organization will ensue remains to be seen.

Barry Kane, Registrar of Yale College, maintained that his office did a fine job posting grades. "Considering the volume of the data and the time pressure we were working under, the staff handled it very well," he said.

Grades were due in the first working day after the faculty's winter break, which fell on Mon., Jan. 3 this semester. Kane's staff had the grades recorded by Fri., Jan. 7. Director of Student Information Technology Services Jill Carlton explained that grades appear on the web as soon as they are put into the system.

Students who received their grades after that date can look to their professors for answers. "The vast majority [of the faculty] respect the deadline and they understand the importance of handing in grades on time," Kane said. "Of course, sometimes things like illness or a tied-up [teaching assistant] intrude and we have to accommodate that." Kane and Carlton expected to receive and release all remaining grades within the next two weeks.

Both the deadline and entry come more rapidly at Harvard, according to Thurston Smith, Senior Associate Registrar of Harvard University. Grades are due as soon as one week after the exam, though, as at Yale, some grades come later. The data is processed within 24 hours. And although grades were previously only mailed—arriving two to three weeks after the end of the semester—a new computer system should make their grades available online within a day.

Aside from grade reports, the registrar's office handles the undergraduate course supplement to the Yale College Programs of Study (YCPS). But the supplements distributed on Fri., Jan. 7 contained a number of errors in class times and meeting places.

Work on the printed supplement begins months before its actual printing. Judith Calvert, Associate Registrar, is responsible for collecting its content. "The YCPS is a snapshot in time," Kane said. "It becomes outdated as soon as it is printed. There is always the problem of putting out the supplement too early, because not all the relevant information might be included."

The Registrar's Office's biggest task at the moment is reassigning classrooms and then notifying students and staff. Kane must accommodate faculty's requests for special locations and equipment, as well as the needs of students with special disabilities.

"We get as much information as possible ahead of time about expected class size, but because enrollment always shifts during shopping period we have to be flexible," Carlton said.

"We accommodate unhappy faculty as best we can and revise the supplement online as often as possible," Kane said. The changes to the online supplement happen automatically six times a day.

The registrar's office will be performing a balancing act in the next few days, trying to avoid a "domino effect" by changing room assignments.

With a portion of the classrooms controlled by individual departments or under shared control, assigning rooms is an ever longer and more difficult process. "We don't want to take away a room one professor is happy with, but we can't allow another to hold a 20-person class in an eight-person room."

"Since Yale does not have pre-registration, we cannot accurately predict class size." Calvert said. "But the decision to eliminate or alter shopping period has to come from the faculty, not the administration."

At this point, the problems experienced by the registrar's office are routine, Kane insisted. He hopes that the difficulties will be resolved in the next two weeks and asks students and faculty to be understanding.

Back to News...