Again, hat tip to Arts & Letters Daily for this article from The Chronicle of Higher Education about class scheduling & managing competition for the "good" classes.
If you've ever experienced the madness of trying to enroll in a class that you either needed to graduate or just had to take, you'll sympathize with students at UPenn's Wharton business school, where they've devised an auction system for class registration. Fitting, that the home of one of the top MBA programs in the world would apply economics in an attempt at restoring order to the chaos.
However, I think such a system requires a specific student population to be successful. In this instance, the solution is uniquely tailored to the students. Similarly, it's not overly surprising that those wishing to take a wine tasting course sleep outside the professor's office on the eve of registration.
I also wondered as I read this article if these systems of managed competition for classes would only tend to inflate the "value" of one class over another. It seems that the higher priced courses would draw the attention of students away from less-desired ones that may in fact be more interesting to some individuals. Also, new courses would struggle to compete with old favorites and may not be given the chance to take hold. Though I'm probably biased since my favorite classes in undergraduate were far off the beaten path of my major & largely unknown to the rest of the university!
Regardless, it's an interesting concept. Any thoughts?
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Arts & Letters Daily: aldaily.com
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1 comment:
Well, that's great, at least this could lessen the hassle during enrollment. I just hope that the system is well developed and could able to handle large database
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