Making the Case for Extending Drop/Add

In April 2005, University Council voted to shorten drop/add from 5.5 instructional days to its current length of 4 days.  The reason for this change:  complaints by professors of low class attendance as a result of students not taking the first week of classes seriously. 

I personally used the drop/add period in Fall 2005 when it was still 5.5 days to drop Latin and Linguistics classes and add Calculus and Introduction to Public Speaking.  While I did not use drop/add during Spring Semester, having a full week to adjust my schedule during my first semester at UGA proved invaluable.  During that time I attended each of my classes twice, spoke to the professor of the Calculus class before I added the class, and exchanged my books at the bookstore.  I also realized I was out of my league in the Linguistics class, being a Science major with little linguistics background in a classroom with virtually all language majors. 

In the new four day drop/add, incoming Freshman are not going to have the same opportunity I had.  Having a short drop/add period limits a student’s opportunity to make informed choices on taking classes that will best fit their educational goals.  While grade distributions and some course syllabi are available online, there is no substitute for the experience of being in the classroom and talking to the actual professors a student might have that term.

After doing some thinking over the past few days, I felt extending drop/add was a worthwhile endeavor.  I began by doing some background research on the subject, the majority being newspaper articles available on the Red and Black website.

Yesterday, I decided to do some background research into drop/add periods at UGA’s peer and aspirational institutions.  I expected a range of drop/add periods with UGA’s four day drop/add being a general rule.  My expectations were proven wrong, as UGA’s drop/add period was easily the exception rather than the rule.

Out of twenty-nine peer and aspirational institutions, UGA was tied with the University of Texas-Austin for having the shortest drop/add period.  The average drop/add length among peer and aspirational institutions was 7.69 days to add classes and 13.52 days to drop classes without a financial penalty or record of the class being recorded on the student’s transcript.  The drop/add data found in my research can be accessed here.     

Clearly, UGA’s short drop/add period can’t be explained as a general attitude among similar schools.  In fact, the aspirational institutions had a higher average drop/add length than the peer institutions.

However, there are other issues to consider when lengthening the drop/add period.  I hope you can assist me in addressing these issues.  I would greatly appreciate if you could comment here or at ruddlereport@gmail.com with your thoughts, in an effort to generate a solid case for presentation to University Council to extend drop/add.

• Why isn’t four days enough time to adjust a class schedule?
• Does a longer drop/add period contribute to “class shopping”?  And is that a good or bad thing for the academic environment?
• Does having a longer drop/add period put more pressure on professors to help students catch up? Or is it wholly the student’s responsibility to make-up missed class material?
• Are students really serious about their classes during the first week of each term?  If so, will that be fixed by cutting drop/add?