706 signatures and counting…that’s the number of people who have signed a petition demanding change at the Computer Science department at the University of Georgia. The department’s courses have more demand from students than it can meet. All of the 4000 level classes in the Computer Science department are filled, and there is no waitlist for the majority of them. These 4000 level classes are required to graduate for Computer Science majors, and hundreds of students are fed up. Third year computer science student Julian Jordan is scared when registration time rolls around.
“I thinks it’s terrifying. During the semester you work really hard especially as a computer science major its a lot of effort, a lot of strife. You have to really perservere. You know you look for to the next set of classes and when see eveything full its like whoa”
The computer science department has grown in popularity over the past few years, but the class sizes have gone down. In 2014 there were 614 computer science majors, and 612 seats in 4000 level classes. Now there are more than 900 computer science students, with only 489 seats in 4000 level classes. That leaves a hundreds of students …. out of luck. According to the Computer Science department advisor Brad Barnes, there is a bug in the waitlist procedure in UGA’s registration website “Athena”. While this bug is on going, Barnes says, “the only way to the only way that we can understand the demand on our courses is for you all to fill out the survey link below that indicates which classes you would like to take (but are currently full.)”
The department currently does not have a solution for the lack of classes. But they hope to resolve the problem in the coming weeks.
