Illinibucks


I would definitely use Illinibucks for the registration period, because of the disadvantage that I have experienced in my previous semester. In Spring 2019 semester, which is my 2nd semester of my junior year, I was not able to register for any 400 level statistics courses, despite that I was in Statistics senior standing student. I wanted to distribute the courses amongst Statistics and Economics, which is another major I am pursuing, so that I can lessen my workload for my senior year. I sought out help from my advisor, but she was unable to help in anyway too. Luckily, I had declared Economics major late, so I registered for all the prerequisite courses on that semester. With Illinibucks, I will know for sure that classes I will be registered and follow my desired schedule every semester.

From my understanding, there are already services that some students provide that is similar to this. I have seen and heard about some students who are in the priority group can reserve the seat for other student with compensation. I have also seen advertisement that states the provider has an algorithm to register for courses that are already full, by checking roster constantly and register for it when someone drops it. Apparently, these activities are again the university regulation that I have never participated in. However, while this ongoing illegal action is somewhat similar to our idea of Illinibucks, it does not guarantee a spot for courses.

The predetermined prices for this service will be vital in terms of who enjoys the benefit. If the service was over the average desirable price, students from wealthier family background may be the only ones who can afford the service and thus have access to the most popular classes. Popular classes can range from classes that students may be able to receive A to classes that lectures on generally interesting material to college students. On the other hand, if the price were to be as low as everyone, if not majority, can afford for it, then I believe there is no point of moving ahead of the line.

Another usage of Illinibucks that I can think of is interviewing time slots. As I am interviewing a lot these few weeks, I have had a chance to be invited for an on-campus interview. I checked the available time within 20 minutes of receiving the email, but I realized more than half of the slots were already filled in. Not that there are no time slots that work for me, but the better ones were already taken. With Illinibucks, however, the payer get to choose the interview time first.

There are also effects on students’ responses according to the price. If the price was set very high, I believe a lot of the students will not use Illinibucks, but just for time slots that are available, since a lot of the students do miss classes to be in the on-site interviews. Also, paying much and picking a desiring time does not guarantee an offer from that recruiter. Hence, it may seem to be a bad investment. If the price was too low, there will be no difference in current situation, since everyone will be striving to get a better spot.

As I provide my desire to use Illinibucks, it seems to me the notion of it promote inequality. The one with wealth is able to move to the head of the line, and the one with no opportunity to do so will always fall behind. Hence, it can cause a lot of the students to choose to not attend U of I and attend universities that allow equal opportunities, which is the reason why there is no such system, explicitly, implemented in real life.

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanSeptember 27, 2019 at 9:34 AM

    This is the post meant for next week. That's okay. Next week go back and do the post on teamwork.

    I am going to respond by thinking about supply decisions and whether you can regard the Illinibucks usage in course registration as possibly impacting supply. So, first, let's note that course scheduling precedes course registration. The room chosen for a class and how many offerings of a class are decisions made in advance of enrollment. For courses that are regularly taught, either every semester or once every year, the historical patterns of enrollment may strongly influence the current scheduling. But, excess demand for a course may be harder to measure (unless the course maintains a waiting list). The spending of Illinibucks in registering for a particular course might be a different indicator of excess demand. To the extent that the excess demand persists over time, it will suggest that the course's capacity needs to increase.

    You may recall that in in class I showed that the numbers of students have grown substantially over the past 10 years and that IUs have grown even faster, about 10% in the same time period. But demand in certain fields must grown even faster than that. Statistics, in particular, is likely one of those fields with rapid growth in student interest, since data analytics is an emerging field and likely a source of good jobs post graduation. Ironically, you'd think that in the Statistics department they'd be better able to forecast the increased demand for their courses, but I'm guessing the people who actually do the scheduling are not the same people who teach the courses, so they do the best they can based on what they already know.

    I think it would be useful for the campus to publish course registration data for day 11, the first day of that students can no longer add classes on their own, and see how many courses are at capacity then. Sometimes a course reaches capacity because other potential substitutes are also at capacity. It may be that to remedy the problem all of the substitutes need to increase in capacity simultaneously. I read somewhere a statement by the Chancellor that faculty growth has not kept up with enrollment growth, but that increased hiring is coming. That should help. I also know that larger classrooms are at a premium on campus, but improved classroom utilization (more 8 AM classes for example) might be a partial solution as well.

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    1. Joan Robinson Econ 490 fall 2019September 30, 2019 at 8:59 PM

      I am sorry for the wrong post. I will do the team work blog post this Friday. I have came to realize that, yes, the number of students have grown substantially, which may be a reason to my experience of unable to register for courses. However, I have also realized, as a senior, I see a lot of my senior friends override the courses and register more classes than they could handle and drops after the add deadline has passed by keeping the more interesting or easier courses, which is a reason why the ones who do the scheduling cannot correctly anticipate the enrollment.

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