As of March 1, Camosun College has disabled automatic enrolment when a space becomes available in a waitlisted course. In the past, when a student was waitlisted on Camlink, they would automatically be enrolled if they were first on the list and a space became available.
Camosun registrar Scott Harris says manual enrolment is standard in post-secondary institutions across Canada; he says he prefers to think of automatic waitlist enrolment as “forced enrolment.”
“We want to reduce the run-around and the time that students have been forced to spend on this permission-to-register [PTR] process,” he says. (If students are waitlisted and want to register in a course, a student brings a PTR form to their instructor, and the instructor must sign the form before the student can register.)
Harris says 20 percent of the students who use PTR forms end up dropping the course. The responsibility is not on the student in this process, says Harris, but on the instructor to make a decision for the student. Harris says that one of the central points around this change is to have students control their own destiny.
“This is all part of attempting to curb some of the hoarding behaviours that we’ve been seeing,” he says. “In the past, students have been registering in 12 to 15 sections, kind of hedging their bets and figuring out which ones they want and then dropping them at the last second, and then leaving those spaces all empty, where nobody else can get into those courses.”
Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) external executive Mitchell Auger-Langejan says UVic has manual enrolment and that, at Camosun, it “is something students will adjust to, organizationally.” (The college will now email students when a spot becomes available.)
“What it means for students, if they’re unaware of it and are used to the old system, they might lose their spots on the waitlist,” he says. “They can be selected for it, but if they don’t see the email, they’ll miss that opportunity.”
When they become first on the waitlist, students will have a 24-hour period where they can enrol. They will receive the email informing them they can enrol, and if they don’t do so after 24 hours, the next person on the waitlist will be offered the spot. Auger-Langejan says students will have to frequently check their email.
“I don’t know that it’ll have any inherent consequences to it, it’s just something students need to be made aware of,” says Auger-Langejan, adding that there is a notice on Camosun’s website about the change (students were also emailed about it). “Registration has taken place before the change occurred, so anyone who is waitlisted now has the opportunity to view the email they were sent. I don’t know that there will be any serious impacts to students when it comes to getting into the courses they’re interested in. They just need to check their email. This can also be helpful to students that are very eager to get in a course.”
First-year Camosun psychology student Scott Joly says it puts the impetus on students to stay on top of their course registration.
“I think there’s a lot of people who are going to miss their opportunity,” says Joly.
Camosun Arts and Science student Matt Stouffer says that he registers for classes as early as possible so he doesn’t have to deal with waitlists.
“I’ve never experienced this problem so I personally don’t have an emotional opinion on it,” he says. “I avoid those waitlists at all costs. I don’t want to be on the waitlist, I want to be in the class; therefore, I do it as early as possible.”
Harris says the college is also “looking to provide an accurate picture of demand” for courses. He says that with the previous waitlist procedure it was hard to know how many students actually needed and wanted the courses.
“The more accurate we can make the numbers, the more it can actually feed into our decision about how many sections to offer,” says Harris, saying that the PTR form “in many ways effectively disregards the waitlist that has existed.”
“We don’t know what the individuals are experiencing that were on that waitlist,” he says, “so to just toss that out and then whoever was able to be there at that moment in time with the best story gets in doesn’t seem particularly fair.”
Second year Mechanical Engineering student Justin Manlargit says the new waitlist policy is better because people who change their minds about a course won’t block someone else from getting in.
“I always try to register as early as possible, so I’ve never gotten waitlisted,” he says.
Harris says students missing their opportunity to register is “absolutely a concern.”
“Students need to be really mindful and paying attention to the emails if that course is truly important to them,” he says.
Harris says that more information for students and staff about the procedure changes will come out soon.