Camosun’s academic advising system—the supposed safety net for stressed-out students—manages to be yet another stressor in the chaotic life of those attending college. The result of this ineffectiveness is uncertainty, frustration, and support that’s no longer useful because it’s too late.
The problem at Camosun isn’t advisor effort; it’s a system designed in a way that all but guarantees long wait times, missed deadlines, and preventable student stress.
The wait times are by far the most infuriating symptom of this ineffectiveness.
Students can wait days or even weeks for a human to respond, only to then check advisor time slots. In many cases a student may wait only to discover that available meeting times conflict with their classes and responsibilities.
Even if they can book a meeting, they have 30 or 45 minutes of time to discuss an entire four-month semester or year-long program. By the time a meeting becomes available, deadlines may have passed, registration may have slammed shut, and the student’s needs can no longer be served.
This system forces students to either book an appointment and hope that their needs do not change or to not book at all and pray that everything will work itself out. But there is a zero-cost solution: Camosun should list advisor emails and schedules directly online.
Direct contact will not only greatly increase transparency, but it would make follow-up questions far easier to ask and reduce the need for repeated bookings. Since students already email advisors after booking appointments, publishing emails simply streamlines an existing communication channel without leaving students waiting.
A priority system would further ensure that advising is not clogged by low-stakes questions.
Students dealing with complex issues such as program transfers, academic appeals, or graduation planning should not be competing over the same scarce time slots as someone choosing between two summer electives. This isn’t favouritism; it’s simple triage.
International students and new immigrants have an extra thick layer to navigate, with ever-changing immigration and visa laws that they must manage while studying. Let us not forget the huge costs they incur, not only paying two to four times the tuition fee of a domestic student, but also the price of moving to Victoria. Leaving them hanging for days or weeks is not just inefficient—it’s active neglect.
To strengthen the areas not fully covered in individual appointments, Camosun should also adopt a more proactive approach. Hosting three large in-person drop-in advising sessions at both Interurban and Lansdowne during the beginning, middle, and end of each semester would allow advisors to address questions for large groups of students in a town-hall style. One advisor could resolve hundreds of recurring issues in a single one-to-three-hour session, freeing up advisor time for more complex issues. Furthermore, recording these sessions and uploading them to platforms like YouTube and Instagram, as well as having a frequently asked questions page posted on the Academic Advising webpage, would make the information easily accessible to students unable to attend the advising sessions.
Those in favor of maintaining the status quo have valid arguments: advisors are overextended; budgets are tight; demand is high; and, yes, many students don’t plan. These are real concerns. However, none of those arguments justify maintaining a state of affairs that makes life harder for the very students it exists to support.
If advising is overwhelmed, the solution is not to maintain a bottlenecking process; it’s to overhaul it. If students ask the same questions repeatedly, the solution is not to leave essential information behind forms, wait times, and automated responses; it’s to make that essential information impossible to miss. If advisors are overworked, the solution is not to indiscriminately ration access; it’s to streamline the system, so advisor time is used where it matters most.