Last week, the university president emailed us to help us steel ourselves against reduced budgets next summer due to depleted enrollment. He confessed that he didn't know why enrollment was down, but I can help with at least one reason why students shy away from college. It's too hard. It's not the curriculum, it's getting in, getting on track, and getting on the same page with the new modus opporendi. In other words, red tape reduced enrollment. We paid for this red tape, and it's going to be largely and increasingly counter productive.
We used to joke, and it's partially true, that all a Nevada resident must do in order to attend is to have a pulse and a credit card. That changed this fall when they rolled out CoyoteQ designed to give the IT folks a reason to justify their lavish salaries. On its face, it purports to streamline lines at the beginning of the term by fitting people into que with other students and giving them an idea of wait times and their place in line based on student numbers. Reality shows us two other consequences. First, IT did it in order to measure how many students are using what college resources. Secondly, it makes college more complicated because now in order to do anything you must first get on track with the technology. Before they can register for classes, we FORCE students to meet with an advisor, which they cannot do until they go online, get their ID, get in the Q, ad infinitum. How many drop out because of that probably defies description.
When I first attended college in 1997, we had very little technology and got along just fine. True, the lines for financial aid and registration for new students started the week before classes and wrapped their way down the hallways and around the buildings outside. However, everyone knew more about where to go and what was expected. I didn't have to get online in order to get in line. I got in line, and a real person handled everything even if it was just to tell me I was in the wrong line. Even I have to fall in line with this new system. When I tried to buy my annual pass to the campus gym, they made ME get into the CoyoteQ system even though nothing else applies to me. It's outrageous, and I think it discourages students for many reasons.
Technology robs people of personal interaction and personal care. It's discouraging to not be treated like a person, to be brushed aside, and to be ignored. We all detest the automated systems and waiting in line alone. Now, there is no line at and for school either. A geography professor recounted to me about a student who had no idea what to do with her life. When this professor referred her to a coach, the coach referred her to the red tape of the computerized system. Rather than volunteer to meet with her right now, she anonymized the student, demanding she get in the CoyoteQ and thereby provide a way for the coach to account for her. Rather than help her achieve this, she passed a series of complicated and convoluted instructions over the phone to the student that ultimately didn't even work! It's all distilled to numbers. You are not a person or a student. You are student 000100469715 (that was my number), and that's all you will ever be.
How many 18 year olds do you think have patience persistence and tenacity to stick with this new program? Although they tout themselves as experts on everything, nobody knows where to start. I think in large measure all of this technological terror hurts our ability to cater to students and their needs. It's all a bunch of accounting gimmicks now to justify all the expense and personnel involved, and it costs us more than we gain. Who really knows what the IT guys do, anyway? Despite the braggadocio of the incoming freshmen, they need guidance and help getting started because college is new in many ways and something for which most of them are not adequately prepared. They can deal with the classes and coursework in many cases, but now the amount of red tape through which they must pass to get into class overwhelms many of them. Particularly at high risk are the students whose parents and family never before attended college.
I think we lost students because the technological tools designed to help us who work and live in academia actually turn away students who used to attend. If in order to get an appointment with a counselor/coach you must go online, navigate a poorly designed website, fill out forms, obtain a password, access a system, and get in line online and all before the semester even starts I think we drive away students who don't know this and don't achieve it by the deadlines. Now that they abolished late registration, I think even someone such as I, particularly since I'm technologically adverse, might be squeezed out by bureaucratic morass. Consider how much we paid for these systems, for the code as well as the personnel, and I think we're losing far more than we gain. To paraphrase Neal A Maxwell: to educate people we must push paper. The abolition of man coincides with technological terrors, and I think it dehumanizes students and hurts higher education more than anyone. I believe this particularly because students are our clients as well as our product, and if we dehumanize them we risk losing them.
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