Also, typo: *Charles’ cousin’s wife (minus the your)

What about science majors though? They are required to take most classes in a particular order… If for some reason O-Chem fills up, that person’s gonna have to put it off by a year, potentially jeopardizing his graduation…

I understand your argument about the college realizing that there’s more demand for O-Chem and thus staffing it up, but those things take time… Eventually, it should work out for science majors. But what about the 1st few guinea pigs who are put through the process? These are lives here that you are playing with…

Also, I’m against internal trading among students. This would artificially spike up the prices for classes by creating artificial demand from people who don’t need the class based on speculation of future demand from people who will need it. While that may work for the stock market (or not), it is not called for when people are actually trying to register for classes…

Also, like Josh was saying, most professors would not like such a public feedback system. maybe some professors will be ok with it (like your charles’ cousin’s wife), but most wouldn’t…

That said, moving away from classes, applying the Wharton system to housing is definitely something that CMC should consider. The various dorms hardly have feelings thus eliminating the emotional aspect of the bidding process. And the bidding system now would ensure that instead of leaving our housing to chance, we can have a say in what we choose to do… I see no demerits whatsoever in using this for housing, nor did I see any bought up in the comments so far…

Josh: Assuming that this system is better for housing (that can be debated later – assume for now that it is), Can the ASCMC can suggest changes like these to the administration?

As the link you put up says,

“Students need to set priorities. If you really want a course in high demand, you must decide whether or not you should use most of the points for the course and take your chances on the other blocks. Prioritize the courses which you have selected, identifying the courses you “absolutely” have to take versus those which are less important for your course schedule. The allocation of points for the proposed schedule would then follow this priority list.”

It seems Wharton’s system would do well for us.

As for the professors, my cousin’s wife is a professor at Wharton. http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/faculty/williams.html. She says that both professors and students like the system, but that popularity for the program changes with the number of years spent in the program.

Also, Colorado College is very different than CMC’s academic system. CC has a unique course schedule under the “block” system in which students take one course at a time over a few weeks, then switch to another course.

http://www.coloradocollege.edu/academics/FYE/points.asp

To the point about professors– they want a feedback mechanism, but they don’t want one that public. You’ll see what I mean if anything like that comes up in the curriculum committee meetings.

I agree with the first, but I think that if you said to some of the professors that it will allow us to see which classes are actually well received some of them may prefer that system… particularly the ones that were tenure seeking. They would have a feedback mechanism much better than the current B.S. forms we fill out.

As for the Wharton example, the article above also mentions an undergraduate institution that does it — Colorado College. http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i23/23a00103.htm. Colorado College is a peer liberal arts college. It might be instructive to look at how those students manage.

I don’t think that there’s such a big deal about the age differences. Some students don’t know what they want to study, sure, but maybe this system would encourage them to be a bit more serious about their education and to decide a little bit before they came to college. They cannot be a bad thing. Of course we routinely let people make decisions about their life when they are over the age of 18 that they cannot take back. The schools allows people to join ROTC, to engage in promiscuous behavior, to drink (semi) legally, etc. I think your fears are misplaced.

And finally, I agree with the final statement. We do need to do a better job with IT staffing.

But let’s say it was allowed– it would not work the way Wharton does it because students are encouraged to follow their interests as they take more credits and discover what they like. A system that works for highly competitive and specialized 25-30 year olds shouldn’t be thrown at 18 year old liberal arts students who shouldn’t have any idea what courses they’ll want to be taking a year from now.

As for both the class and housing registration processes themselves, both should be online, yes, but our IT staff is way understaffed.

Thanks for giving first hand evidence of the system at GW. I think a way not to stigmatize the richer kids would be to have the auction system be online so that few people knew who those rich kids were. Otherwise, I think you’d have to limit it to only several dorm rooms on campus.

And you could conceivably auction it for spots in the line, not particular dorm rooms. Keeping it quiet and using a Dutch auction, as opposed to a Japanese auction, would be better.

Still Feeling Guilt From Pedro,

I’m well aware of the consequences of this. Isn’t WoW’s internal economy cool? Well, in any event, let’s assume that the freaks come out of the woodwork and start trading and creating all these options or derivatives, etc. Would that necessarily be a bad thing? For students that eschew complicated things, you could encourage those students to be your auction broker and could conceivably pay them in credits! Just because an idea is complicated doesn’t mean that there aren’t simple and creative solutions that could emerge. As Bill puts it rather rightly, speculators would have an incentive not to get stuck in the rooms. After all, they could presumably not purchase multiple rooms at once. (Although, maybe they should…. Hm….)

You could theoretically design computer programs that would set thresholds based upon when to sell your class or when to buy it. Many students already trade on the stock market. This system would just encourage them and may even encourage many of them to learn about markets so that when they’re dealing with the stock market or other markets later on, they’ll have an advantage.

The current system actually encourages students to take extraneous courses over the summer to get higher credit numbers. I had this problem last semester. I was .5 credits away from being in a higher level and therefore having a higher room draw number, but I got screwed, falling near the bottom of the pack. People with fewer credits than I had, got to pick rooms before I did. Of course, there must be a better way to reform that system. Maybe having a room draw with each half credit or single credit? I think that such a process of more and more credits is entirely unfair to poor students who must work during the summers to continue affording CMC, but that’s just the system that we have.

Bill,

Thanks for the compliments. This remarket is right on the money, so to speak: “having an equal chance of getting a windfall or getting screwed by the system is a far worse quality than having an equal ability to decide what you want and act accordingly.”

@Bill,
You’re exactly right. I’m counting on the huge premium paid for the top professors. In fact, I want it because what it does is send signals to the tenure committee, to the other professors, and to the students about which courses are valued and which are not. This might help the college better allocate resources than it does currently between the departments. If every student wants to take organic chemistry, the college will see that and allocate the resources efficiently by hiring more O. Chem professors. Demand will create supply.
There will be an incentive for students not to spend their credits. If not, they could be rolled automatically into whatever GEs they still need to complete. This would suck because some people would make poor decisions, but that would encourage people not to bid things up too crazily.
Anonymous,
I totally disagree with you. The current system sucks for room draw and it’s only marginally better for your classes. Many families have to spend money over the summer to help their kid get classes at community or college in order to graduate. You should be able to get a dorm room where there was no pot smoking or drinking. The demand for Stark, for instance, is at an all time high as the number of students increase under Gann’s plan. Whereas juniors used to be able to get a single in the Towers without a problem, they just cannot now. It will probably get a lot worse in the future.
I think you misread me. I don’t believe the auction market should use the same currency for housing and classes. Obviously that would create problems and probably incentivize a lot of students to move off campus to get the classes they wanted. I wasn’t calling for that.
Nathan,
Thank you for writing what I didn’t have the courage to say. (In part, I think this kind of an auction would lead to a centralization of registrars that only help you when you have a serious problem, rather than the current model.)

Then there is always the problem of taking classes for a major. Many classes fill up early and can’t be taken until your later years. This is fine as if I need a class to graduate, I can take it later. Under a credit system, people can run out of credits so they can never take that premium major class, or some majors will never be able to be finished due to lack of credits or due to how much major classes cost. This doesn’t even take into account any market hysteria from classes which are annually overbooked. I’m looking at you JSD! Think of all those crazy chem majors who can’t take ochem because every class is full. This bids the market price up but since their is so much demand and limited supply, the market price gets bid very high. Now I don’t know anyone who is taking ochem for fun, so demand doesn’t ever really diminish but an increased price locks some people out of taking the class. So we now have people who can’t complete a major because they are priced out.

If there was a way in which credits allowed supply to rise, then we’d solve this issue but I don’t see that ever happening.