For a University that prides itself on research, Penn sure likes making it hard for students to do their due diligence.
Last week, administrators implied that the Online Syllabi Initiative won't happen until at least 2010.
Unfortunately, we weren't entirely surprised. The University has dragged its feet for over two years, ever since the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education proposed creating a centralized online syllabi database.
The delay is shameful.
Syllabi provide vital class information not available elsewhere, including the workload, reading materials and grading schematics. During advance registration, this information is essential for students to make educated course selections.
Even worse, institutions like Harvard and Princeton are years ahead of us in this area. Wharton and Engineering have created their own repositories, but only 11 percent of College syllabi are online - and those are scattered across the Web sites of various departments.
Penn administrators claim that "belt-tightening" stemming from the financial crisis is the cause for the delay. The reasoning strikes us as a little convenient, especially since SCUE had been pushing tirelessly for an online system long before the economic downturn.
Moreover, the one-time cost of this system pales in comparison to the benefits it would provide during advance registration, which Penn makes complicated enough.
This isn't rocket science. For the good of its students, the University needs to get behind this initiative - and stop giving us bogus excuses about why it can't.
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