Students feel pinch from cuts

One thing that’s noted about the relationship between students and teachers is their different views on various topics. However, the students and professors of the university share the same outlook when it comes to the lack of classes and the over enrollment of others. As the effects of budget cuts weigh in, students are witnessing a decrease in classes offered, and professors the loss of their jobs or co-workers. These budget cuts have had a tremendous effect on classes available to students at the university.
LaKeith Lewis, a senior psychology major, stated he felt the effects of budget cuts when two of the classes he’d pre-registered for were cancelled. “I was angered by it because I took my time to pre-register for classes during the spring and the constant cancellations of classes is making the entire pre-registration period a waste.”
Students got a glimpse of the effect of budget cuts when they prepared to pre-register for the fall. During the pre-registration period at the end of the spring semester, student’s struggled to find enough courses to qualify them as full-time students or to bring them closer to graduation. With the shortage of classes already affecting student’s opportunity of graduating on time, students are extremely enraged to return to school to discover that some of their classes had been cancelled, pushing their graduation date further away. While cancelled classes postpone graduation for most, it leaves others in overcrowded classrooms.
“Overcrowded classrooms are uncomfortable, and prevent students from learning as much as they can, (there is) heat, noise, lack of chairs and room, and the inability to see boards and hear discussions.” ShaunTaLana Gray, senior secondary education/English major said.
While students are angered about prolonged college stay due to the lack of available classes, instructors are enraged about something a bit different. Many professors at the university argue that the university is not properly equipped to adhere to the code of providing students with the best education obtainable.  Professors in various departments argue that the university is not equipped with technology essential for preparing students to work in a society overwhelmed with technology.
The Criminal Justice department, which has over 500 students enrolled into the program, is one of the many departments feeling, perhaps, the biggest effects of budget cuts; as chairpersons struggle to find offices to house their staff and as instructors struggle to find classrooms to teach students enrolled into the given course.
Though professors have pleaded for better work environments for themselves and better learning environments for the students at the university, they assure that their voices alone will not get much accomplished; but guarantees that if students come together, use their voices and no longer accept the poor customer services granted to them, administration would begin to provide quality customer service.
Assistant Provost Cecilia Golden explains to the DIGEST that, “we use the model of expansion, rather than contraction. In the past they would have all these courses and all these professors and ten under enrolled courses, so you would have fewer students (in each class) and you still had to pay the professor the full amount. (In contraction) we look at whether the course is full then we put the professors in so then we’ll know we’ve got the students.”
For those students approaching graduation and in need of a course only offered this semester it is overload. Golden says that administration is asking the professors if it at all possible to provide an independent study for singled out students. An alternative, the student can cross register.