Opinion: UCSB Shouldn't Have Decreased the Amount of Units that Students Can Enroll For Passes 1 and 2

Back in October, UCSB decided to decrease the number of units that students could enroll in during passes 1 and 2 for Winter Quarter 2022. Prior to this unit limit change, the amount of units that students could enroll in during passes 1 and 2 in was 13.5 and 19 units respectively. However, for Winter Quarter 2022, the amount of units that students could enroll in decreased to 10 units for pass 1 and 15 units for pass 2. While this change was intended to address the course shortage at UCSB, I, a UCSB student, believe that this change did not address the course shortage any better. Besides, since 12 units is considered to be a full-time, students won't be able to be full-time until pass 2, which increases the amount of stress when it comes to selecting classes to take.

When I selected courses for Winter Quarter 2022, I saw that both PSTAT 122 and 126, two of the classes that I was thinking of taking to fulfill my major (Stats and Data Science) requirements, were both full before my first pass time began. Moreover, I couldn't choose Math 8, another class that I was thinking of taking, until pass 2. As a result, I ended up selecting 2 GEs (general education classes) during pass 1. A few hours before my second pass time, I noticed that Math 8 was full, which was upsetting since it was a class required for my major. I also couldn't waitlist it right away because I had to already have at least 12 units in my schedule to do so. While I was able to eventually waitlist that class, I could only do so with another class that was worth the same amount of units as Math 8. Because Math 8 was a 5 unit class, I was unable to waitlist it with a 4 unit class (most classes at UCSB are worth 4 units), and so I had to waitlist it with another 5 unit class. I was upset about this because when choosing classes for fall quarter this year, I actually did getting Math 8 but decided to link it with a GE class that I waitlisted for because I already had 2 major classes (CS 9 and PSTAT 120B) and so I thought that having 3 major classes would be too much for me to handle. I ended up getting off the waitlist for that GE class, which dropped Math 8 from my schedule. Looking back, I wonder if I should've kept Math 8 on my fall quarter schedule since I'm not sure if I'll get off the Math 8 waitlist for winter quarter 2022. It seems that the decrease in the amount of units that students can enroll for each pass time doesn't address the problem that courses are still filling up quickly. A better solution would probably be opening up more space for classes, especially the ones that students need to take but fill up quickly. After all, some of the Math 8 sections have less than 10 students in them. In addition, to address the fact that 12 units is considered to be a full-time student, it would be good to potentially increase the amount of units during pass 1 to at least 12 units. I typically have 4 classes in my schedule, and I add my fourth class during pass 2, so I think that the amount of units during pass 2 should increase to at least 16 units.

Overall, I think that decreasing the amount of units that students can enroll in does not address the course shortage at UCSB and could probably make it worse since students will have to wait longer to become full-time students (until pass 2). Instead, UCSB should consider adding more spots in classes that are popular and/or don't have that many spots to address the course shortage.