Admission and Registration

Our "mythical" university exists for one purpose and that is to educate students. So, it is unlikely that any such educational establishment will be regarded as successful it is unable to accept, and teach students. This requires two main processes, admission and registration.

To summarize, there are only two types of University admission systems in the world. Both private and public establishments can belong to either one of the two groups.

1. High admission/low graduates: This type of University is usually state run, but several private type Universities also follow this trend. They accept large number of students because they believe that students may score low during highschool only to mature as they grow older and excel. These Universities are not alarmed at failure rates. Some of them offer students who have already completed their first two years of study an option to graduate with a diploma by asking them to work on a 6 month practical project or to submit a thesis following this period to ensure they do not leave the University without any official certificate. There is no separation during the initial two years between students as all are considered equally likely to succeed.
2. Low admission/high graduates: Under this option, only the cream of the crop is accepted by the University so it is up to the instructors to make extra sure that this cream does graduate. Here, the normal standardized curves cannot be implemented because the University as a whole does not encourage dismissing people unless it is absolutely necessary.

That is the admission strategy. As for the steps followed to apply to the University, they should be as simple as possible, yet deadline have to be strict. There is no such thing as it's ok to apply following the announced date for a simple reason. The systems used once applied, cannot be rerun. This means that applications can be received over a period of time, and all new students received ready made schedules and they can complete their registration over a period of time prior to the time other students have to register. Some may say if they all register together, the new ones will see how the others register. This justification is not valid, because there is no real difference in the method, and they will not lose their way once they start studying there. Instead, what is happening is that the number of students registering becomes phenomenal and they all (old and new) complain that the place is crowded.

As for the procedure itself, it is usually based on a formula that is developed by the University according to Best Practice trends set by other universities. AACROA for example, offers the results of a number of studies across a large number of universities on what factors influence student performance in Universities and what fields for example are preferred by male students versus female students etc. It never hurts to learn from the sum of knowledge accumulated by 300 Universities that respond to this type of surveys. In addition to this, it is possible to run correlation studies on the data accumulated by our mythical university to be able to know if this new change, correlates with student performance in the University or is just a waste of time.

Another issue regarding admission is the ranking of specializations. What specialization are we going to admit student A to? Will it be based upon only preference, or grades in highschool etc. The correlational studies yet again help us in identifying what factors many influence student progress. It is extremely easy to believe oneself to be a good judge only to discover that for example, commercial school students do better than those of science in the business school. There may be no ranking possible in some choices, while in others, there should be a ranking.

Last but not least, fairness has to be guarenteed. Will ranking be for all applicants into one list so that the list will be broken in sequence to admit students to various specializations? Or do rankings have to be dynamic according to first choices and then students who are allotted chairs in specializations are gradually taken off the list so that others are ranked etc.

It is extremely sad to see that people do not save the work they did in the past and build on it for future registration periods. For example, if a schedule is build and changes had to be made to accomodate students by opening new sections, then why aren't these sections offered from the start on the following year/same semester? The same additions year after year after year is cumbersome and bugs both students and instructors.

Learning from the past, is a factor of improvement from year to year but it is not a sole factor. Another, is to think of numbers. If students wish to get a certain number of courses, they why do they pre-register and then get no courses from those they selected. Yes, they did get the full load, but hey these are not their selections. classes are closed, while others opened according to group distribution and classes are distributed according to seniority. One possible track our "mythical" university may follow is to invest in a project that may cost up to BD350,000. We ask students to write the course names that they wish to register, and not to organize a timetable that is never acheived. Then these requests will be accepted by the system, which will use their requests as a guide to organize class timetables. This has a disadvantage, which is that instructors will not be able to request what time of day they wish to teach. However, it is likely to result in more students getting the courses they want and to help them graduate in a shorter amount of time. The system is a schedular that is already used by many international universities for the same purpose

No one can claim that no classes will end up with less than 10 students and all students will get all the courses they wish, but an optimizer, is known to optimize, so at least 10% improvement on the current state is guaranteed. Classes may start from 8 to 4, or 9 to 5 but not 8 to 5 simply because students will be so tired that they will not be able to comprehend anything they are taught.

Ideally, a completely new registration system can of course be installed for a fee of about BD 1.3 million that would allow the bulk of students to perform all necessary registration tasks electronically rather than go to any registration area.

Permissions for class ceiling numbers should be given in advance and kept off the allowed number of seats list, while compiling a student waiting list. Later students can be taken off the waiting and onto the registered list only according to the preset ceiling which is basically the number of chairs in each room. This procedure is followed to ensure proper distribution among the sections before raising the ceiling of any section to avoid having a section with 10 and another with 40 in the same course.

A lot of suggestions can be made here, with one aim. To keep students away from the campus and halls during registration. To allow them to complete all that is required from the comfort of their own homes. Even if this is not achievable, it will be a goal to hope for.

A good question to ask at this point is, who knows what rules must be followed such that the student may graduate? If the answer gives only one name per department, then there is a big problem here. This information should exist electronically, as part of the registration system to support advisors, such they know the current rules and advise students on what courses to take etc. If advisors do not know the rules, then how can they advise?

I wonder, wonder, wonder, what would happen if a fire starts. From experience in a UK based University, I saw my peers lose several years work in one day. I was here, so I did not suffer at all because my work was here with me, and they all envied me for that. All educational establishments, MUST think about what may happen, if things go wrong. The data contained in the files, is critical the futures of students who will still need official transcripts etc for years to come, in fact whenever they change jobs etc. backups could be anywhere, on campus, off campus or even in rented space anywhere in the world fully controlled by our "mythical" establishment. The best thing is to buy the whole server and control it remotely.

Security?

So what if a student hacks, and changes a grade or two or all. What if a hacker hacks and deletes all the files? Risks, that require attention and investment. It is difficult to determine costs, without performing a detailed analysis of the current state and to write up a whole project, just for security.