Advisory Overload

Courtney Denen

Instead of graduating in five weeks time, I will be prepping for summer, only to come back three months later for another semester here at Youngstown State University.

At the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year I had every intention of graduating. After taking five 18-hour semesters and a few summer classes, I was sure that I would be in good shape.

Especially since I met with an adviser and was told I would be graduating in the spring of 2010.

Last fall I made an appointment with the chair of my department. I went to the appointment and left the office with a small sheet of paper. On that paper was a list of five classes. Those were the five final classes I needed to take before graduation.

A few weeks later I held in my hand a very different piece of paper. I received a letter from the English department. In the letter it said I was 24 hours short of upper-division classes and my graduation would be pushed back until the summer of 2010.

After making several phone calls, I discovered there was a “computational error” with my records and I was indeed lacking necessary hours.

Despite meeting with advisers prior to every semester I will not be graduating in four years time like I had originally planned.

I never met with the same adviser more than a few times. I tried to, but scheduling was difficult and I took what I could get.

Maybe if I were able to be with the same adviser over the years I would be graduating in five weeks. But I’m not.

In most cases, advisers are not really advisers. They are teachers and professors. In my case, every time I met with an adviser it was with someone from whom I had taken a class.

Teachers and professors are certainly capable of advising a student, however, they are tackling so much other work it’s most likely not their priority. Most of the time, their desks are covered in stacks of paperwork. At one of my advising appointments the “adviser” literally lost my paperwork amidst the piles of papers and folders that had been collected on the desk.

When we all first started at YSU, most of us were constantly being encouraged to visit the Center for Student Progress. The CSP provides assistance in many different areas. I visited the Center, I was told I could set my educational goals, so I sat in a corner cubicle with a peer counselor and laid out my plan for my time at YSU.

An adviser’s job is providing a student with her road map. Without that road map, the student would be very lost. Sure there are some that can find their way without the map, but most need it in order to succeed.

Perhaps YSU should invest in positions for full-time academic advisers. Their only job would be advising students.

Every student should be provided with an advisor; one that sticks with them through their entire academic career.

Maybe this would also help YSU with its unimpressive graduation rates.

If the students were better directed, maybe they would stick around.

YSU’s undergraduate academic advising claims to “provide assistance to you in fulfilling your degree requirements,” it also says that the “responsibility to do so rests ultimately with you.”

I really don’t know what more I could have done. I made a plan, met with an “adviser” every semester, and took numerous 18-hour semesters. I feel I took on the responsibility. But I did not reach my goal, even with the help of professionals.

Advisers are responsible for making sure we take the appropriate classes, they keep track of what we have taken and what we need to take. If I had an adviser who wasn’t juggling class work and lesson plans, I would have been told that I needed to take some upper-division classes.

But I don’t blame the advisers; I blame the system.

I can do one more semester, unless of course they find another “computational error.”