Undergraduates to face hurdles for graduate courses

The policy change is an effort to ensure that students are prepared for their classes and fully understand their professors’ expectations, Senior Associate Dean of the College Claire Fowler said.

The new policy requires that students get the approval of the instructor of the course, their department and their dean before registering for an advanced course, a much more involved process than signing up on SCORE.

“We think it’s a great idea that high-achieving students take graduate courses,” Fowler explained. “We just want to make sure that both student and department understand how that course fits into their degree program.”

The withdrawal of the P/D/F option for undergraduates in graduate courses should encourage only those students who are fully committed to their upper-level coursework to enroll, she added.

“The kind of undergraduates we expect to take graduate courses are the kinds of students who excel in their field, so we would expect them to be highly committed to the class,” Fowler explained.

The Committee on Course of Study, which is composed of both students and faculty, pre-approves all the courses in the undergraduate course offerings. The courses are clearly explained in terms of department, requirements and role in the degree program, Fowler said.

On the other hand, “graduate courses vary incredibly in terms of substance, length of course, objectives and what’s required in the course,” she said.

Undergraduate students have faced problems in the past due to their lack of knowledge about advanced courses. Fowler gave the example of one student who did not realize until halfway through a semester that the graduate course he was taking was only a half-credit course, leaving him course deficient.

“Students who register for graduate courses without a clear understanding of the expectations or the nature of the course may run into difficulties,” she said. “If they have the opportunity to go over these with the instructor and their department ahead of time, problems are less likely to occur.”

Fowler also added that the new regulations help professors better prepare for their courses.

“The guidelines on the form also serve to remind the instructor as well as the student of the expectations for an undergraduate taking … a graduate class,” she said.

Though professors were not consulted before the new policy went into effect, instructors of graduate-level courses said they recognize the importance of the differences between teaching undergraduates and graduates.

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Psychology professor Daniel Oppenheimer said in an e-mail that he has never had an undergraduate in any of his graduate classes because graduate courses are “fundamentally different” from undergraduate courses.

“It isn’t that an undergraduate couldn’t handle the workload,” Oppenheimer said. Graduate courses, he noted, are “designed with a different set of goals, most notably facilitating the grad students’ research.”

“The grad courses I have taught, by and large, would not have been useful for most undergraduates, and there are much better ways for undergrads to achieve their educational goals,” he added.

Wilson School professor Thomas Christensen said that, though he typically has one or two undergraduates per year in his graduate classes, he does not encourage them to enroll and will not adjust his courses to better suit their needs.

He echoed Oppenheimer in noting that the courses’ goals are not necessarily appropriate for an undergraduate.

“In general, graduate classes, particularly graduate seminars, are very intensive, professional training experiences,” he explained. “I think undergraduate education should be broader and involve exposure to a more diverse set of subjects.”

Astrophysics Professor Bruce Draine explained that his department addressed the difference in qualifications when undergraduates enroll in graduate-level courses differently. Instead of making the enrollment process more difficult, the department split one of its upper-level classes into two courses: one for graduates and one for undergraduates.

“It seemed to be a better match to the different capacities of the graduate students and undergraduates because there wasn’t the stress to teach the course at a level to keep everybody happy,” he explained.

“It wasn’t as though there was a drastic problem,” Draine added, “but one did have the sense that a few of the graduate students were ready to do more work than the undergrads were ready to do. Trying to pitch the course at an intermediate level did not make either end of the distribution happy.”

Some undergraduates said the University’s new policy is burdensome.

“I think it’s a bit of a hassle,” Cynthia Barmore ’09, who is enrolled in a graduate course in the Wilson School, said. “In the past, you didn’t need to run around campus to obtain these signatures.”

As for the limited grading option, Barmore said that she was not concerned.

“No one really P/D/Fs the classes anyway, so I don’t think it really matters,” she said.

— Staff writer Paolo Esquivel contributed reporting.