Academic Advising Center

There is no system in greater need of reform than the academic advising system here at Boston College. Twice a year, students are plagued to visit their “advisors” to discuss their future classes and receive their access code to register for classes. Although academic advising was most likely a revolutionary idea at its conception, throughout the years, it has become archaic in that it no longer serves its purpose of assisting the student. Instead, academic advising is a failure for the following reasons:

1. Orientation advisors often lack information about the “Credit/No-Credit” rule for Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) programs or science/ non-science math classes.

As incoming freshmen, some students wish to receive credit for the AP or IB classes they took in high school either to get a jumpstart on their major or satisfy their core requirements. Nevertheless, advisors never seem to have a good grasp of the University’s policy over where credit can be awarded and where it cannot.

The problem is amplified because the university does not have a standard score for these programs across departments. Thus, students may only need to earn a three or four (out of five) on an AP foreign language to satisfy their requirement, whereas a five on the AP would be needed to place out of statistics.

Thus, I propose that the university seriously reconsider its allotment of credit for these programs. If it chooses to keep them, it should disperse a copy of its AP and IB policies to advisors at the beginning of Orientation and to newly arrived freshmen. That way, both sides will be knowledgeable. The university also should apply these changes to its science and math students who are forced to become conscious of the “math classes for science and math majors” and the “math classes for non-science and non-math majors.”

These classes should be more explicitly marked on the course guide. There is nothing worse than discovering halfway through the semester you have taken the wrong math class!

2. Students will go through at least two advisors during their undergraduate years.

By some ridiculous university policy, students are assigned new advisors at Orientation, their fall semester of freshman year and second semester of their sophomore year. If the student’s advisor decides to go on sabbatical, the student is handed off to another advisor. This continuous shuffle of students prevents them from developing a personal relationship with their advisor.

Thus, when a student finally meets with their advisor, they have to spend five to ten minutes of their pre-scheduled thirty minutes of consultation providing background on their course history, major and minor, leaving little time to discuss graduation requirements and smart planning for their junior and senior years.

Therefore, I encourage the university to take steps to ensure that students do not change advisors so frequently, perhaps by adopting a group model. I understand the university cannot dictate professors not to take sabbaticals but there have to be a better way to cultivate the advisor and student relationship.

3. Advisors oftentimes lack information regarding students’ minors or students who double (or triple) major.

Even when you find an advisor that you like, advisors tend to be pigeon-holed into only focusing on one major. This presents a problem for students when it comes to picking classes for minors or double (or triple) majors.

Students are often told to contact the minor or major director and forced to make another appointment with them. This places a burden on the student who has to seek outside appointments.

This seems absurd when you think that the Lynch School can coordinate and adequately advise its students who are required to double major. The other three colleges on campus should certainly take note. This may be more difficult to implement for the College of Arts and Sciences since its students can pursue many different avenues of study but it is not impossible.

The biggest problem with academic advising is that it has forced a reversal of roles – the student must become the advisor while the advisor assumes the role of the student. Students have to become obsessively proactive in their advising to ensure that no mistakes are made which could hinder their application to a program (such as International Studies) or ability to graduate on time. I understand that an aspect of college is growing up and taking responsibility but if this applied to advising, why would advisors be a required component of university policy? Some balance needs to be struck between students, advisors and the university because the teeter totter has been weighed down on students for far too long.