Yet perhaps what we should really be criticizing is not pre-registration per se, but the actual selection of courses. To have to resign to taking only one of the four classes you really want to take because they meet during conflicting times is not uncommon.
This semester, of the 324 course sections offered, 52 (16 percent) of them meet-or conflict with classes that meet-at 2 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays and 63 (19 percent) of them meet at 2 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In the spring semester, 64 (19.7 percent) of 325 classes will meet on Mondays and Wednesdays at 2 p.m. and 78 (24 percent) on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 2 p.m. Can Amherst legitimately continue to pride itself on offering students a diverse range of classes where in a given semester almost a quarter of the courses offered overlap? The answer: no.
One partial solution is that seminars could be offered during morning time blocks in the morning to better balance the number of courses offered at different times throughout the week.
According to the Committee on Educational Policy (CEP), faculty members are free to choose when they will teach their courses under the current system. Though it would be a shame to limit the liberties of individual faculty members, the task of overseeing and regulating the assignment of time slots to courses offered should be the responsibility of a department head or chair. Overlapping courses are often, after all, concentrated in certain departments. If an intradepartmental reshuffling of courses does not work, another option would be to add new time slots. Late afternoon and evening courses would not be entirely unwelcome.
If the problem of limited course availability cannot be fixed by individual departments, perhaps they can turn to the CEP as a resource. Course scheduling is certainly a concern that is well worth the attention of the CEP and the entire school would benefit if the CEP would advertise what some departments are doing right to avoid time conflicts.