To the Editor:
From the economics department, we would like to begin by apologizing to our students. The new system of caps in advanced courses, proposed by the department and approved late last semester by the College Curriculum Council, caught most of our students by surprise, which led to a messier than usual shopping period ("Econ caps spur black market controversy," Sept. 12).
The new system of caps in advanced economics classes is part of an overall program to improve the learning environment for our undergraduates. The project is not simple, as our enrollments continue to put enormous pressure on the resources that we have. For instance, this semester we again have an all-time record in our overall enrollments with something close to 2,500 student enrollments in all our undergraduate and graduate classes. I note with special gratitude that even those students I talked to in the middle of shopping period, who were upset because of not being able to get in some of the classes they had planned, had words of support toward the department's new plans for the undergraduate curriculum.
At this point, I am writing to get the word out and publicize the changes in preregistration and shopping of all our advanced classes. It is very important that this information reaches all students in time for preregistration for the spring semester of 2012. I would also like to thank the Office of the Registrar, and in particular its head Robert Fitzgerald, who have kindly and patiently assisted us in the design and implementation of the new restrictions. While in the long run the Registrar would like to move toward a system in which this kind of targeted restriction can be put in place for the other departments, at this point they have agreed to do it as a favor to the economics department, given the large numbers of both concentrators and non-concentrators wishing to take economics courses.
Roberto Serrano
Chair of the Department of Economics
