Getting into courses with limited seats has always been tough. In the Department of Computer Science, registration has become far more challenging.
In an email sent to CS students on April 13, Department Chair Roberto Tamassia announced that enrollment caps would be placed on “almost all” courses starting this semester.
The department is “unable to give the same open access to its courses as in previous years” because of limited classroom space, budgeting and course staffing, wrote Jeff Huang, associate chair of computer science, on behalf of the department.
Over the last decade, computer science has rapidly grown in popularity. The number of awarded CS degrees nearly tripled since 2015.
Shriram Krishnamurthi, a CS professor, believes that the department is underfunded, limiting its ability to financially support the number of TAs needed. But he said the addition of enrollment caps was premature.
“This was not a consensus decision by the department's faculty. This was a decision made by the department leadership,” Krishnamurthi said. “There was no formal vote.”
Multiple faculty members, worried that the caps would prevent students from registering for their desired courses, requested that the department create a centralized pre-registration form to measure course demand, according to a document shared with CS students this fall.
Since upperclassmen are the first to register for classes, faculty feared that sophomores would be shut out of courses because of the new caps, Kathi Fisler, co-director of the CS undergraduate program, wrote in an email to The Herald.
In the form — which opened at the start of pre-registration last spring — students were able to request an override for four courses, two of which could be listed as “priority courses.” Students then listed their semester level, concentration and the courses they would like to take. For priority courses, students could indicate whether or not the course was required for graduation and explain any special circumstances.
Based upon these factors, students have been manually approved for courses. According to the department website, some professors began approving override requests before the end of pre-registration, while others are waiting until students have completed some coursework in the fall.
Use of the centralized pre-registration form was up to the professors’ discretion. Some courses requiring override requests instead granted them directly through Courses@Brown or created a separate application process, according to the department website.
Huang noted that many introductory CS courses fill up during spring pre-registration, leaving few spots for incoming students. To help mitigate the problem, courses were assigned lower caps during pre-registration that were raised during the summer to allow incoming undergraduate, graduate and transfer students to register in the fall.
According to Krishnamurthi, the enrollment challenges in the department echo bigger concerns over Brown’s shopping period. Professors often have difficulty adjusting to enrollment changes and hiring the proper number of TAs as students add and drop courses from their schedule so frequently.
Registration woes
As the fall semester begins, many students remain unsure about what CS courses they’ll be taking.
Jason Wu ’25, a CS concentrator, worries that his options for upper-level courses will be limited by the enrollment caps. “Now, it doesn’t come down to luck, like how fast you can click a button,” he told The Herald. “Rather, it's more like, ‘are you the right person to take this class?’”
Lucas Chan ’25, an APMA-CS and physics double-concentrator, noted that some courses gave priority to sophomores and juniors over seniors to “ensure that the TA pool would be full for the coming semesters.”
Chan also suggested that the enrollment caps and registration system may have prohibited non-concentrators and students at the Rhode Island School of Design from registering for CS courses.
“I think a lot of (RISD students) didn't even know that this was the system, so there might be an issue with communicating these new standards to people outside of the CS concentration,” he said.
“Let's be honest — this is a very unpleasant situation,” Krishnamurthi said.
In response to the enrollment caps, many students have been shopping and registering for backup courses in case they don’t get into any others — what the department refers to as a “traffic jam.” The department has since encouraged students to drop and remove those courses from their cart to allow the department to redistribute their seats.
On Sept. 8, students received updated instructions from the directors of the CS undergraduate program: Fill out more forms. Students missing necessary courses to make progress in their degrees were advised to complete a “critical situation” form. Those registered for courses they would prefer to drop were asked to fill out a “would-drop” form.
At this time, the department is not able to process non-CS or non-joint-CS concentrators’ requests until all CS concentrator requests are processed.
“With the goal of allocating sufficient seats by the end of shopping period, we are working with the instructors of popular courses to admit students beyond the cap and possibly over last year’s enrollment levels,” Huang wrote in an email to The Herald.
Clarification: This article has been updated to clarify that non-joint-CS concentrators are treated similarly to non-CS concentrators.
Benicio Beatty is a staff writer and a copy editor. He is studying Public Health on the pre-med track. In his free time, Benicio enjoys playing with his dog Tivoli and constructing time capsules.
