Enrollment In f ux Causes Stress

By CARLIN REYEN Sun Staff Writer

For majors such as information science and computer science, enrollment has nearly doubled in the past five years, creating additional anxiety for students during the add/drop period.

While the number of enrolled students from Fall 2019 to Fall 2022 changed from 15,043 to 15,735, the degrees conferred in the Computer and Information Sciences major nearly doubled from 682 to 1,250 between 2017 and 2022.

“With how big the information science major has become, I expected more class options, less time conflicts and for them to fill up less quickly,” said James Kelly ’25. “I don’t mind the larger classes if it means that people are able to take the class that they need.”

However, at the same time, enrollment in other majors has largely remained unchanged. In particular, architecture and related programs, English, biomedical science and mathematics have maintained relatively stagnant enrollment.

Business, management and marketing majors have also experienced a drastic increase in enrollment from 1,382 to 1,724. However, no other major appears to have increased at rates as rapid as the computer and information sciences majors.

In fall 2022, Information Science 2040: Networks had 552 enrolled students while Information Science 1300: Introductory Programming for the Web had 286 students. Information Science 1260: Choices and Consequences in Computing had a total of 690 students enrolled in spring 2022. These three courses serve as core courses in the information science major, requiring all students in the major to compete for select spots in each course.

“In general, information science is a really attrac- tive major and opens a lot of doors,” said Emma Warden ’25, an information science major. “But it makes it near impossible to enroll in the classes and to be in the major.”

Since enrollment opens by grade, oftentimes younger students experience difficulty enrolling in courses they desire.

“There was one class that I really wanted to take and that my advisor recommended to me, but it filled up before pre-enrollment even opened for sophomores,” Kelly said. “This class was a prereq-