Today is the last day for students to drop a course, but today also serves as a bitter reminder that this time next year, UNC-System students will already be long past the drop date.

Last spring, the UNC Board of Governors moved to impose a system-wide drop date of 10 days, which will begin next fall. The change was not popular among N.C. State students, who currently have about two months before having to chose whether to drop a course.

While many criticize this as simply allowing students to drop classes in order to maintain a high GPA, others feel the late drop date encourages students to challenge themselves.

Kathy Ziga, academic advisor and assistant director for Assessment for the First Year College, said students won’t have the necessary time to decide whether a class they have enrolled in is engaging or manageable enough for their schedule.

“Some students like to start off with 18 credit hours to just test out different ideas on what they are interested in or maybe even challenge themselves if they think they can handle that amount of course work,” Ziga said. “In the past they have been able to do that and then drop a class… that is not as interesting or a little more hard to handle and this is going to restrict them from doing so.”

Opposition to the bill came from N.C. State Chancellor Randy Woodson and former Chancellor of UNC-CH, Holden Thorp, during a meeting in 2012. 

Both Woodson and Thorp said that because N.C State and UNC-CH had low course drop rates, the measure would prove ineffective in its purposes, according to an article by the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

“I think it is a campus matter that should be determined by faculty members on campus. I don’t think it’s appropriate to centralize it,” Thorp said in the article. 

This policy was proposed by the Academic First workgroup, whose guiding principles included the hope to “maximize limited and declining resources to reward students who are serious about progressing toward and earning an undergraduate degree,” according to its June 2011 committee notes.

“It’s a lot different,” said Zack Brady, a freshman in textile technology. “There is so much stuff going on. The first couple weeks of school I wasn’t sure if my schedule was going to work out or not because I really didn’t know what was going on.”

Joni Worthington, vice president for communications for the UNC-System, said the purpose behind the policy is to help students graduate in a timely manner and to ensure funds are being used adequately. 

But because the University already has a high retention rate, some people feel the policy will not have a major impact on campus.

“A review of class drop behavior shows that N.C. State students who are making satisfactory progress toward degrees typically do not drop more than four courses after the census date,” said Michelle Johnson, senior associate registrar for Registration and Records. “In fact, of students who graduate within six years, 93 percent do not drop more than four courses after the census date. That number increases to almost 98 percent for students who graduate in four years. So, based on that analysis, we do not anticipate that this change will have any negative impact on the majority of N.C. State students.”  

Chad Walton, a junior in Business Administration dropped a class his freshman year because he didn’t feel comfortable with it.

“Students won’t take risks in terms of taking really cool classes because they might fear they will get a low grade,” Walton said.

Other concerns include classes in which teachers don’t give feedback until late in the semester. 

“Most students won’t have had a test in the first 10 days. I’ve had some classes that are just tests and no homework, no in-class work, no anything. You just sit in class, take notes, and take a test,” said Jeremy Evans, sophmore in Environmental Science ,who said he has never dropped a course.

In fact, in past years a high percentage of seats remained filled after the drop date, about 94 percent at N.C. State, according to Student Senate Resolution 52.

However, the new policy is thought to have positive effects as well. 

“On the other hand, this is going to line up with the financial aid policy of satisfactory academic progress,” Ziga said. “That’s something new that students are having to adjust to this year. Students need to complete 67 percent of their courses so those policies go hand in hand.”

According to Resolution 52 from N.C. State’s student senate, under the current policy about 30,000 credit hours are lost each semester due to course drops. The new policy may ensure more seats remain filled and those that aren’t can quickly be replaced by students on waitlists.

“If there’s the possibility of having a middle ground, I think that’s maybe where some administrative individuals and students might need to come together and collaborate about what’s actually best for the students,”  Ziga said.