The Fact: Despite record enrollment, the University has cut many class seats and sections in the wake of budgetary pressure.

Our Opinion: Budget cuts are a difficult beast to tame. But the University, as a whole, needs to reassess its priorities as many students review their disappointing schedules on the last day to add classes for the spring semester in MyPack.

During the summer, N.C. State had a tough run. The scandals surrounding the former governor and those who know him turned the University upside down. In the long run, though, students probably won’t remember Easley and Oblinger.

What they will remember is the classes they couldn’t get into, the sections that were full and the extra year they had to spend at the University — not out of lack of effort, but due to faulty administration.

The 10-percent budget cut the University experienced this summer was more impactful to the University than every resignation combined. It has wreaked havoc on the number of seats and sections the University can offer as well as its ability to hire new faculty.

If students want evidence, open up MyPack. The number of seats and sections dramatically fell this semester. The University is offering thousands fewer seats than this time last year. Few students have been able to enroll in half the classes they wanted, and in some cases, needed to graduate.

The University, through its actions, seems to have made an implicit decision that the four-year plan is no longer the norm. Quite frankly, the inability to enroll in classes for students at all levels has left many students with unfulfilling schedules or will forcibly cause them to delay their graduation.

How many teachers this semester have said they’re teaching more students per class than they’ve ever had? How many classes have you seen where students have to sit on the floor or drag desks and chairs in from other rooms?

If the University is still a four-year educational institution, it is experiencing an identity crisis.

The budget reversions this year have left Chancellor James Woodward and the University budget crew with few options, and students understand that some cuts will be necessary in the present and as the University moves into the future.

But during this final day of enrollment for the spring semester, and when thousands of students are scrambling to find classes today in anticipation of when the MyPack waitlists drop at midnight, students should ask themselves how many more sections and seats can the University cut before the institution becomes dysfunctional.

Dozens of faculty positions — if not more — were left vacant this semester; many adjunct faculty members did not have their contracts extended, all in the name of cost cutting.

We’re having an academic crisis.