It's UF's eternal problem. No, not too few season football tickets. Not Friday's crossword puzzle being too hard for you to finish during your chemistry lecture. Not when your professor schedules an exam for the morning after Halloween.
We're talking about the lack of advisers for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
If you've ever been lucky enough to be awarded a hold or if you accidentally forgot to take some critical tracking courses, you might know what it's like to have to sit in the hell that is the Academic Advising Center lobby.
We shudder just to think about it.
Academic advising, and presumably the center, are supposed to be lucky recipients of some of the money from the Tuition Differential Program, which will begin bringing in funds next fall. UF President Bernie Machen has said he would use the some of the money to hire new advisers.
Hopefully CLAS' student-to-adviser ratio will improve from 1,200 to one. But in order for CLAS' ratio to be comparable to UF's other colleges' ratios of 250 students to one adviser, CLAS would need a total of 49 advisers.
Right now, it only has 11.
We know that is completely unrealistic, but even doubling its number of current advisers would mean only one adviser for every 560 students.
For now, students are advised (ha!) to avoid coming to the Academic Advising Center right before registration begins, but for students with holds or who have no clue what to take next term, that may not be an option.
We suggest you exhaust all your other options - your department, phone calls or e-mails, your Preview staffer - before you trudge down to the center. If you absolutely must go, make sure you bring along an iPod, your laptop, some homework, a pillow or a crossword puzzle - just not Friday's.
