Recent buzz at Hawaii Pacific University hasn’t had much to do with the school’s plan to redevelop Aloha Tower Marketplace. Nor has it concerned HPU’s initiative to improve student retention and graduation rates.
Instead, talk on campus has involved something a little closer to home for current students: the 153 courses that were canceled this spring, some of them just weeks before the semester started.
HPU’s student newspaper, Kalamalama, has reported that the problem is nothing new to the university. But the number of courses canceled this semester is higher than figures reported for recent semesters. About 129 courses were canceled last spring, according to Scott Stensrud, special assistant to the president for student retention.
“It’s affected a lot of students — especially seniors and upperclassmen,” HPU senior and Kalamalama reporter Alyssa Amasol said, pointing to students who are in crunch to take classes in their majors before they graduate.
Amasol, a journalism major, said the canceled classes have taken an especially grave toll on students in small programs. Many journalism students, for example, were forced to enroll in communications courses this semester instead, meaning that some seniors — including Amasol — will graduate without having taken journalism classes more tailored toward their interests.
But a variety of degree programs and departments had cancellations. And many of the canceled classes were one of several sections in popular courses or general education requirements, Stensrud said, meaning that some students could enroll in different sections of the same course.
Stensrud also pointed out that only 60 of this semester’s 153 canceled classes actually had enrollment. And only one had double-digit enrollment, he said.
Many of the cancellations involved courses that were initially entered into the system but pulled out for various logistical reasons before the course offerings were announced, he said, pointing out that some of the courses were canceled as early as last September. According to Stensrud, roughly 120 students were affected by the cancellations. About 8,000 students total are currently enrolled at HPU.
“We do try to keep it to a minimum,” he said. “But in some cases, we don’t have control.”
The university is currently offering about 1,200 undergraduate and graduate courses total, Stensrud said.
Still, students say the canceled classes are a letdown, particularly because many chose to attend HPU — a private university that costs roughly $36,000 per year — over the University of Hawaii and other universities in state.
The cancellations could even deter students from fulfilling degree requirements, ultimately posing graduation delays, they say. Less than 40 percent of the students who enrolled in HPU in 2005 had graduated as of 2011, according to the university’s website. That’s compared to the approximately 65 percent of students who graduated within six years after enrolling in private nonprofit institutions across the country in 2004.
Amasol is a senior and expects to graduate on-time this May. She needed to take an elective class in the communication department this semester to fulfill her degree requirements in time for graduation.
She originally enrolled in a feature writing course, but it — along with the news writing elective — was canceled about a month before the semester began in January.
She quickly signed up for another course: Sports Writing. But that class, too, was canceled — about a week before the semester started.
Amasol ultimately switched into a mass media course on the first day of classes.
“It still fits in (to my degree requirement), but it’s not the course I wanted,” Amasol said.
Amasol, who covered the course cancellations for Kalamalama, said she had trouble getting a precise figure for the number of canceled classes. HPU officials disagreed as to how many courses were actually canceled this spring, she said.
While university staff originally told her that 163 courses were canceled, others later said the number was actually 154, according to Amasol. But that data didn’t include two canceled courses for which Amasol had originally registered, she said, suggesting that the list was incomplete.
Stensrud reiterated that he counted 153 courses total, emphasizing that students were given recourse if their desired courses were canceled. If a student needed to take a class required for graduation, he said, HPU either offered it despite low enrollment or converted it into directed study — independent coursework supervised by a faculty member.
In general, Stensrud said building a master course schedule is more difficult than meets the eye.
“It’s a constant dance to try and figure out the best way” to figure out how many classes to offer, he said, adding that the school is looking into software that would facilitate scheduling and better project students’ needs. “What sounds like a relatively easy task is actually very, very complicated.”
Stensrud cited a range of complications, including variation in students’ schedules and building capacity limitations.
Amasol also said that students who registered last-minute are also to blame because they rejigger HPU’s scheduling at the 11th hour, explaining some of the abrupt cancellations.
Still, for Amasol, the canceled classes aren’t the end of the world.
One university official told her graduating in four years is very rare. “It’s only a few canceled courses,” she said. “And I’m still graduating.”
