"The chances of finding someone who's trained in the area and available at the last minute are slim," says Maher. "The only way to avoid understaffing is to pull faculty from other departments."

This year, the University shortened shopping period to 10 days, saying this policy would make it easier for professors to get enrollment figures quickly and schedule sections earlier.

Maher says other universities at which he has taught either require students to pre-register or eliminate sections altogether.

"But I think that as long as Harvard wants to have small teaching sections--which it ought to--and as long as it wants to give students flexibility with course selection--as it ought to--there's going to be a problem."

"We can work on it," he adds. "But I think that our solutions will always be limited by those two factors."

The associate dean says problems with sectioning and course planning have raised calls for pre-registration.

"There's quite a large number of faculty in favor of pre-registration, especially at the beginning of semester when a lot of problems arise in the larger courses," says Pilbeam.

And the course catalog is not structured to make pre-registration an option.

"If there were a smaller, more stable course catalog, from which students could get solid information and be better able to rank course preferences, pre-registration might work. But currently, it would be extremely unfair to require students to pre-register."

Pilbeam says he believes limiting enrollment in certain classes is the best solution under the present system.

"What I would like to see is capping in courses where we know we won't be able to staff it above a certain limit, like in lab courses because of space limitations, or in extremely large courses, like those in the Core," says Pilbeam. "It's a more responsible reaction on our part to put together a strong academic program, which is after all our priority."

Pilbeam says arguing that students have an inalienable right to take any courses they want is "short-sighted."

"It's a question of it being the 'least bad' alternative. In the long run, it's ultimately more honest [to limit enrollment]," he says.

Administrators say one of the reasons students and faculty members are more concerned about sections today is a renewed interest in undergraduate education in general.

Wilkinson calls it "a reaction to a period when less attention was paid to teaching [and to] subsequent pressure by students who want teaching to be on a high level."

And Pilbeam says such an emphasis is cyclical.

"I think there's now more interest and concern with the undergraduate program," he says.

"Ten years ago, there was intense activity devoted to the Core, but there's only a finite amount of attention you can pay to one area, and so now I think we're back into thinking about concentrations and other aspects of the undergraduate curriculum."