Despite strong opposition from students, a proposal that will require Harvard undergraduates to preregister for their classes is almost certain to be adopted when it comes up for a vote later this spring, administrators and professors say.

The proposal, which is set to be discussed by the full Faculty at its meeting today, has the support of the president of the University, the dean of the Faculty and many professors.

But despite the proposal’s seemingly impending passage, some professors and many undergraduates remain unsure that preregistration will benefit students significantly enough to warrant the loss of freedom in course selection that it would bring. Roughly 1,200 students felt so strongly about the proposal that they signed their names to a petition opposing early course selection last month.

And a group of students recently presented to the Faculty Council a proposal for an alternate system that would require students to update their plans of study each semester—without requiring them to actually “preregister”—but that proposal was shot down.

Preregistration’s proponents say that preregistration would bring major advantages to undergraduates, including better advising and better prepared instructors and teaching fellows (TFs) by obtaining estimates of course enrollments several months early. But students worry that the requirement to obtain the signature of the instructor of every course they wish to add or drop during “shopping week”—preregistration’s promised liberal add/drop period—would limit their freedom to branch out and try unconventional classes.

No final decision about preregistration will be made during today’s discussion; Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Education Jeffrey Wolcowitz says that the proposal will most likely be voted up or down in April.

But today’s discussion will be the first opportunity for opponents of preregistration to make their case to the full Faculty.

An Initiative From the Top

Despite the advantages a preregistration system might offer, it was only through the efforts of Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby that this issue was placed on the Faculty’s agenda, administrators say.

Moving to a system of early course selection has been a goal of Kirby’s since he was first appointed dean last spring.

In an interview last May, Kirby listed the implementation of a “non-binding preregistration” system as one of his priorities, citing his concerns that the current registration system does not allow professors enough time to prepare their courses.

“It does make for a better experience to the degree you can put together a staff and plan the class,” he said last May.

Both the Registrar and director of the Core state that preregistration is not something for which they are actively pushing, although they say they are not opposed to the proposal. “This is not something that the Core office asked to happen,” Director of the Core Susan Lewis says, noting that her office is usually able to accurately predict course enrollments under the current registration system. “There are two groups of people in the institution who really would like better information, and one of them is the Faculty—they’d like to get underway in the beginning—and the graduate students, who really very much need information about where work is going to be available.”

And Registrar Arlene F. Becella says that though her office will support whatever decision the Faculty ultimately makes, she doesn’t see any major advantages to the proposed system.

“It just means that we’ll be doing this mostly earlier and we’ll have to be a little more careful about planning, organizing and coordinating our work with the course heads and department staff,” she says.