Additionally, administrators say early course estimates should allow professors to find adequate meeting space to accommodate all interested students, which should limit the number of courses that must be lotteried each year. Gross notes, however, that only four to five courses are lotteried each semester.

Because sophomores, juniors and seniors tend to take a wide variety of courses, it is currently difficult to predict course enrollment, Gross and Wolcowitz say.

But, in fact, many enrollment trends do remain constant.

According to the past two year’s enrollment statistics posted on the Registrar’s website, the number of undergraduates in large courses—those enrolling 75 or more students—is fairly stable.

There were 54 large courses offered in both the fall semesters of 2001 and 2002. Of those, two courses experienced absolutely no change in the number of undergraduates, and only 15 courses’ enrollments fluctuated by more than 30 undergraduates. And though several of the courses did experience extremely large enrollment changes—on the order of several hundred students—these extremely large fluctuations could frequently be explained by changes in teaching staff or some current event drawing undergraduates’ attention to the topic. For example, Afro-American Studies 10, “Introduction to Afro-American Studies,” dropped from an enrollment of 579 undergraduates to just 96 undergraduates between Fall 2001 and Fall 2002, a factor which might be explained by former Fletcher University Professor Cornel R. West ’74’s departure to Princeton. And the drop-off in enrollment in Government 1540, “The American Presidency” between Fall 2001 and Fall 2002 may have been the result of the return to normalcy of student interest in the presidency after the controversial 2000 election.

And even with preregistration, some administrators are unsure that the Faculty would have accurate enough information to predict course enrollments.

“It could conceivably mean that professors have better information,” Lewis says. “For some extent it would depend on how seriously undergraduates took the exercise, how seriously they looked through the catalog when they chose their courses.”

Furthermore, Becella and others worry that because students will be allowed to preregister for up to five courses, they will—resulting in more adding and dropping than takes place under the current system and a lot of extra paperwork.

That extra paperwork is one reason why some students have suggested that preregistration—if it must be passed—be put online.

Gross says that suggestion was well taken and that the idea for web-based preregistration will be discussed at today’s meeting.

Another negative side-effect of students preregistering for more classes than they intend to take would be the overhiring of TFs.

But Wolcowitz says he isn’t worried about having too many TFs. Even if preregistration leads the FAS to overestimate the number of TFs it needs, however, he pledges that the Faculty will retain those extra TFs and put them to use reducing the size of the sections.

The main concern of students about preregistration is that they will lose the freedom that shopping period allows.

The requirement to obtain the signature of the professor for every course a student wants to add or drop is a restriction that will limit creativity in course selection, Chopra says.

“The enrollments in Sanskrit or linguistics or history of science are not letting them enjoy a subject they wouldn’t have thought about learning. You’d see...higher enrollment in the more traditional fields,” he says.