Wyss: Registration off to snarled start
Frustration was rampant among McHenry County College students and many of their parents Thursday as computer server malfunctions, phone line freezes and lengthy lines made for a not-so-smooth start to the spring 2010 registration process.
Simply put, the college’s staff and systems were overwhelmed by the volume of students trying to register.
Ask administrators, and the response is, “What a great problem to have.”
Sure, if you’re not one of the folks who received a continual busy signal, or a system-down-for-maintenance message on the computer, or who tried to keep young children from losing it while standing in line for hours.
Clearly, those who put together the Promise program – which is paying all or part of the tuition of about 930 students this fall and to which a large spike in student population has been attributed – hit upon an intense desire among young county residents to improve their prospects.
It also hit upon an equally intense desire on their parents’ parts to save thousands of dollars.
The McHenry County College Foundation, which administers the program, is “retooling” it after running into financial difficulty in the program’s first year. It is taking no new applicants, requiring people to pay up front with later reimbursement, increasing the GPA requirement from 2.0 now to 3.0 in spring 2011, and doubling the community service hours requirement to 32 next year.
The hope, of course, is that foundation members can put the Promise on more secure financial footing.
Bill Brennan, interim executive director for the Foundation, said the new rules were not intended to push anyone out.
“What sense would it make for the people on the Promise Committee, who all have individually spent hundreds of hours in getting the Promise program started, to push people out?” he said.
Meanwhile, the student population surge is both blessing and curse.
It’s a blessing whenever the door to education opens for more people.
But crack wide the aspirin jar, especially for those who started at MCC before this fall – without benefit of Promise funding – who fear finding themselves unable to gain a seat in needed classes.
That, clearly, is why when the college’s doors opened early Thursday, an immense line awaited.
Some wonder why more planning did not transpire, i.e., hiring more help, adding classes, acquiring greater server capacity, and adding phone lines before the big day.
For Crystal Lake resident Victoria Kemmeling, whose 19-year-old daughter is a Promise recipient, Thursday’s registration mess was exacerbated by unanswered questions about the new rules, and how her family would come up with the $1,120 plus fees due Nov. 19.
“[The Promise] was a great idea,” she said. “But I think there was some poor planning.”
• Cyndi Wyss is a Northwest Herald community editor. She can be reached at 815-526-4534 or cwyss@nwherald.com.
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