Please post your recollections in the comments. Here are mine:
It took me 3 tries to get an undergrad degree – 1983 or so – and I remember the process as being pretty much the same from Columbia to Montana State. The university mailed you a thick catalog that outlined some basic gen-ed requirements. Every department had a section with a paragraph describing each course and the pre-reqs. At Columbia the student government sold a book with edited student comments on the faculty – it was hilarious and treated as gospel. I met with an advisor once. He was old and his eyes were full of tears. I told him I was sorry.
Then there was a day when we all went to the gym to enroll. It was an all day event, scheduled by seniority and last name. You got a card at the entrance. Every department had a table, staffed with a few faculty to answer questions. They had to sign off on your courses.
When you filled your card, you took it to the Registrar’s table. They kept a running tally and would tell you on the spot: “Astronomy is full. He shouldn’t have signed this. Go find another course. I don’t see anyone in the Economics line.”
It was not different at UC Berkeley in the early 60s. One did have to get a course enrollment card [an IBM style cardboard form] from the instructor and submit it in a packet. Actually, I thought the system worked well. Advising was virtually non-existent. My first advisor was useless I changed my major seven times in nine semesters and on the whole, I believe I ended up with a good general education. At UO I have ‘advised’ hundreds of students on gen ed and departmental requirements and was undergrad advisor in three departments. Served several terms on the Undergrad Council. Major advising was surely useful for the students but I am not sure that one-on-one Gen Ed advising helped much. The online forms tho often obscure had all the basics. Often I felt I could do little more than to confirm or support decisions that the student had already made. My sense is that the ‘value’ of undergrad advising esp for gen ed is much lower than the administrators believe.
At Chicago back in the day, to get your classes, you made an appointment with the registrar. Desirable classes, like Karl Weintraub’s History of Western Civ, filled up immediately. These appointments were assigned in order of comers. Thus a queue developed to make your registration appointment. The queue became so long that students started to camp out — for a weekend — to get a good registration slot. It was self organized by the students, so there was a roll call every hour or so, and if you missed it, you lost your slot. This describes the U of C perfectly, perhaps the only place where 18 year olds would camp out and stay up for two days outside in spring Chicago weather to get a spot in the best section of Western Civ or even O-Chem. Alas, Sleep Out no longer exists — it’s all computerized and randomized these days.
Early 90s: same. Big printed catalog followed by a day at the gym organized by year/last name. Lots of waiting in long lines at tables followed by disappointment and frustration as classes filled, or the aggravation of small mistakes that had to be corrected with more signatures/slips of paper/forms/more tables. I also have some memory of a telephone system being involved somehow in the process but that’s hazy and maybe my imagination. Adding/dropping classes was an unrivaled pain in the neck since faculty had to be tracked down for even more signatures.
It became apparent that I need a degree in what I had already been doing for years — Computer Science.
I applied to the UO the day before enrollment started as an LCC transfer student (luckily, as I slept through my SAT tests a decade earlier), entered as a junior, I believe. With no credits for CIS. My attempt at declaring CIS as my major was nearly blocked by the senior faculty member who was to sign my paper work — because CIS is hard, there’s a lot of math, and it might be too much for me. Explaining I’d been doing software engineering and programming for years didn’t make any impression. CIS was not for females in his world view, apparently. Needless to say, women in CIS were few and far between.
Managed to get the man to sign my paperwork. Did just dandy. Had a great experience in CIS. Didn’t bother with any advising until I needed someone to sign my graduation paperwork. Considered getting a double BS in math, but the tuition was getting ridiculous! Over $300 a term, I think!
I read the course catalog, mapped out each term when I entered UO on graph paper, adjusting the schedule as courses changed. Easy peasy.
I thought the circus in Mac Court was great fun. The only time I was ever in Mac Court was for class registration and a Frank Zappa concert.
My experiences at at the UofO in the early 1960’s were similar to yours, only worse. At UofO one had to get your advisor’s signature on a card, then go to each department’s office to get a rubber stamp imprint on the card, then to MacCourt to have your class request entered on a master list and if everything fell together to Emerald Hall to pay your fees. The first problem occurred when my advisor never kept his office hours and was impossible to get an appointment to see. A sympathetic senior member of my fraternity advised me: “Just do what everybody else does and fake your advisor’s signature”. I followed this sage advice until winter term of my senior year. My action allowed me to follow my crazy ideas that college and learning ought to be enjoyable and interesting and further allowed, for example, enrolling as a sophomore in courses designated only for senior majors and graduate students. Then, near disaster struck. A history department secretary called me midway through my senior year and said “professor X wants to see you.” Turned out he was my advisor, a small fact I failed to remember. He began our conference by asking: “Who are you?” Things rapidly went downhill from there. He verbally and nearly physically threw me out of his office and told me he could no longer serve as my advisor and that I couldn’t graduate without an advisor’s approval. I’d taken a few classes from Professor Ed Bingham in the history department and thought he was a reasonable guy and perhaps would help me out. I explained my plight to him, he laughed, said: “I never cease to be amazed at the ingenuity of undergraduates” and agreed to sign on as my advisor.
By now you may be wondering “whatever happened to this resourceful undergraduate forger?” Well, I graduated on time with one small glitch. When I returned to MacCourt to walk across the stage and receive my diploma I received instead a card telling me to report to the Registrar’s office. I did so the next morning at 8:00 a.m. to learn that the professor for a psychology course I’d taken spring quarter of my senior year and needed for graduation had failed to turn in his grades. I called his home, awakened him, and although he sounded seriously hungover, he agreed to turn in my grade. I received my diploma in the mail a couple of weeks later.
So, you may be asking at this point: “whatever happened to such a wayward undergraduate”? Well, many positive things. First,He learned the value of an undergraduate liberal arts education even if its self-designed. Second, he learned that some faculty are jerks and others are truly wonderful people willing to overlook the foibles of youth. Third, from a relatively inauspicious start one can succeed in spite of roadblocks placed in one’s way. I went on to earn a Ph.D. from one of the most prestigious private U.S. universities and enjoy a pretty successful career in higher education. Fourth, never forget those who helped you along the way. Thanks, Professor Ed Bingham. You saved my ass.
Registration at UO in the 1970s was much as described, including the phone system. I really enjoyed it. You could talk people into letting you into their classes, run into friends, etc. Plus I memorized my social security number early in life, because we used that to register with. :) Like Science Girl above, concerts and registration were the only times I went to Mac Court, which I really liked as a building.
Husky stadium did all of that magically …
I think I heard in 80s at CU Boulder if you were in the know you could phone it in. There was of course the stadium as well… Perhaps the phone was for certain majors or grad/law students, but I remember people dialing like it was tickets for a Milli-Vannile concert.
90s at a small poly. Your degree had every course mapped out for you, every term. For the few “elective” slots you would get a choice between one or two courses you needed for you emphasis. If you met with your adviser (to be told if you were on track to graduate) they would take your registration, otherwise you could drop the paper off at the registrar.
My courses were chosen largely at random, but with the influence of advisors who were herding us into certain large selected courses. At the time I was quite annoyed, as there seemed to be lots of other courses that looked far more interesting. In retrospect, I realize that it simply didn’t matter. There are only a few GE courses that are useful in the long run, and in one’s chosen major one should just choke down everything possible. (Pro tip: Avoid professors who are crazy or cruel.)
The GE courses that matter teach broadly useful skills: the ability to write well (non-fiction), public speaking, basic statistics, basic personal finance (including how to understand one’s college loans). Everything else is like browsing coffee table books–interesting, but you’ll forget it all after a week.
As for major, I discovered at length and painfully the basic rules. Your vocation ultimately has to be something you enjoy, something that pays, and something that you’re good at. Bonus points if it’s socially useful. Anything else is misery.
I tried four or five other majors in the process, but eventually hit on one that fit that formula.
An additional confounder is that coursework doesn’t really suggest what one might eventually be doing on a day-to-day basis after graduation. Eventually it becomes clear that though the subject might be interesting in the abstract, actual jobs in the discipline are uninteresting or unpleasant. Or, with some regularity, there simply are no jobs.
I feel blessed to have made it through that thicket.
If nothing else, I think each major should have to provide a vetted “truth in lending” statement showing what graduates with the degree end up doing, how much it pays, and how many years it will take to pay off their college loans at that rate, versus simply having taken that Starbucks job to begin with.
At 17, went to San Francisco Public Library. Grabbed as many copies of the Wall Street Journal and San Francisco Chronicle as I could carry. Looked in the Help Wanted sections and saw pages of solicitations for CPAs, MBAs, quants, for employers that had names of actual people, e.g. Arthur Young, Ernst and Ernst. Worked out okay, until the S&L fiasco blew the bottom out of the economy.,..
In 1985 I found myself in San Diego looking for a job as an economist. Nothing. The want ads went:
Dry Cleaner
Electrician, Marine
I picked Electrician and bought a pair of boat shoes from Goodwill for the interview. The toughest question was Ohm’s law. I remembered it from HS physics: V=I/R and I got the job. The first payday they took me to the bar – I think it was called “The Snag” – and told me it was traditional for the new guy to buy, but I looked so down and out they’d make an exception. Thanks Jimbo!