Last week, the Student Success Center announced that advising is now required for ULM students of all classifications. Before, upper-classmen didn’t have to get advised.

But now it has to be required for everyone because students frequently miss courses that they need. There are so many courses that are required for certain majors and only when you go to sign up for the class do you realize that it’s not even being offered this semester. It throws everything off.

When that happens, you have to wait an entire semester to take just one course that you  have to take for your degree.

It can throw off a student’s entire graduation schedule and cause them to graduate late. For this reason, all courses should be available every semester.

If all courses were offered every semester, the new advising requirement wouldn’t be necessary. Nobody would have to worry about getting advised. Nobody would have to worry about graduating late.

However, offering every class every semester may not be possible. Maybe there’s not enough money, maybe there’s not enough space.

But a simple way to keep students from having scheduling and graduation issues would be to simply provide them with a list. On ULM’s website, there should be a list of all courses that the school provides and the semesters that they are provided. That way students would never be blindsided.