New state law limits freshmen to six drops

by Hylann Camacho, staff writer

                                                                

A new law enacted by the Texas Legislature will limit the number of drops a student can have.

Senate Bill 1231 states that only six course drops are allowed for new college freshmen during their undergraduate college career. Six drops during your entire undergraduate college career.

Even if a student transfers to another university, he or she does not get to start over. The drop record follows to every public university. However, students who were enrolled before this semester will be “grandfathered” for the six-course drop rule.

Rep. Fred Brown from college station wrote the bill in hopes of saving money for the state by reducing the amount of refunds for dropped courses as well as by getting students to use time in college more wisely.

Andrea Rangel, Dean of Admissions for South Plains College, said,“ I think it will not only promote responsibility, but help with education costs as well.”

 One of the problems this law is trying to solve is that not all students can get into the classes that are required for their majors because the classes are filled up. So this law will possibly reduce the number of students in certain courses, allowing other students access to the courses they need.

However, there are exceptions for extenuating circumstances. The exceptions to this law on the SPC student-initiated Drop Form are as follows: 1.Severe illness or other debilitating condition; 2. Care of sick injured, or needy family member or close relationship; 3.Death of a family member or close relationship; 4. Deployment of student, a family member, or close relationship; 5. Work schedule; 6. Any other legitimate reasons for drop of course.

The law was implemented in hopes of helping student choose their courses more wisely, yet there are some changes that need to be made in order to implement the program successfully. Rangel said that the major issue with this bill is cost of staff and software changes. She said that in order to keep track of all the excused and unexcused drops they would need to hire one or two full-time employees to keep up the database. Also, program changes are going to be needed for software for tracking the drops, which is currently being worked on at the Technology Center at SPC.

Rangel also said that new students were informed of the new rule in freshmen and new student orientations as well as a statement of the new policy has been posted on the admissions website, although it was not published in the catalog because the catalog was published before the school got wind of the new law.  However, it will be published in the new catalog.

According to Rangel, the institution is required by the state to publish the policy, and currently an official school policy is in the works.