The Blind Leading The Blind

Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and higher education positively fortifies it.

Stephen Vizinczey (1933 - ), An Innocent Millionaire

A student dropped by my office earlier this week to ask about her course load. She is a new, direct-intake student with a pre-sessional status. New students joining the university are tested for Arabic and English placement tests. If they fail to meet certain standards, they are required to take remedial courses and classified as pre-sessional with limited course load. When I joined IIUM I had to take remedial courses in Arabic. This particular student is taking a class in English listening skills.

She came to see me because she was worried that she had not registered for enough courses. Other students, university officials and lecturers were giving her different answers, and she was confused. So, she finally came to see me, the stand-in student advisor. It turns out that she has registered for more courses than she needs to. Full-time students need to register for twelve to fifteen credit hours per semester. Pre-sessional students need only register for six credit hours. She already has eleven and a half.

She was smart to come to see me. Most students, especially those coming from the matriculation program, rely on their friends and seniors for information. Direct intake students do not have friends or seniors they know from matriculation to turn to. They usually arrive at the university only a few days before the beginning of the semester, sometimes even on the first day of the semester itself. The university does not have an arrangement in place to help them specifically, so they typically spend the first week, with class registration and adjustments, running around feeling lost and abandoned. Last week one of them actually got around to submitting a complaint over the system that “discriminates against direct intake students in favor of students from the matriculation program”.

I know exactly how they feel, as I experienced the exact same thing when I first joined the university eight years ago. Obviously something has to be done about it. Eventually, however, these students will find their way to a student advisor. Here comes the irony: since ex-matriculation students have friends and seniors to refer to, they almost never see a student advisor. So later on in the program we tend to see them having all sorts of problems with their studies as a result of receiving the wrong advices and information from their fellow friends and seniors. The direct intake students, having received the correct information through consulting a student advisor, do not have the same problems.

I remember classmates coming from the matriculation program taking more language courses than they had too simply because the seniors told them so. Even after showing them the program curriculum structure, they chose to believe the equally clueless seniors instead!