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Article from the Chronicle of Higher Education about course selection (competition, class lotteries, etc).
Every college has a hot-ticket class. Maybe it’s the subject matter (serial killers! sailing!) or maybe it’s a celebrity professor (George Tenet! Toni Morrison!). Whatever it is, everybody wants to get in.
And, of course, not everybody can. So how do you decide who gets a seat and who’s disappointed?
If you’re Patricia de Castries, you make everybody sleep outside your door. Ms. de Castries, assistant director of the Stanford Language Center, teaches a wildly popular wine-tasting course at the university. Often more than 100 would-be connoisseurs compete for the 60 spots, so on the eve of registration students show up with pillows and sleeping bags, hoping to get their names on the list. “It’s tough,” says Ms. de Castries, “but if you want to be in the class, you do it.”
Covers the range from MIT’s technical approach to Wharton’s free market approach, where students at the latter bid on courses using a point system. Sadly, the article now seems to be blocked except for those academic-types who have access to a subscription.
(Thanks Eugene)
