RPI silent over new drop deadline

In late June, an email was sent out to the Rensselaer students stating that, effective Fall 2024, the drop deadline for courses would be moved up from the eighth week of the semester to the second week. Students can still drop a course after the second week and before the tenth week but will receive a “Withdrawn” on their transcript. Any drops after the tenth week require permission from ALAC.

Not long after, the Student Senate’s Academic Affairs Committee sent out a survey asking for students’ opinions on the new drop deadline. The response to the change was almost universally negative. Roughly 2 percent of the nearly 260 students that filled out the survey supported the change. 66 percent of respondents stated that they believe the change will negatively impact their approach to registration.

“The Academic Affairs Committee sees the add/drop policy as our most important issue,” said AAC chairperson Griffin Oliver ’27 in a statement to The Polytechnic. Oliver added “the changes made are arguably the largest academic changes in years. Students have demonstrated their passion on this issue with over 250 responses each to two separate surveys, one of which was sent in the middle of the summer. We recognize that the ability to drop classes late served as a safety net for students, and this change may lead to students being more frugal with their credits per semester. We’ve formed a commission to learn more about the reasoning behind the change, and to find a solution that prioritizes student well-being while meeting the needs of faculty, administration, and other stakeholders. This is a tough balance to strike, but considering how important this subject is for the RPI community as a whole, Academic Affairs is not going to sit it out.”

The Poly sent several questions to the Institute in early September regarding the policy change. RPI’s Office of Community Engagement and Communications offered to connect them directly with someone who could answer our questions in-person which we accepted. However, they were unable to find time for an interview throughout the entire month of September.

Higher education institutions in the US are required to submit a Data Feedback Report every year to the Department of Education. These reports provide administrators data for benchmarking and peer analysis. In RPI’s most recent report, the Institute was compared to Boston University, Carnegie Mellon University, Case Western Reserve University, Cornell University, Lehigh University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern University, Rice University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Rochester, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. These schools are referred to as RPI’s peer schools.

According to the academic calendars for the Fall 2024 semester of each of the peer institutions, the average drop deadline was 5.3 weeks into the semester with a median slightly lower at 5.5 weeks into the semester. WPI was not included in the average as it operates on a quarter system instead of a semester system. Only two schools—Case Western and Lehigh—have a two week deadline similar to RPI. MIT and Cornell have the longest drop deadlines of 11 and 8 weeks, respectively.

The AAC’s summer survey also included a question about what respondents thought was the earliest reasonable number of weeks for a drop deadline. The average response was between 5 and 6 weeks into the semester.