UFV has now released the Winter 2020 timetable. Since I’m in the final year of my degree, this is the fourth time I’ve had to spend my October anxiously refreshing the timetable page on UFV’s website, waiting for the university to release next semester’s schedule.Â
It always surprises me how late in the fall semester UFV waits to post the upcoming semester’s timetable. University of British Columbia (UBC) and Trinity Western University (TWU) post semester timetables differently than UFV. When students register for courses for the fall semester at UBC or TWU, they register for their winter semester courses as well. During registration in the summer, those students are able to plan out their entire upcoming academic year.
With over 60,000 students attending the university each year, it seems unnecessary to me that UBC would release their course timetables in such a manner. Since there’s such a large amount of students, there needs to be enough classes for them all; therefore, there are copious sections of the same class offered, but at various times, on various days, and at various locations throughout campus. With so many options for class selections, I wonder why UBC releases their timetable yearly while UFV, a small university with fewer options, only releases timetables semester by semester.
With my major in English and a concentration in creative writing, I am required to take four credits of a Canadian literature class. But unfortunately, UFV usually only offers one upper-level Canadian literature course each semester. I’ve got two semesters left and I still haven’t taken those credits because of timetable conflicts or other required courses that seemed more urgent to take at the time. But if I would have had a full-year timetable in front of me for the 2019–2020 academic year I would have been able to actually take my Canadian literature credit this semester instead of another class that I thought would only be offered once a year (which it turns out is actually offered again in the Winter 2020 semester).Â
I’m sure that I’m not the only one in this boat. TWU, which has even less students than UFV (only 4,000 a year), also offers a full-year timetable. With less students, fewer courses are being offered — making course planning more hectic — so a full-year timetable is assumably very helpful.Â
If UFV ever begins to release the full academic year timetable, it will probably be once I’m out of here, but I can only hope they do so for the next generation’s sake.
