Since it takes weeks for printed grade reports to be mailed home (those pesky library fines come quickly, though), using exiting technology to expeditiously provide final grades online should be a University priority. Yet this year, Tufts took a leap in the wrong direction, discontinuing the 800-number system that partially mitigated frustration caused by SIS online (which, although located on the Internet, moves at the speed of molasses).
But even in the short run, Tufts should not have to rely on the phone as a means of information transfer; telephones are fast becoming an anachronism, and should rightfully seem out of place at a "Research I" institution. The technology to get grades to students quickly currently exists and any administrative statement to the contrary would be misleading.
At universities that Tufts regards as its chief competitors for both students and prestige, and even those that we consider beneath us, grades are readily accessible online. At SUNY Binghamton, grades are posted as received on the day they are submitted by a professor. At Boston University, students can order updated transcripts well before the New Year, and can see their final grades almost as soon as they return home from their first semester. Other schools - Emory, University of Florida, Washington University, and Brown among them - post grades on the Web long before Jan. 1, well in advance of Tufts, which supplies the information a mere week before classes resume.
No one seriously argues that Tufts lacks the capability to publish grades as they are handed in by professors. Since the implementation of online registration, in fact, students can easily check their schedules on SIS Online to ensure that they have registered for the right courses. Address changes and other assorted functions are processed immediately by the site and can be reviewed nearly instantaneously. But with final grades, the "Grades" option is actually blocked by the Registrar's office, and does not allow students even to review their grades from prior semesters. <P> Despite the ample and efficient technology, this year's grades were not available for Tufts students until Jan. 8. Last year, the wait was comparably long as the Registrar deemed Jan. 4 the first day students could obtain the results of their semester's work. Thankfully, a major loophole was benignly neglected in the past, allowing anxiously awaiting students to hear their grades well before the "official" date. The 800-number, provided by the school and paid for by promotions from outside vendors, made grades available a few days after final exams. Even though the official date when it was supposed to come into service was similar to that of the website, the phone system always allowed anxiously awaiting students to check grades well before the New Year. The discontinuation of this option was a mistake, considering that outside vendors defrayed much of the cost and the system clearly benefited students.
With the phone system not in service, the school's official information website, SIS Online, was the only vehicle for obtaining grades. But the system blocked students from receiving their grades and transcripts until well into January. The wait became aggravatingly long, especially since no email told students the date when they could obtain grades until after New Years. On the day that grades were supposed to be posted on the website, the server was down, returning online late in the day. When grades finally did make their debut, barely a week remained before the new semester.
Simply having online technology, as Tufts does, is not sufficient. The capabilities that Tufts has acquired with services like SIS Online are certainly helpful, but they must be used to their full potential, lest they resemble the phantom TCU Senate Tufts Polls. The idea behind implementing (and paying for) improved technology was to speed up the transfer of information, not to slow it down. Last year, grades were available four days earlier, leaving people to wonder how technology actually slowed down the grade retrieval process and whether competent people are working on these projects. This past semester provides bleak answers to these questions.
Craig Waldman is a senior majoring in political science.
