Syllabi provide a more substantive and accurate synopsis of a professor’s expectations of their students and unique approach to the subject than the brief course description on CUNYfirst.

Unfortunately, students often don’t receive the syllabus until right before the semester starts.

Baruch College students receive little to no information about the courses they need to register for prior to enrollment. The course descriptions on CUNYfirst are often a short paragraph filled with vague details and abstract conceptions of what will be taught.

Without a comprehensive summary of what the course will entail, students are resigned to seeking out third party sources of information, such as ratemyprofessors.com, which is a minefield of biases.

This means students won’t have substantial information about a course until it is too late for them to register for an optimal alternative.

By the time the semester starts, that slot in the student’s schedule is wasted if they drop the class due to most classes already being filled.

This leads students to unnecessarily suffer the sunk cost of time wasted and the opportunity cost of a class that could’ve taken up that slot in their schedule.

The Ticker believes that professors should be required to describe how they run their class, course materials, grading and attendance policies on CUNYfirst before registration appointments begin.

This will help students make a well-informed decision about if a course or professor is the right fit for them.

College is a business and courses are a service. A business that is incapable of providing adequate information pertaining to the services it offers is unacceptable.