Academic advisement appointments are critical to every student’s success in college.

These appointments provide crucial information on the classes and credits necessary for graduation, clear up questions and solve academic problems that students are facing. In their first-year seminar, students are taught how to utilize academic advisers and why it’s important to do so.

However, the current system that Baruch College has for academic advisement isn’t working the way that students need it to.

In the past year, Baruch changed the software program that students use to schedule academic advisement appointments to a website called Navigate. Navigate can also be used to schedule appointments with SEEK counselors and honors advisers.

This program, though, is more complicated for students to use than the previous one.

Once a student logs in, they are supposed to schedule an appointment with an advisor by clicking on the “Appointments” tab on the left-hand side panel. This takes the student to a page that should show their upcoming appointments if they have any.

There, a button to schedule an appointment comes up. The student has to fill out a short form asking what kind of appointment they want — with the choices of “Student Services” and “Undergraduate Advising” — what service they want — with the options of “Long Term Planning” and “Quick Advising” — and, lastly, the date they want to meet.

Once the student makes their selections, however, Navigate always comes up with the response that there are no appointments available. Several Ticker members themselves experienced this issue.

According to one Ticker member, who also works as an FYS peer mentor, that happens because the available times get uploaded only on a day-by-day basis. This means that the available appointments for Monday, Nov. 15 are uploaded onto Navigate only on the morning of Nov. 15. The Ticker member said that the appointments go live on the website at 8:45 a.m. each day.

However, this does not seem to be the case, as a different Ticker member tested it out themselves, with no success.

At least three other members also had trouble reaching academic advisers when emailing them directly. These emails have so far gone unanswered.

This means that no matter what a student does,, nothing works. They have no way of getting help from an academic adviser.

As a result of all of this, students have not been able to schedule academic advisement appointments. This is unfair to students who need help with class registration decisions and more.

Freshmen need academic advisement just to find their footing. Seniors need academic advisement to stay on track for graduation. Everyone else in between needs academic advisement to handle various issues or just for some basic support.

Baruch first needs to switch platforms for its appointment scheduling, possibly back to what it had been right before going over to Navigate.

Then, the school should change the system so that appointments are made available at least a week in advance, if not longer. Ideally, students should be able to schedule appointments a few weeks in advance so the meetings can fit into their schedules.

The college should also notify students when it plans on changing the process to access academic advisement — like it should have done back when it switched to Navigate.