If you spend enough time around computer science majors, one of the things you’re likely to hear is a long series of complaints about course enrollment. That’s been my experience living with two CS majors, and after two years of hearing about the shortcomings of the course enrollment process in the CS department, I decided to take a closer look at the problem myself. Here’s what I learned:
Difficulty with course enrollment is a common experience for CS students at UW.
To better understand the enrollment problems facing UW’s CS students, I created a short survey and had a friend share it on two popular WhatsApp and Discord forums. The survey generated 10 responses and reflected a general sentiment of dissatisfaction, though most students stopped short of reporting that an inability to enroll in CS courses was directly impacting their degree path.
Eight out of 10 students either agreed or strongly agreed with the claim that they have more difficulty enrolling in CS courses than in other courses. Another eight out of 10 students also either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that “course enrollment is a significant problem in the CS department.”
But, seven out of 10 students polled either disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement that difficulty enrolling in the CS courses they want to take has changed their degree paths. Further, on average, CS students actually tend to graduate in less time than students in most other majors, according to CS Department Administrator for Academic Services Cindy Fendrick.
While overcrowding in CS is not unusual, UW’s open-access model is.
With high starting salaries, good job prospects and a cutting-edge skill set, CS has taken higher education by storm in the last 15 years. For instance, in the 2008-2009 academic year, the College of Letters and Science produced more Art History degrees — 62 — than Computer Science degrees — 60 — according to UW’s Repository of Administrative Data and Reports.
Since then, CS has become a campus juggernaut, producing 877 undergraduate degrees in the 2023-2024 academic year — more than Business and Biology degrees combined.
And this isn’t just a UW phenomenon. Across the country, universities have been scrambling to meet the surge in demand for CS degrees, and many of UW’s peer schools have been forced to move to a closed-access model, meaning they independently restrict who can major in CS, according to Inside Higher Ed.
In 2023, for instance, the University of Michigan moved to a closed-access model, mandating that students apply directly to the major, according to the Michigan Daily. Hoping to minimize overcrowding and address equity concerns, the University of California San Diego instituted a lottery system in 2017, making the declaration of their CS major literally the luck of the draw, according to Inside Higher Ed.
Nationwide, increased demand for computer science has forced university administrators and computer science department leaders to make difficult decisions about who to grant access to the major and who to leave behind. UW, though, has managed to maintain its open-degree model throughout — a point of pride within UW’s CS department.
“The Department of Computer Sciences is proud to offer an academic degree accessible to all students who meet the major declaration requirements,” Fendrick said in an email statement regarding UW’s open-degree model. “Many Computer Science departments nationwide have transitioned to a limited-access model, where only a specific number of students can complete the degree. While our open-degree model offers more flexibility, it does present challenges, one of which is course seat scheduling.”
Bottlenecks and prerequisites
The struggle to accommodate a rapidly growing degree-seeking population lies largely in finding the personnel to educate these students. Fendrick said that most departments at UW have research tenure-track faculty and academic staff faculty, sometimes called teaching faculty.
Teaching faculty, as the name suggests, specialize in instruction, and recently the CS department has greatly increased its teaching faculty and to a lesser extent its research tenure-track faculty. The department has also turned to local talent for lectures, extending offers to experts from Google, Microsoft and Epic.
The department has also taken measures to offset overcrowding by expanding the course catalog to include classes that don’t count towards degree progression but still offer valuable skills and help distribute the weight, as in their mobile applications class, according to Fendrick.
Despite this, many students report running into bottlenecks in their degree progression, sometimes having to wait multiple semesters to take required classes. Eight out of 10 students polled reported they were unable to take CS 354, a core requirement of the major, in the desired semester.
Another student left a comment stating that they couldn’t schedule Starfish meetings within the CS department as they were all booked. A second student reported that they were unable to enroll in any of the CS courses he wanted to take next semester due to small class sizes, TA shortages and the fact that some CS classes — like CS 407 — aren’t offered every semester.
I asked one student, sophomore Farhan Siddiqui, about his experience trying to enroll in CS 354, and he told me that he has tried and failed for two semesters now.
“You can’t graduate if you don’t take this class,” Siddiqui said. “I wanted to take it last semester, but I couldn’t — I couldn’t even waitlist myself because it was closed. I thought: ‘Alright, I’ll take it in my Sophomore Spring semester.’ I tried that, again it’s closed. I can’t even waitlist.”
CS 354 is currently facing reduced class sizes due to an instructor change, Fendrick said.
The Bottom Line
UW’s CS department is packed — there’s no doubt about it. The department has had to adjust to a meteoric rise in popularity among undergraduates, and yet, unlike many of their peers, they have not instituted a limited-access model.
The obvious downside is that, even though students are not directly excluded from the degree program, competition for classes and resources nevertheless excludes students indirectly. On the other hand, any student who maintains a minimum 2.0 GPA can study CS, eliminating equity concerns about how the department would admit students in a closed-access program.
Given that UW’s CS students, on average, finish their degrees in less time than their peers on campus, and that interest in CS appears to have peaked — the number of undergrads who completed a CS degree decreased in 2023-2024 for the first time in 14 years — UW’s open-access model appears to have survived the worst.
