I must warn you: reading the following article may invoke irrevers- ible feelings of disappointment in your school system.

If you take the time to visit the tab “My Academics” in your Madison Area Technical School’s Student Center, you may be in for a big surprise.

To see what I’m referring to, you will next need to expand the “Degree Career Summary” section.

What you see next may come as a shock to you, or perhaps if you are like me, you may be angered. There is now a subheading entitled “Courses Not Used List.”

What I discovered is that as of right now, I have taken and paid for 19.8 unused credits which cannot be applied to my Madison College degree. I did this unknowingly. I did this while thinking that all along I was taking the courses I needed to graduate in the most efficient time. If I could have done this, who else could have overlooked this as well?

First off, let me explain a few details about myself in order to put all of this into light. I am a Phi Theta Kappa student. When I have signed up for my required classes for my associate’s degree, I always did so with a printed course list, highlighter and my own personal degree audit. One would think that I was on the right track to accomplishing my required courses in order to graduate. However, for some reason unbeknownst to me, the courses that I had been signing up for did not apply in the areas that I anticipated, even though I was choosing classes that would “satisfy” a needed element. In fact, most of my classes were being applied to electives, not where I had believed it was applying. This was after a diligent print out and examination of my degree audit after each semester, complete with class numbers for qualifying classes for what was still needed.

If I, an attentive student who made legitimate efforts to follow the appropriate course, was having difficulty figuring out the system, then what about other students who were less attentive? I’ve even heard of students signing up for classes based on friends or by the days and times.

How many students would really, truly take and pay for classes that would be used for, well, nothing?

I spoke with an advisor at the school. It was pointed out to me that it is ultimately the student’s respon- sibility to ensure that the classes enrolled in are applied in the desired manner and that school resources must be sought out by the student.

I had failed in this area. In fact, I was even one of “those” students who skipped orientation. Perhaps that is where I first went wrong. But is it really my sole responsibility?

From this experience, it appeared that our school wasn’t looking out for individual students, or even guiding them in their educational endeavors. It hadn’t worked for me anyway. Resources are available, but ultimately, even attentive students such as myself need to seek them out. That guidance is not given without appointment or request.

You need to be aware that the school expects you to be the one ensuring that your education is fitting your personal goals (aka, actually reaching graduation). I highly encourage you to first examine your advisement report. After that, meet with an advisor to see if your classes are being appropriately applied.

If your situation is like mine, discovering the amount of tuition that you may have needlessly paid warrants an hour of your time to investigate the matter.

Still, I would like to see the college do more to help students in this area.

The college has a high-tech and interactive website that is intelligent enough to know whether or not my prerequisites have been met. It can calculate how much to refund for a course withdrawal based on drop date. Couldn’t it also inform a student whether or not a course fulfills a program requirement?

The college could also require all students to undergo an in-person degree progress review upon completion of a set number of credits. That way, if they’ve misunderstood something it can be corrected before, like me, they end paying hundreds, no, thousands more in tuition.

All I can hope is that someone else is able to correct this before they feel as I do, let down by a school I mistakenly believed was guiding me.