Does Your School Assign Classes to “Staff”?
Some students don’t know what it means.
This morning I thought I’d take a peek at the schedule of classes for the school I used to teach at, Glenville State University. I quit my tenured, full-time teaching job there this summer, and I wanted to see how they covered the classes I had been scheduled to teach.
I was surprised to see the state of the schedule. They are less than a month away from the first day of classes, and they don’t have real teachers assigned to a significant number of classes.
When they don’t have real teachers to teach a class but they want to keep the class open instead of cancelling it immediately, they assign it to “Staff, J.” It’s kind of a placeholder they use while they search for a teacher for a class.
It’s not terribly unusual to have a class or two assigned to “Staff, J.” People leave unexpectedly, or a certain class is needed for students to make progress for their degree, and administration needs time to find a teacher. But it can be a warning sign if too many classes are assigned to Staff, because it makes it more likely that a student’s schedule of classes will be disrupted, and that can impact their eligibility for financial aid and the time it takes them to get their degree. A class assigned to “Staff, J” might continue not to have a real teacher, and it may…
