Illustration by Arnie Bermudez

Last spring Jamie Witt, a pre-nursing junior, logged on to WebReg on her assigned registration day. She went down the list of prerequisites for her degree. She didn't get into a single one, and got into only two classes total.

And one of them was choir.

Witt came to the UA with high hopes of being a nurse in Arizona, but two years later, she'll be lucky to graduate in five years and wonders if the UA was the right decision.

The UA has on its hands a long-term problem and a short-term problem. Both deserve solutions.

The long-term solution is to have a better balance between resources and the number of students. Many say that the UA needs to accept fewer students.

The UA is doing this in the form of increasing admission standards.

On the other end, the univeristy can increase its resources. Tuition hikes will hopefully bring more professors and classes.

Ryan Johnson Columnist

But neither is happening fast enough. Right now there are not enough resources and too many students. Students that are only here for four years (or five or six) can't wait for the long-term solution to come to fruition.

We need to have a short-term solution.

As much as it hurts, we need to increase class sizes. This pains everyone involved. Professors have more work. Students lose interaction. Rankings go down.

But if you have a class of 50 and it grows to 55, you've only slightly decreased the quality of instruction for the class, but you've made a huge difference for those five students.

And Witt doesn't buy the argument of having only a finite number of seats. She'll drag a chair from the hallway. She'll sit on the floor. She'll stand. Just give her the class.

Her adviser told her to go to Pima. Should students really be forced to pay to go to a community college in order to go to the UA?

It's not just nursing majors. Ask almost anyone in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. The art history department. Biochemistry.

Some professors say the problem is having big enough classrooms.

If there is anything close to a rock star professor, Gerald Swanson is it. His Economics 200 course always fills up, no matter how big the classroom is. A Wildcat story last year quoted a student who was taking it for the second time, not because he failed the first time, but just because he wanted to hear Swanson.

Last semester, Swanson had the 600-person Social Sciences Room 100. This semester he has the 200-person Education 211.

On the first day of class he had the 200, plus another 200 who weren't even signed up for the class. And they kept coming.

"I had to make a decision to not use too much class time asking them to leave," he said.

Give that man a bigger class.

Some departments do a better job of accommodating their students. One geography class went from 30 to 120 students. The education quality of the 30 goes down, but it's better than leaving the other 90 out in the cold. In five years, there will be only 60 and there will be two sections, but not now.

No, these students can't wait. And some are simply throwing in the towel.

Arizona currently has a shortage of nurses, and it's about to lose another.

In the front pocket of Witt's backpack, she has a list of schools she's looking to transfer to. She says she's most likely to end up at San Diego State. Cost: $9000.

"It's worth the extra $5000. Easily," she said.

For the UA administrators who hear incessant complaining about $500 tuition increases, take note.

Ryan Johnson is an economics and international studies junior. He can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.