Thursday, June 11, 2009

beurocracy

My experiences with San Jose state admissions and records department came to mind when I read this section in chapter 3. There are rules and forms for every situation that can be encountered. I am in the process of applying for graduation and I feel like I am an animal at the circus jumping through hoops for entertainment purposes. I know that they have a system to try to manage thousands of students paperwork, but if you miss a "hoop" you're back at the beginning. The school says that they are trying to downsize and get rid of excess students, yet they're not doing anything (that I am aware of) to speed up the paperwork or reduce the "hoops."

1 comment:

  1. I share your pain. I've experienced this both academically and in the workplace. The process of going through "the process" often times feel redundant and aggravating. At my last job, we had a process in place for new vendors that wanted to work with us. Unfortunately, the process we had in place didn't deter these vendors from hounding us with e-mails and phone calls. They all had an urgency for us to meet with them and to commit to a contract. Each time they contacted us, that took time away from other projects that we were working on and in the long run, pushed back the vendor selection process. Academically, as a distance education student, I'm the one doing the hounding. Since I can only e-mail or call someone at the school, I often have to talk to multiple people before I reach the one I need to talk to. I feel bad bombarding people's in-boxes and their voice-mails but I don't have the option of taking care of what I need to in person. I know there is a system in place to make things more efficient and I think SJSU is going through some changes that includes trying to make everything more seamless but for the time being, it's not fun to deal with.

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