I take classes in the evening at the local junior college when work allows, usually a 3-4 per year, depending on my business travel schedule.

Last fall when I tried to enroll into Trigonometry and Statistics, I found out that since a previous year's Visual Basic .NET course had been converted to an online class, all of us had a $20 lab fee added to our records but were never told. While one could argue that by taking the course online, we save them $20 in facility costs, whatever. The fact is, I had to leave work to go resolve the issue during business hours (only time they are open) which I think is a little out of line with their attempts to target older students who want to return to school.

I'm attempting to enroll into classes online through Artemis, but receiving a message that states "Program Objective requires Placement in ENG, REA". It sounds as though the system thinks I need to take a placement exam (the last one I took was probably in the summer of 2003). I've been attending classes (from casual attendance of college coursework to the police academy in 1990) for the past 20 years and have taken a couple of placement exams over the years. I even taught at the junior college (the police academy is a part of it) from time to time as an instructor.

Maybe I'm an optomist (haha) but I think it's safe to say my reading hasn't degraded substantially over the past 20 years. Yet, I keep having to take this stupid test because the scores are only good for two years. I found out today that if I take an English course, I won't have to take the exam again. That would have been a nice thing to tell students. Not all of us go full-time for two years and leave, especially those of us that take night classes. Furthermore, it's now $17 to retake the exam.

I tried to get them to override me so that I could get into an English course, and then whole point would be moot. No dice.

I asked for the address of the Vice President of Student Services -- the question is whether to take time to complain. It's not the policy, it's the endless little stupid things that come up because the school fails to communicate things to its students.

To complain, or not to compain?