Following student complaints about waitlist inconsistency, Columbia University has announced that they will be introducing ranked-choice voting to determine enrollment. In this new system, enrolled students will rank the waitlisted students they want to add into the class. Students who receive the most votes will be added by the instructor, while students who receive the fewest votes must try for another class. According to a Columbia spokesperson, “We saw how well it worked in the mayoral primaries and figured that it would make sense to determine class enrollment too. Allowing the students to determine their classmates also takes pressure off of the professors, who no longer have to feel the crushing guilt of rejecting a student who needed that class to graduate.”
This new move is not without controversy. Opponents of ranked-choice voting waitlists have decried the system as “ill-concieved” and “open to exploitation,” claiming that some winning students may not even receive the most popular votes from their potential classmates. Supporters have pushed back, claiming that it “reduces potential friction between students” and promotes an environment of inclusivity by allowing broad representation across the student body to have a say about their future classmates. As for the students who fail to place near the top of the waitlist ballot, a Columbia spokesperson simply said, “better luck next year.”
