I have heard a vast mul­ti­tude of hor­ror sto­ries from both friends and strangers about hav­ing issues with their advisors.

Students being one class short of being able to grad­u­ate, not hav­ing enough classes over the 300 level to grad­u­ate, tak­ing classes that they did not even need, and being told a required course trans­ferred when it really didn’t are just a few exam­ples of these problems.

Speaking from per­sonal expe­ri­ence, the advi­sor that I was assigned has been use­less. He is always unor­ga­nized, has no idea where I am at in my school­ing career and gives me no direc­tion that I could not have fig­ured out myself. I was just told by another fac­ulty mem­ber that I could have been grad­u­at­ing this win­ter instead of hav­ing to take more classes in the spring in order to graduate.

I know I am not alone in this after hear­ing all these hor­ror sto­ries about other stu­dents and their same, if not worse, issues with their advisors.

I am cur­rently in my sec­ond and final year at Ferris State after trans­fer­ring from Western Michigan. While I have thor­oughly enjoyed my time as a Bulldog much more then as a Bronco, there is some­thing I miss from my time at Western Michigan. The thing I miss is that I used to have an actual advi­sor. Someone whose only job is to give advice. That is it; their main and ulti­mate con­cern was advis­ing stu­dents to the best of their ability.

Ferris clearly has an issue with dou­bling up its pro­fes­sors as advi­sors. The issue is that advis­ing is not a professor’s top con­cern, at least that is how it seems. Professors have enough on their plate as it is with form­ing les­son plans, writ­ing tests, hold­ing office hours, and grad­ing. It really is not fair to ask pro­fes­sors to take on the mon­u­men­tal respon­si­bil­ity of advis­ing stu­dents on top of every­thing they have to account for already.

Advising is some­thing that can­not be taken lightly. Poor advice can result in a stu­dent not grad­u­at­ing on time, which also could relate to the stu­dent spend­ing thou­sands of extra dol­lars they should have never had to spend. College stu­dents are poor enough as it is; we do not need to be tak­ing unnec­es­sary classes on top of every­thing else.

Changes need to hap­pen. Students should not be ques­tion­ing the advice they are receiv­ing from their advi­sor which will have a huge effect on their future.

It is time for Ferris to face real­ity and real­ize that the cur­rent sys­tem is unac­cept­able. While some pro­fes­sors can han­dle the dou­ble duty, it has become clear that many oth­ers cannot.

If one stu­dent does not grad­u­ate on time due to poor advice from their advi­sor, then that is one too many. For now though, I would rec­om­mend talk­ing to as many fac­ulty as one can to make sure that he is stay­ing on the right track. Do not let some­one else’s incom­pe­tence come between you and your goals. n