The mysteries of MyRED extend far beyond the disappearance of student bills.
Although MyRED is in the process of being made more user-friendly, past problems have caused chaos for some U. Nebraska-Lincoln students.
Dexter Schrodt, a senior finance major, enrolled for the 2010 fall semester through MyRED just like every other student last spring. But when Schrodt came to class his first week of school, four of the classes in which he had enrolled — Finance, Financial Intuitions and Markets, Statistics and Intermediate microeconomics — had dropped him.
He quickly re-registered for the same classes and found he was dropped again, he said.
Schrodt sought the help of an adviser at the College of Business and Administration where he was told that he didn’t meet the prerequisites needed to take those courses.
He said he was never notified after he enrolled last year that he would be dropped from his classes in CBA. When Schrodt went to enroll for classes a third time, his problem was still unsolved. All the classes were full.
The switch from WAM to MyRED played a role in Schrodt’s grief.
“The old system used to list the prerequisites,” Schrodt said.
During the time of student enrollment last spring, MyRED allowed students to sign up for classes without the prerequisites they needed to take a course. Earl Hawkey, director of UNL’s Registration and Records, said it is up to a student’s department to notify them regarding changes in a student’s schedule.
“(This problem) has happened before in the past, but it maybe happened more often because of the switch from WAM to MyRED,” Hawkey said.
Kathy Mellick, an administrative tech for CBA’s Department of Finance, said the department notifies students by e-mail if they don’t possess the prerequisites for a course and are going to be dropped from it.
“The switching of systems made things really messy for us,” she said. “If he wasn’t notified, it may have just been a glitch in the system.”
Schrodt is currently pursuing his degree with the help of online courses at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. He is also still taking two courses at UNL.
“[This] put me really behind,” he said. “At this point, it would take me too long to get all those prerequisites; I just want my degree.”