If you haven't seen the news, here's the Straits Times article (well, okay, this is a Reddit comment which copies and pastes the entire article, because the actual article is stuck behind a Premium paywall) announcing the death of CORS, the Centralised Online Registration System which National University of Singapore (NUS) students use to bid for the modules they want to study.
NUS will be replacing the venerable portal, which has been in existence since 2003, with a new system that doesn't rely on bidding or points in the middle of next year.
The news saddens me. CORS is a good system, I believe. In a perfect world, everyone will get all the modules they want 100% of the time. But that's not possible in reality because of resource constraints, so there has to be a way to control for modules which everybody wants but not everybody can have.
CORS achieves this by giving students virtual currency and telling them to buy their modules for a particular semester using it. The "prices" of modules are driven by the students themselves in a similar vein to a market economy. If a module is popular, more students will put in large bids to increase the likelihood that they will get it, and its cost will go up. On the other hand, modules that fewer people want typically cost a nominal one point.
Students have to prioritise how they use their points. Do they spend thousands on that one very expensive module, and end up only being able to afford four other modules that cost one point because nobody wants them?
All this means that students have partial responsibility for the bidding outcomes. Only they can decide how much they want to spend on each module. If they get the balance wrong and fail to get a module that they want, perhaps because they overspent on another, it's partly their fault.
Contrast this to the new system. Details are sketchy at the moment, but it looks like it is essentially an extension of the current tutorial balloting system in which students rank the available tutorial timeslots for a particular module in order of preference, and the computer allocates the tutorial classes, using randomisation if necessary to determine who gets into an oversubscribed slot. According to the news article, under the new system, students will rank the modules they are keen on, and the computer will do something, and bam! Here are your modules for next semester.
It seems like the element of luck is greater, and the control that students have is diminished.
Another advantage that CORS has is that it imparts real-world life lessons. Besides learning how to make the best use of limited resources, module bidding is also an exercise in diligence. It won't do you any good to spray points left and right at random and hope you get all your modules. To maximise your chances of success, you have to look up the archived data tables showing the trends in the "price" of each of your modules of interest, so that you can plan how much to spend on each one. Doing such research in advance is good training and discipline for anything in life. You wouldn't buy a house without first understanding what you're about to pay, would you?
CORS is also a useful introduction to "adult" concepts. Not sex and violence, but more wholesome things like extremely basic economics and personal financial matters. For example, the theory of demand and supply can be observed in how modules end up being priced. Modules that many students want, meaning high demand, cost more. Modules with small intakes, meaning low supply, cost more. The converse is also true for both statements.
Using CORS also lays the foundation for participating in actual auctions with cash instead of fake computer money. For instance, the purchasing of a Certificate of Entitlement (COE), which is a piece of paper you need if you want to own a car in Singapore, works on the same fundamental principle as CORS. A small number of COEs are made available by the transport authority in a certain bidding cycle, and people who want one have to bid for them. If the number of bidders is greater than the number of COEs, then the bidders are ranked according to their bid amounts and a COE is awarded to each person starting from the highest bidder until all the COEs are given out. The last person to be awarded the COE is the lowest successful bidder, and everybody who got a COE in that round only needs to pay the amount that he bid. When the latest COE prices come out in the news, this is also the amount that gets reported.
Will the new system do all these wonderful things? I doubt it. What's so mentally stimulating about putting your choice of modules in order from most to least desired?
It seems that CORS is a victim of this sudden push that NUS is on right now, to upgrade all its online systems by replacing the existing ones with totally new versions. Other than CORS, the longstanding university-wide Integrated Virtual Learning Environment (IVLE) will also soon fall prey to its successor, LumiNUS. They should really find a better name, for this one is a contrived and pretentious piece of garbage. And even the Graduation Academic Planning System (GAPS) that is used by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) to help its students keep track of their graduation requirements, is set to give way to a new Academic Advisement system at the end of this year.
Whether these efforts result in any real improvements in user experience and reliability remains to be seen. I choose to stay optimistic, but am nonetheless a bit peeved at having to deal with so many changes in such a short time.
Especially the loss of poor little CORS.
Rest in peace.
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