To institute Illinibucks at our campus would take a lot of
planning to consider all the possibilities of the system so it can run as
smoothly and efficiently as possible.
However, the possibilities are endless for these “illinibucks” from
everything from the allocation to the uses of them. Regarding the allocation of illinibucks to
students, the university would have to decide if every student should get the
same amount or should some students get more or less than others. Class registration on campus could be totally
changed if a student could use illinibucks to move up in the registration
process. If seniors no longer got an
earlier date for registration but got more illinibucks than younger classes
they would then have to budget their illinibucks and determine if spending a substantial
amount of their allocation on early registration is a priority of yours. Then the next question would be what is
eligible to spend your illinibucks on?
Class registration is an obvious example of what illinibucks
could be used on but there are a few other examples on campus I could see
illinibucks being used. One is at career
fairs; this comes to mind because I had a personal experience at the business
career fair this semester that illinibucks could have been very useful. You wait in lines for hours at the business career
fair just waiting to talk a company for a couple minutes to drop off your
resume. There are a ton of companies
there that some kids do not have time to go talk to because they have been
waiting in line for hours for other companies.
If you were allowed to use illinibucks to be admitted to an express line
to talk to certain companies, then students would be able to network with more
companies and not have to prioritize certain companies over others due to time restraints. If illinibucks could be used for both
registration and career fairs it would force students to budget out their
illinibucks depending on their priorities.
If a senior had to register early for classes because they needed to get
into a certain class they would have to spend a lot of their illinibucks on
registration but then would not have a lot of illinibucks left for things such
as the career fair. This would cause
controversy because a senior would not be able to go into the hypothetical illinibucks
express lines at the career fair which would have a negative effect on their
chances of talking to an abundant amount of companies for jobs post graduation.
Other uses for illinibucks would be to
skip the line at the union bookstore, at dining halls, and even could be used
to get better seats at university sporting events.
I would suggest that every student get their own illinibucks
card almost like their own university debit card because then they could just
simply swipe the card when they wish to spend the illinibucks. Another thing the university would have to
consider if students could purchase extra illinibucks but I think that would be
a disastrous idea because then wealthier students could just purchase extra to
have an advantage in certain scenarios on campus. Ultimately, I believe illinibucks would not
be a good idea on our campus because things such as registration already have a
good system in place that allows for all students to register for classes in
the most efficient way possible.
Most importantly, the price of the illinibuck would have to
be set logically. If the price is set
too high students will be timid to use their illinibucks being fearful if they
spend them at one place they will miss out on an opportunity elsewhere. Vice a versa, if the price is set too low
then the students will not value illinibucks because everyone will be able to
skip all the “lines” that illinibucks allow you too.
In my class last year more students talked about the career fair example. I can't recall somebody else doing it this time around. One question for you is whether the lines are pretty much the same in length or if some are much longer than others.
ReplyDeleteHere's a thought. Track the line length at the career fair by time of day and use the data generated by that experience to calculate the IlliniBucks price for the next career fair. So, to make this as simple as possible, suppose a student could jump at most one line for a really popular company, but could jump two or three lines for less popular companies. Would that benefit people? Would some students not stick around and instead leave once they used up their Illinibucks?
I also wonder, quite apart from the prompt, where some of the career fair times could simply be scheduled in advance using some software for that. You might comment on why that doesn't seem to happen. Could it?
Yes, I agree that the illinibuck needs to have a value set to it in terms of how many lines you can skip. A good way to determine that is track line lengths of each company to see which companies are the most popular. For next years fair I would have a live tracker of the estimated wait for each line and the illinibucks will be valued at how many minutes of wait you can skip per illiniibuck. This would make it fair so companies with longer lines will be valued higher by the students. I do not think students will leave after they run out of illinibucks because illinibucks should just be seen as a convenience and to save you time. If a student were to leave because of they ran out of illinibucks and they did not want to wait in lines that would show that the student is lazy.
DeleteJohn,
ReplyDeleteI agree with all your points in here about the Illinibucks. The career fair example I think is very relevant as well having been there myself and seen the mass amounts of people. However I just think it would be too difficult to introduce an efficient system at the career fair to allow people to use Illinibucks to cut lines, get resume preference, etc. Your point about a senior having to weigh registering for classes vs. career fair also I think is a great point against the use of Illinibucks. Overall I agree with a lot of your points and also think that wealthier students would just buy more and effectively break the system- leading me not to want to have an Illinibucks system on campus.
John,
ReplyDeleteI like your proposal of the possibility of using Illinibucks at the business career fair. While at the career fair a few weeks ago, I realized that certain companies, especially more competitive ones, had ridiculously long lines while the others maybe had one or two people talking to a recruiter. I noticed a friend of mine waited in one line for a company while I had enough time to talk to 3 other companies and a variety of other acquaintances I ran into at the fair. I understand that there a variety of factors that contribute to this, but I am interested in the possibility of using Illinibucks to skip one of these long lines to talk to a recruiter. Ideally a senior would have more Illinibucks to use over a junior waiting in the same line. This could persuade underclassman to not wait in these lines at bigger companies, giving seniors a higher chance at getting a job. However, I could also see this overcomplicating the career fair and causing issues that might not work out. Good post.