Reading and composition classes expanded

Students who will be juniors and seniors and haven’t yet signed up for required reading and composition (R & C) classes have one more chance to enroll, and campus leaders have increased the number of 2011-12 seats to accommodate them.

Some 1,400 additional spots in these classes will be available for the 2011-12 academic year. And juniors and seniors, who register ahead of freshmen and sophomores, will have first access to the courses when they register for  fall courses this month. R & C courses provide critical foundational skills that are an important prerequisite for upper-division courses.

If these students do not take advantage of the priority access, they will lose even standard access to those courses after the 2011-12 school year, when R&C courses will only be offered to freshmen and sophomores.

George Breslauer, the campus’s executive vice chancellor and provost, announced in March 2010 that the campus would significantly increase funding for additional R&C courses so that all UC Berkeley students complete the requirement before their junior year.  The number of seats in R&C courses increased from approximately 5,200 in 2008-09 to 6,400 in 2010-11 to and an estimated 7,800 for 2011-12.

The R&C course expansion is part of a comprehensive campus planning effort to ensure that undergraduate students have access to the courses they need. By 2011-12, more than $6.25 million will have been allocated toward the effort to expand R&C courses, lower-division math and science courses, and many foreign language courses.

Additional details about R & C course expansion are available online.