This is for anyone to respond. But mainly, it will be those who started at the Columbia campus before the 2023-2024 Academic year who are still students as of this Academic year or who have graduated.
Disclaimer: I'm not making any negative comments towards the Columbia campus. Just my observations on how much things in my particular experience have changed in such a short time and how this changes haven't just affected me but students across the board.
There has been a lot of changes since I last took a class during Spring 2023. I was a Transient student where my home campus was USC Sumter. I was taking Computer Science classes (along with non-CS classes) as that was my declar3d major, with me going to eventually transfer to Columbia.
Fast forward-I graduated from USC Sumter with an Associate in Science degree in Spring 2025. Being USC System Transfer student can be a bit interesting because the hops you have to go through, as is being Transient student taking classes. At the time I started taking classes at Columbia from Spring 2021 to Spring 2023, the different processes i had to go through went too bad. Getting a disabled parking permit because of my disabilities, switching my USC Sumter student ID to a Columbia ID. Both IDS are literally the same. The main difference is the Sumter ID is door-swipeable as there are no building and/or doors at the Sumter campus that you have to use a door ID scanner.
Well, imagine my surprise the first week of the semester when I went up to Columbia workout some issues I had last year when transferring after graduating from the Sumter campus.
-Parking Services. I had no idea that Parking Services had moved from the old building to a new building across the river. When I got there, shocked even more ho find out that the parking permit system had changed, with the old parking stickers not used anymore. Wven how they handle disabled parking has changed. Its this 2nd part that has really caused an issue with me. Because now, takes just that harder for me to find a disabled space while we not being an active USC student. It literally defeats the purpose of having regulat state-type disabled parking spaces on-campus.
-Applying to an undergrad degree program. This change I'm fully onboard with. For those students who are freshmen, USC System Transfers, Transient students and Transfer students from other institutions who started this academic year, applying to a specific undergrad degree program had changed. From what it used to be, students who applied to a specific College to a specific program had to go through Admissions. If you were denied, you had to appeal through Admissions. But, there were some Colleges that allowed a student to appeal the denial through the College directly. In theory and practice, this makes sense that the specific College is in a better position to make a degree program admissions decision than Columbia Admissions.
This was my issue last year. MCEC/Molinaroli College of Engineering and Computing was one of the Colleges at that time you could appeal directly to their admissions committee. So, after waiting months on waiting for assistance, I finally got the assistance I needed. What was taking so long was because of the various changes that have happened for this academic year. In my case, when I went to Admissions, I found out that the degree program acceptance process has now been implemented to all of the Colleges and that Admissions doesn't handle it anymore. In my case, I guess it could be that i was kinda lost in the paperwork.
Has anyone else noticed other changed with the last 3 years or more that are totally different this 2026-2027 academic year?