I didn't have to, my college provided fairly functional class scheduling systems. It had integrated wait lists, so you could just sign up and hope someone else drops if needed, and occasionally you could just have the professor add another slot (the college didn't mind the free extra money).
I had this in a state school that isn't even our state's premier state school, and we are not a state known for computer science or anything, why do all these supposedly premier institutions not offer it?
> It had integrated wait lists, so you could just sign up and hope someone else drops if needed
This just moves the scripting point to "signing up for the waiting list". I guess in that case it does mean that running it 24/7 wouldn't help.
> and occasionally you could just have the professor add another slot (the college didn't mind the free extra money).
You paid per course? In most of the world, you pay per semester and there are no per-course fees. So professors aren't particularly incentivized to take more students.
In our case, the number of professors and size of rooms was simply insufficient for the number of students. Especially if you wanted a good professor - where I was at the variability in quality of teaching was pretty high. Or for some people, if they wanted to schedule things so that all their courses were packed into 4 days of the week, or they didn't want to wake up early, or whatever reason for making a particular course be in high demand. This led to the necessity of such scripts.
I had this in a state school that isn't even our state's premier state school, and we are not a state known for computer science or anything, why do all these supposedly premier institutions not offer it?