JEDDAH, 18 August — Organized chaos is supposed to be a humorous contradiction in terms. It became a stressful and noisy fact at King Abdul Aziz University on registration day last Tuesday.

At the stroke of 8 a.m. when registration opened, long lines of prospective students snaked their way through a milling crowd of other applicants. Already with signs of frustration in the frowns on their faces, there were clear signs that the situation was going to deteriorate.

After an hour, when nothing much seemed to be happening at the registration desks, the low muttering rose to shouting and the once patient lines had become a disorganized crowd, pushing and shoving towards the desks in their frustration.

After nearly three hours, the levels of tension rose appreciably when students who arrived to register bullied their way to the front of the mass and cleared registration in a few minutes. It was not apparent why they received preferential treatment and it visibly increased the tension.

"I wish I knew somebody, just to speed things up," muttered one in the crowd. "It’s know what you know," replied another. "Wasta," growled a third. One of the university staff members forced himself through the heaving throng, distributing registration forms. I asked him why it wasn’t possible to register by telephone or Internet. His face was a mixture of frustration and incredulity.

"Where on earth do you think you are?" he snarled. I had thought I was at a technology based university that offered business management and IT among its courses; perhaps I was in the wrong place. It is worrying that a university, allegedly at the forefront of IT and communications studies in the Kingdom, doesn’t seem to have got beyond the pen and paper stage when it comes to registration of students.

Shortly after 11a.m. I registered the papers, only to find that payment for registration had to be made before they could be finalized. Why wasn’t this made clear in advance? Why could the payment be made on the spot by credit card? Did I have to go through the whole cattle-market of queuing again? No answer to the first two questions, yes to the last.

Having paid the fees into the bank, the end of the process seemed close. However, this is the land of the mirage – I had to wait another two hours in an almost empty office while what staff that occasionally drifted through languidly waved pieces of paper about with no sense of urgency. By this time, the tension in the office was electric among the supplicants – because with less than an hour to complete registration, there was no sign of a confirmation of registration. All agreed that the organization of registration was disgraceful and entirely unfitting a university and was further compounded by the cavalier attitude of the staff towards their prospective students. It finally arrived with moments to spare. Whether it arrived in time for those unfortunates queuing behind me, I have no idea, for my only desire was to be out of that nightmare as quickly as possible.

This is the first year that fees have been charged for tuition. Many have saved hard to afford the courses on offer. Mehsin Al Shehri, for example, had to find SR6,000 for a course out of a salary of SR2,700 a month.

The course fees contribute to the costs of the university, which include the salaries of the less than welcoming staff taking the fees from the applicants. It might be productive if the Public Relations department whispered them of this. Perhaps in the crowd of exhausted students in the foyer at the end of the day there is the future manager who will one day implement the changes that are clearly necessary. It’s the only positive thought I can derive from the experience.