John Clement asked, "Whatever happened to the 18 hours/semester."
My answers will sound cynical... but I believe they are mostly on track.
At my school, with a 122-hour graduation requirement, if you take 15
hours per semester for 6 semesters and 16 hours per semester for 2
semesters, you will have the minimum hours for graduation in exactly 8
semesters (four academic years).
If you take 18-hours per semester you can graduate in 7 semesters,
assuming you can sequence the necessary courses in your major. That
would save the student (read this as "be a loss to the college") in the
ballpark of $10,000 in tuition and room and board, depending of course
on the cost of the particular college. You won't find many colleges
recommending that students try to graduate in 7 semesters.
If you take 12 hours for 9 semesters and 14 hours for 1 semester you can
graduate in 10 semesters (5 academic years). That would cost the
student (read this as "be extra money for the college") about $20,000.
You won't find many colleges discouraging 5-year students.
If you take 18 hours per semester and you are not a highly motivated
student, you might get bad grades, might get burned out, might not have
any fun, might have to quit sports... and... might drop out after 1 or 2
years. This would save the student big money, except the student
wouldn't get a degree. This would cost the college really big bucks
(lost tuition and room and board) for 2 or 3 years.
In addition, if the student drops out, the college has to report a worse
retention rate. Poor retention rates can hurt during accreditation
reviews, but hurt even worse for recruiting and for ranking in "US News
and World Report."
Although it hurts PR a little bit to have 5-year graduates rather than
4-year graduates, the big hurt comes if students don't graduate at all
or don't graduate within 6 years. Thus, the college wins financially if
typical students stay more than 4 years but equal to or less than 6
years.
While I am being cynical, my college is one that recently changed from
quarters to semesters. Although all kinds of reasons were given for
this change, there was one major driving force that has two aspects to
it. This driving force is attrition. Here are the two aspects:
(1) With 10-week quarters the first big opportunity to quit school is at
the end of fall quarter. If the school is on 15-week semesters, there
is some likelihood that the slow starter or the homesick student will
stay an additional 5 weeks and become adjusted and willing to stay in
school. Also, with quarters there is an additional chance to drop out
after the second quarter, making two drop-out possibilities per year
rather than one drop-out period for semester schools. My college was
absolutely convinced our retention rate would increase when we switched
to semesters. I think this has been true, but not anywhere near as good
as they hoped. I think that when a student comes in to my office after
7 weeks and is thinking about dropping out right then (before the term
ends) I have a good change of getting them to finish the quarter because
there are only 3 weeks left... "You're almost there!" However, I have a
bad chance of convincing the student to finish the semester because they
aren't even half-way through the semester yet. Thus, the term-break
dropouts went down some, but the midterm dropouts went up.
(2) If there is a midterm drop out (which is reasonably high for
first-term freshmen) the tuition and room and board refund is often zero
(depending on the date of withdrawal). If the student drops out in the
middle of a quarter, the college got one-third of a full year's money
from that student. If a student drops out in the middle of a semester,
the college got one-half of a full year's money from that student.
Bottom line... colleges are counting beans and watching the financial
and PR bottom line more today than ever before. That drives a lot of
decisions; usually for the worse.
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry and Physics
Bluffton University
Bluffton, OH 45817
(419)-358-3270
edmiston@bluffton.edu
_______________________________________________
Phys-L mailing list
Phys-L@electron.physics.buffalo.edu https://www.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l