https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2019/3/18/university-convenes-calendar-committee-discuss-pos/
Thoughts?
Not going to happen to the entire University. Doubt that the professionals schools will accept the semester idea. May be just the College and Graduate Schools. Strong doubt even that will happen.
Boyer may have a lot of say in College but he is only one of the kingpins among other major constituents of the entire University.
Agree. Dean of the College isn’t the same thing as Dean of a professional school or academic division. Not a knock on the guy - he’s done a great job with the College and his long tenure at the place spans a ton of crucial history. He’s well poised to recommend the next set of steps. A bit surprised about this one being taken to the next level. Would love to read what comes out of the committee and hope that the Maroon keeps current with the story.
If you can’t get all the grad schools and divisions on board with one another, don’t see how this is going to happen for the college either. You need faculty, graduate and undergraduate schedules to be in sync. unless the College plans to hire their own set of instructors, TA’s and graders for all courses. And obviously it would destroy any ability to take grad courses or participate in any class that would have a mix of grads and undergrads. And seriously - are the Bus. Econ. kids really going to be taking courses at an empty Booth for the month of September?
Personally, I’d be more than a bit disappointed if the pace of learning slows down. Seems like every 20-25 years there’s some major discussion about dumbing down the program LOL. Despite moving along at the same clip since 1892, the “relentless pace” of the quarter system is apparently now causing “social” pressures on students, faculty and staff. Huh?
I hope it happens. My daughter is a third year in the Neuroscience program and she and ALL her friends there say that the quarter System is stressful and does not work in the larger scheme of things. They study for midterms barely a few weeks into the Semester then prepare for finals a few weeks after that. They live and die for tests and not for knowledge. It causes great anxiety to the students. Boyer and the committee should hold an open dialogue with the students and get their Feedback.
Why would the professional schools resist a semester system?
When I was in law school, most of the professional schools at Stanford were on a semester system, while the rest of the university, including the college and arts & sciences graduate school, used quarters. Everybody has since moved to a quarter system, but back in the day there was zero appetite for a quarter system in the law school, at least, and I wasn’t aware of any in the b-school or med-school, either.
Couldn’t agree more with this. It seems antithetical to instilling a love of learning and quest for knowledge.
It’s a non-reason, IMO, but ostensibly a semester system locks them into only offering courses that can fill 15 weeks. Of course, there’s nothing preventing them from offering 7 week half-credit courses.
Academics I know in both academic and professional divisions detest the semester system because you run out of stuff to teach. Most of them speak from the experience of switching from quarters to semesters, rather than the reverse. I think that Law is one example where there’s not much interaction with the undergraduates and med/Harris/Div might be the same. As for Booth, Bus Econ would conceivably have B school faculty or grad students teaching some of those courses.
@skieurope has a point. There are ways to keep the curriculum hopping within a 15 week time frame. Minis, staggered start dates on your courses, or abbreviated semesters with a winter session . . . some of this exists at other schools. University of Chicago shouldn’t just adapt the models of a standard 15-week/4 course load typical at other peer schools. They can use the opportunity to explore how a 15 week run-time can be used effectively and rigorously.
@paxfobiscum and @Mwfan1921 - whether this works well for any particular student will vary. But when a school switches from quarter to semester, it’s not the case that the workload is less relentless - oftentimes the courseload will increase (in this case from 4 to 5). The pace for any particular class is slower, but you make up for it with more courses required in order to get through the required credits in four years. So probably doesn’t make sense to few any particular switch as going easier on the students. It will still be tough - just in a different way.
“They study for midterms barely a few weeks into the Semester then prepare for finals a few weeks after that. They live and die for tests and not for knowledge.”
There’s a quick fix to that w/o having to change the term system. It’s called one midterm at week 5 and a final after week 10. Smaller quizzes in between can test knowledge progress if needed.
“It causes great anxiety to the students. Boyer and the committee should hold an open dialogue with the students and get their Feedback.”
According to the Maroon article the respective student advisory committees will be involved.
Run out of stuff to teach? I don’t think I ever had a course in college or in law school where we ran out of stuff to learn because 15 weeks was too long a time period.
Law especially. We had these enormous casebooks, and there wasn’t a single class I took in all of law school that covered more than half the material in a casebook. The only casebook I had where I covered almost all the material in class was (a) written by the teacher, and (b) covered over two semesters, the second of which was entirely elective. Even then, there were three or four chapters we barely skimmed in the classroom.
^ It’s quite possible for those teaching cumulative courses. Just ask anyone teaching Calc 1 or Micro theory after it’s been stretched out another 5 weeks. The thinking is 10 weeks is the perfect amount of time to learn a set of concepts. If you stretch it out you just waste everyone’s time. Seminar-style majors or professional programs of the same might be different. You can always add more cases to a law class.
Does anyone know what the original thought process was when the quarter system was implemented? Why was it adopted originally rather than the semester system?
@kaukana - there used to be 4 quarters including summer. Much more common once upon a time.
Even 35 years ago there were a lot more quarter systems than today. I remember when Berkeley (I guess the entire UC system?*) changed to semesters. UMN did so 20 years ago. We know profs who have done the switch. We dont’ know anyone who has gone from sems. to quarters like what JHS was saying about Stanford law and other professional schools. Would be interesting to observe what happened to the pace of instruction in that case.
- Maybe not - UCLA is still on quarter system.
[Speculating]: Although we tend to think of the Ivies as imitating Oxford and Cambridge, historically that was largely not true, at least until early in the 20th Century. The spate of universities created from whole cloth at the end of the 19th Century, however, including Chicago, Northwestern, and Stanford, were designed from the outset to imitate the Great Universities of Europe.
One of the features they imitated was to have three academic terms during the academic year. At Oxbridge, they weren’t called quarters, but there were three terms between September and June, with a “long vacation” separating the last from the first of the next academic year. In the U.S., as colleges sought to make more efficient use of their facilities, and responding to the demographic imperatives of a depression and a world war, and the increasing popularity of college for women, they started offering classes for credit in the summer, too, so everything became “quarters.” (Dartmouth switched from semesters to quarters when it started admitting women, so that it could continue to admit the same number of men – as it had promised its Trustee and alumni it would – without having to pay for building more dorms to house the additional female students.)
(Berkeley and Merced are the only University of California campuses that switched to semesters.)
^ I’m all for UChicago renaming it’s quarter system Michaelmas, Hilary and Trinity.
At LSE we had Michaelmas, Lent and Summer.
UCLA’s law and medical schools are on the semester system. Since many (if not most) summer legal internships begin in late May or early June, it only makes sense.
I’ve been a student at two schools on the semester system and one on the quarter system, and I’ve taught in both systems. Give me semesters any day! If you’re running out of things to teach, you’re not a very good instructor.
^ That’s funny. I’ve done the same. Give me quarters - semesters are for slower learners 
All joking aside (thought that wasn’t quite a joke), there is no one right answer since the slower pace of the semester system can simply be offset with more courses. However, at many of our top private uni’s currently, that’s simply not the case. One perhaps may load up with five-courses a semester at Harvard but most don’t. UChicago’s program is simply more academically intense on average, since all must enroll in a minimum of 38 courses (compared to 32 at other top uni’s on semesters). Sure, the semester system can go “deeper” in the average course, but what you find when you examine the curriculum is that it doesn’t - it’s merely stretched out with some filler. What ends up happening is that Harvard kids have more free time for non-academic stuff. For those desiring that experience at college, Harvard, Duke, and other 32-credit semester schools are perfect for you. For those hoping to maximize their academic experience (more courses, more energetic pace), UChicago and its current quarter system is going to be what you want.
The issue of summer internships is a genuine consideration since they have become an ever larger factor in choosing an undergrad or professional program. It’s helpful, perhaps, to have everything in sync. Haven’t read that the College students have been kept away from internships due to the quarter system - quite the opposite (profs and employers are very accommodating about finals and start dates when necessary). At Booth none of us was kept off Wall St. due to being on quarters, and of course both Chicago and Stanford Law are on quarters . . . not sure, practically speaking, that summer internship timing is a genuine enough issue to warrant a switch.
I thought Chicago required 42 courses. Has that changed? I note that in my children’s cohort most people took at 45 or 46 courses, and 48 was a lot more common than 42.
When I went to Yale, it required 36 courses to graduate. Harvard does require only 32, that’s true. At Penn, the minimum number of courses varies by major, between 32 and 36. At Brown, it’s only 30! And at Dartmouth, another quarter school, it’s only 35. (Meanwhile, Stanford seems to require the equivalent of 45 full-credit courses.)
I don’t know about other schools.
^ You are allowed to transfer in up to 400 credits/4 courses (AP/IB etc.). So minimum of 38. A good number probably take over 42 UChicago courses.
Haven’t checked but Duke was 32 when Hubby was there and I thought someone posted that it’s (still) 32.