It seems like in times of covid when many professors are at home would be an easier time to make the long talked about switch to the semester system. Granted, it is a lot of hassle to figure out what to do with existing students …but maybe start with freshman classes. I heard that the data is the semester system is less stressful on the students and more in tune with textbooks, deep learning and the rest of the nation’s colleges. Does anyone know if there is a push for this now at UCs? UCLA UCSB UCSD UCI UCDAVIS
I do not work at the UC’s but if the quarter system will not work for you at the moment, do not expect things to change very quickly for the UC’s.
Cal Poly Pomona recently switched from the quarter system to the semester system and it took several years of planning.
I personally attended the CPP in the dark ages and loved the quarter system. 3 quarters= 2 semesters so you are still going to get the same amount of information and deep learning, it is just spread out differently. You definitely need to be on your toes with the quarter system and hit the ground running. My younger son attended SDSU which is on the semester system and he had a tendency to procrastinate since he had more time for his projects which is not an option on the quarter system.
To each is own, so find a school system that works for you and do not depend upon anything drastically changing for the UC’s any time soon.
there is no “push” to change UC calendars; they’ve been on quarters for decades. When Cal first proposed its switch, it took years (literally) to implement.
fwiw: approximately 25% of colleges are on a quarter system, including Stanford, Northwestern, Chicago and Dartmouth. Those ~top 10 unis apparently believe that their students can participate in “deep learning”.
Advantages per Carlton College:
@Nubesenior . . . back in 2019, Chancellor Gene Block of UCLA addressed the subject of switching to semesters in a meeting; here’s a link:
https://dailybruin.com/2019/04/02/chancellor-gene-block-supports-switching-ucla-to-semester-system
Here’s an attribution and a quote:
As gumbymom stated, if a student stays on top of the material, then she/he won’t {edit} fall behind, and thereby not feel stressed.
He didn’t even come close to elaborating on quarters (trimesters) being “a failed system.”
Personally I think he’s way out of bounds. I’d guess that the majority of UCLA students become appreciative of the quarter system legitimately for the reasons they listed. Students by in large are appreciative of taking 40+ courses over their undergraduate years – unless they come in with a lot of APs and want to graduate in three years; but even if they have a lot of APs, they can extend their unit caps and go deeper into their studies. And if he expects students to harbinger the change, I think he’s going to be waiting a long time. I think the professors feel the same way too as seen by the academic senate.
Additionally, UCLA and UCB should keep their distinct differences.
But UCSD is seriously considering switching to semesters. Here’s a link:
Edit, here’s a quote:
Don’t fall behind then.
“Don’t fall behind then.”
That is my view of the quarter system.
I studied under the semester system for undergrad, and the quarter system for graduate school. By the time that I got to graduate school I was mature enough to never fall behind in any class. With this requirement, I preferred the quarter system because you get to take more classes in an academic year. Also, the quarter ends sooner, so that you get to take a mental break for a week or so, and then get back to work on a new set of interesting classes.
If you are inclined to fall behind, then the quarter system might not be a good fit. However, if you are inclined to fall behind, then an academically challenging university might not be a good fit.
Perhaps the Southern Branch students are different, but fwiw, it was the Cal students themselves that led the charge to change to Cal back to a semester system in the early 80’s. (really Old Blues may remember that Cal was originally on the semester system but changed to the quarter system in the mid-60’s). Regardless, it took several years of planning to reprogram computers, align the course credits, etc., to return to a semester system.
I did the opposite of @DadTwoGirls and had quarters undergrad and semesters for grad school. The quarter system taught me to stay on top of things and after getting used to that, I really disliked how long and drawn out semesters felt.
Let me attempt to do a more comprehensive examination of the plusses and minuses of quarters and semesters.
I’ve read the Daily Bruin article before and just glanced at it when I linked it above. But having looked at it again just now, the professor’s quotes bothered me as it did when I read it initially:
He initially made mention of the benefits of semesters better bringing forth a concept of humanistic learning. I was going to say something, but this is obviously not the forum to do this. But this idea is still nonetheless theoretical.
Regarding the first bold, there isn’t even a mention of the concerns for students, who would have a mish-mash of quarter and semester classes.
Regarding the second bold, I don’t think students’ educations which are occurring during the change should be subjected to “trial and error” during the transition.
So in other words, if the system isn’t entirely broken – there are no perfect length of terms for higher education, then why switch? Notwithstanding Chancellor’s thoughts of quarters being a “failed system.”
Here are the pro-semester comments:
Presumably Mr. Lala is speaking about having a two-midterm and one final course. If they are evenly split, they could occur at week 3, 7, and 11 if evenly spaced. If the course were in semesters, they could be at 5, 10, and 16. Semesters do have an advantage of a spring semester break, but that could lead to even more slacking by a student being in party-mode before and after the break. I don’t see mid-term breaks as being an advantage.
UCLA when needed has split off courses that were standalone ones to two-term classes, “A” and “B”, or if they were year long they would naturally be three-quarter term classes, “A” “B” and “C”. There are some that are standalone ones that do pack in close to a semester term’s material in one 10-week, but those are farther between now. These would occur in sciences classes, but no offense to the professor, there doesn’t have to be such need for history classes or the humanities because these are not foundational-type, sequential learning, but they do have occasional “A” and “B” and “A” “B” and “C” classes. English has a very important set of classes that are three-term make-or-break classes, 10A, 10B, and 10C – those were way too tough for me when I heard various prospective English-major horror stories.
Regarding Mr. Avidan’s concerns, I’m not sure why having to take a full load of quarter classes means having less professor and TA support. There will be times where a student will need to take four classes with, say, four units for each in some quarters, but that also occurs during semesters; in fact, there’s more pressure within a semester to take four classes. At least in a quarter term, the student doesn’t have to take three terms of four classes. In fact a four, four, three would keep one on track for a four-year graduation.
As far as digesting material, if a student keeps up with the assignments, then I don’t see a problem with the learning aspect. There are lots who even study beforehand.
Someone also brought up illness, but I don’t see that if a student falls behind because he/she becomes sick would necessarily give the student a better chance of recovery in semesters over a quarter. He or she might have an entirely lost semester rather than a quarter which would be worse.
@bluebayou , regarding Block’s comments of “reading days,” does UCB have these, say, for the last few days of classes before the finals, at his/her discretion? And do they have them before midterms? Or maybe I should ask @ucbalumnus ?
^^yes, Cal does have “reading days” under its semester system. (But that also means the semester has to start a week earlier and students have one less week to work to make money.)
http://guide.berkeley.edu/academic-calendar/
Mr. Avidian needs to work on his critical thinkings skills: for many STEM courses quarter or semester is the same: Frosh Chem is a full year. Calc 1 is a full year. The material is the same, only the numbers of finals (3 or 2) are different, but with one less final, a semester course may have more tests/midterms.
IMO, where a semester system really helps is in the Lit/Hume courses as it gives students more than a couple of weeks to get into the material, come up with a research topic, and then start writing a 10-page paper.
@bluebayou . . . I was thinking about just letting Excel compute the days from beginning to end of instruction for both UCLA and UCB, but I didn’t want to figure out how to remove the weekends. So I just manually counted the days where there were classes without holidays.
**For UCB, these were numbers for both terms in the academic year of 2020-21. **
Fall Semester, 2020:
…68 Days of Teaching Instruction
…5 Days of Reading/Review/Recitation Instruction
…73 Total Days of Instruction
…5 Days for Finals Week
Spring Semester, 2021:
…68 Days of Teaching Instruction
…5 Days of Reading/Review/Recitation Instruction
…73 Total Days of Instruction
…5 Days for Finals Week
Total
…136 Days of Instruction
…10 Days of Reading/Review/Recitation Instruction
…146 Total Days of Instruction
…10 Days for Finals Week
For UCLA, these, were the numbers for 2020-21.
Fall Quarter
…49 Days of Instruction
…2 Days of Common Finals, Saturday and Sunday (Grouped for specific classes)
…5 Days of Finals
Winter Quarter
…48 Days of Instruction
…2 Days of Common Finals, Saturday and Sunday
…5 Days of Finals
Spring Quarter
…49 Days of Instruction
…2 Days of Common Finals, Saturday and Sunday
…5 Days of Finals
Total
…146 Days of Instruction
…6 Days of Common Finals, Saturday and Sunday
…15 Days of Finals
If you take the 73 days of instruction for UCB for each term including R/R/R week, the total is 146, which is the same for UCLA’s days of instruction for the three terms. Both stagger the first term starting mid-week, and UCB staggers its Spring term also. UCLA staggers the Fall term start, but starts on a Monday for Winter and Spring.
Again, I like how spring break divides the Winter and Spring quarters for UCLA, and I think the quarter system generally has a better calendar. I suppose UCLA could stagger the start of each term by adding a couple of days in the front to give its students some reading days, because common finals occur one day after instruction ends, but all this means is that students have to manage their study time better because of the placement of common and regular class-related finals.
UCLA instructs on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, but Cal takes that day off. Better for travel, although UCLA students could travel later on a Wednesday or take the day off from classes which is probably more the case. I hope both sets of students have that problem this fall, which would mean more in-person classes.
UCB doesn’t come back from Christmas break until January 12, 2021. Instruction begins on the 19th. UCLA is already back from Christmas break on January 4th and instruction begins on that date. Both universities winter terms end on December 18th, so UCB students have almost a month off. Slackers!
fwiw: Stanford, which is still on quarter, finally relented and gave all of Thanksgiving week off. Of course that meant that they had to start the fall quarter a whole week earlier (last week of Sep) than they used to (first week of Oct).
OTOH, U-Chicago and Northwestern, two highly ranked quarter schools, still only have Thursday/Friday for Thanksgiving holiday.
Just to add some (hopefully) final points; it looks like UCB has mainly three- and four-unit classes, and perhaps some twos and certainly one unit lab classes.
UCLA sciences have some (mainly) four- and five-unit classes, along with some twos and one-unit labs. One has to be wary of the fives because they could be time consuming outside of class, like some of the CS-type classes.
Most Social Science have fours; Econ likewise, with some one-unit labs, which comprise analytic and/or case-study presentations.
The English major has primarily five-unit classes. 10A is a five-unit, and apparently is the toughest class in the department because the reading material is in Middle English.
The Film/TV major has some ones, twos, fours, fives, sixes and a handful of eights: e.g., F&TV 135A - "Advanced Screenwriting Workshop 6.0, and with the class 135C having 8.0 units, along with some film production classes w/8.0. A lot of the film criticism classes have 6.0 units because of time in class viewing.
So there are ways to build up to 180 units at the quarter schools at UC, and similarly to 120 units at UCB and UCM.
My kids LOVED their quarter systems. They learned that they only had 10 weeks to get it done. People who were not serious about their studies, just couldn’t keep up.
It kept my kids on track for everything. Now, they keep themselves on similar calendars.
Re: #10
Having an extra set of overhead days (final exams, pre-term buffer, etc.) and having the summer be a full 10 week quarter (instead of an 8-week half-semester) makes the yearly calendar more cramped under the quarter system. In addition, there is the extra administrative cost of doing class assignments (for instructors and rooms) and registration (for students) one more time during the year.
So if a college were starting fresh, it would probably choose semesters over quarters. Note that UC Merced started on semesters. However, an existing college would incur a very large one-time cost to switch from one calendar to the other.
The quarter system may make more sense if student enrollment patterns treat summer as a normal term, rather than most students taking summer off school. It may also be advantageous for undecided frosh, who typically can sample more courses in a year under the quarter system than under the semester system. Athletes may prefer one calendar over the other depending on how much of the academic year overlaps with their sport’s season (e.g. football players would have only a third of their academic year overlapping with football season on the quarter system, versus half of their academic year overlapping on the semester system).
I’m not sure about the other UCs, but UCLA also ~ halves the term for a lot of classes, making them six weeks for summer, mainly for non-science classes. There are even a handful of classes that are three-week courses, with everyday meetings M-F, with each day having two-hour sessions, which is also dependent on class units. The typical student, though isn’t going to take more than two classes, if that, so it can be pretty relaxed only having one class to put one’s efforts into. The science classes tend to be more ten weeks, not eleven, with a few six-week classes, with all the classes commonly ending with a final without any set-aside time to prepare for finals on the class’s last day. But if UCLA isn’t allotting for a period between the end of instruction to finals for summer, I’m not sure why Chancellor Block would be concerned about a lack of reading time for regular session classes, unless he thinks that summers are not that important. They actually are because students often have to take these classes to graduate with their class back from spring term.
Obviously, Chancellor Block can’t make the excuse that quarters are bad because students who fall behind find it harder to catch up. That wouldn’t be very chancellor-like to make excuses for the students as the San Diego Tribune did for students at UCSD, where the administration there is seriously considering switching to semesters supposedly for the reason stated by the paper. Obviously the chancellor there wouldn’t be able to state the same thing either.
I don’t know if cost of registration would be a concern for the UC quarter schools with one additional term of registration, and I don’t see the quarter calendar being cramped. Obviously quarter schools always start later and end later. If the quarter schools wanted to add a few days for reading, they could start a little earlier; instead of the later part of September, they could start mid-month. (UCLA already staggers the start of fall quarter in midweek, but it’s actually pretty useless because it’s too late in the week. They could start instructing on a Monday of the staggered week and start the quarter before that by a week or whatever is necessary to prep the students with move ins, etc. ) For the two terms after the start of the new year, the academic year could end in mid-June instead of the start of June. That’d still be three solid months of summer before the start of the new academic year. And as it is the last class of each quarter generally isn’t for learning new material, but if it is, it’s not usually put on the final. And I don’t think it’d be good to have nine weeks of instruction and one week of reading “dead week” leading up to finals.
I still think too, that quarter-system students do adjust and grow to like the shorter terms better, with the ability to dump bad classes quicker, along with being able to take more classes over their four years. The football seasons for quarter-system schools do start three weeks before school starts, and this is considered an advantage, but I don’t think this should come into play as far as keeping quarters or not. And I don’t think having a prolonged break in the middle of spring term is an advantage for semesters.
I wanted to look at UCLA’s 2020-21 academic calendar to see if I could fit in ten weeks of instruction, one week of reading, and one week of finals. I tried to max out the time, including the entire one week for reading, to see how the calendar would end up by adding in 2021’s summer classes leading up to the 2021-22 academic year.
It would indeed be tight, but I don’t think there’d need to be an entire week of reading leading up to finals for each of the three quarters, in addition to other adjustments. I get a start point of 09/21 to move in the students (hopefully this will happen, though doubtful) and instruction starting on 09/28 – this is also maxed out. Finals would end on 12/18/2020.
For the winter 2021, its quarter and instruction would start on 01/04. This would make the end of Finals March 26th. You’d have one week of spring break, then the spring quarter would start on April 5th and end on June 25th.
This would leave ~ 12 weeks for the summer until the start of the fall quarter 2021. It would be a cramped for two sessions of six-week classes – they’d have to start without time between, but these would be shortened to five with the one ten week session. And again, this setup would be with a full week of reading, and I don’t know if an entire one would be needed. There’d be some other adjustments, but I think if reading needed to be included it could be done, with staggers, etc.
There’s too many advantages to quarters to instead throw it out to switch to semesters. And I would hope that Chancellor Block would retire before he tries to push his agenda for semesters even farther along.
Here’s the math behind a quarter-term academic calendar with one week of reading included:
Instruction, Quarters x 3…30*
Reading Week x 3…3**
Finals x 3…3
Maxed-out Move in Week…1^
Christmas/New Year’s Break…2
Spring Break…1
Summer Terms…12^^
Total…52 Weeks
- The 30 weeks would be set regardless of the handful of holidays within (edit: academic year).
** Reading week wouldn’t need to be an entire week.
^ Move in week to start the year is maxed out at one week. There wouldn’t need to be an entire week, though there are some colleges that do have a week for acclimation of freshmen. Also, the quarter and instruction would start on the same day for winter and spring, which UCLA does now.
^^ Summer terms would include two five-week sessions and one ten-week, and others like three-week terms and whatever else that are less than ten.
Comparison:
| Quarter Semester
Instruction 30 30
Term Overhead 6 4
Move in 1 1
Winter Break 2 2
Spring Break 1 1
Summer Instr 10 8
Summer Overhead 2 2
Total 52 48