This discussion (3 versus 4 classes) makes me think of “all you care to eat” versus all you “can” eat labeling. It all depends on the person and how they approach it.
Did someone say “bacon”?! Sorry, long day. I digress…?
Well let’s see. Last week, H’s school system inserted a clause into all contracts saying the system could terminate the contract at any time if they have to close for a pandemic (or other catastrophic events). Their union has no collective bargaining power, so no way to fight it. Yay!
Then the governor issued all of the rules to open. Only 10 kids on a bus? The buses that hold 50-60 kids? So the school district that’s so poor that all kids get free breakfast and lunch must somehow find $$$ and hire 5x the number of drivers? They have a hard enough time finding the normal amount. To be fair, I would guess the county will have a harder time. It’s over 1000 square miles of rural roads.
And to top it off. The superintendent just resigned. And I believe the #2 person is also gone. This year will be awesome. (sarcasm) though at this point I’m just praying H can keep his job and get paid. And I’m very glad my kids are out of the system. Edit - just saw he still gets his year’s salary. Lovely.
@ClassicMom98 - I’m so sorry!!! All of that is horribly depressing.
Because under the circumstances (whatever those circumstances might be) maybe they don’t think they can pass four. Taking four courses and passing three is worse than taking three courses and passing three.
ClassicMom98 - I am really sorry about that; the unknown sounds frightening for you and the kids in the schools. Sort of in a bad situation here too with our low SES 50K+ students in our district. I truly hope it can all be reasonably resolved easily.
my D23 said absolutely she’d go back in a heartbeat if she had to wear a mask all day rather than staying home again. First time I’ve heard that from her. I can not figure out the bussing thing though; it’s so so so expensive for school districts. Keeping fingers crossed here.
BC let us know that freshmen will move in over two days instead of one to help with distancing. I guess students need to sign up in advance for a move-in time.
I am taking all of these announcements with a grain of salt as I think everything can be upended at any time during summer. Just keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best.
Hope you”re not confused or put out by my innocuous remark, trying to put a positive spin on a difficult decision this college made in its attempt at a creative solution that may or may not work.
I was not judging whether any given student is, or is not “giving their all” doing three courses or five, @homerdog. It is always possible to do “More” at State U or at Bowdoin or if there is more time, whether we’re talking about being a researcher, an athlete, an artist or anything else in this life, depending on one’s intensity of interest and goals.
By ‘dig deeper, I thought it was clear, to work more in-depth by one’s own initiative, curiosity and desire on a topic than would have been possible with fewer hours to invest. Maybe there is a student who does a superb job spending ten hours on a project that they feel impassioned by, and sincerely wish they had five more hours to give to that project. That’s all I meant. Not being forced to skim the surface of many topics but the luxury of a fuller exploration of something. That’s a value that an intellectual school would encourage, I would think, but what do I know.
Yikes, I’ve had enough, and the sweetness of evening air is pulling me outside. Outta this thread…good luck to all the ‘20s this fall.
Most people have limits as to how much they can do and do well. Some students don’t want to be massively overloaded. When I transferred from Community College to Research U as a Junior I took 12 credits Fall, 15 Spring, 10 Summer, 14 Fall, and 15 Spring. I had to drop one course and repeat it, and I withdrew from a couple of others.
Could I have taken 19 each for 4 semesters? No, at least not with the grades I managed to attain. I was pretty maxed out as it was.
It’s about what you can do, not just getting in as many credits as you possibly, possibly can.
This is a cost cutting move. Less classes to teach bu the same revenue. They’re fine with lowering what it takes to get a diploma too.
@sylvan8798 i understand that it’s like that at public universities. Some of those credits for kids taking so many might be easier classes. I’m sure very few kids can handle a really tough load with all academic classes. I remember when my nephew took a lot of credits - it usually meant he had a “physical fitness” class or maybe a low key music class like chorus.
A lot of private schools don’t do credit hours. They just do credits. At most LACs, you need 32 credits. That’s eight classes a year. That’s just way it works. Some classes do meet more often, like a class with a lab, but it’s still worth one credit. The lab doesn’t add any credits at all. So a physics class could have three hours of lecture (which is typical for a week) and then a three hour lab. Still worth just one credit. So, while these colleges allow kids to maybe take three credits or five credits sometimes, it doesn’t happen very often.
I get that Amherst is just making it an option. I just wonder if their reasons have to do with mental health during this weird time or, more likely, that’s part of it but it’s also that it helps them out with fewer kids to schedule into four classes and helps with distancing.
@homerdog They’re not requiring it, probably because it would be unethical for them to require full tuition, for reasons you stated. I have no intention of reducing my course load.
I’m a little confused about extending the school day and school week so they can have more social distancing. Isn’t a big part of the problem what the viral load in the room will be? So if you’re the last class of the day, you’ll have more bad air with viruses circulating around because of the HVAC. I know the masks are supposed to help, but they’d help equally for social distancing or load accumulation, right? Isn’t the better solution hybrid teaching, so you have the same number of classes, but as an example half the class sitting in the room on Tuesdays and doing it on-line on Thursdays, and vice-versa for the other half?
Amherst’s announcements are very similar to what Williams announced a few weeks ago. My kid also plans on taking 4 classes, but registration has not taken place yet.
I think number of credits taken can change due to circumstances.
My D took 17 credits one semester. She worked hard and got all A’s. Another semester she took 9 credits…she had some other things going on and felt it would be better to take it down a notch. Still worked hard once again and got all A’s.
At the end of the day it really didn’t matter, tbh. She still became heavily involved in the things that were of interest to her.
@homerdog if your S chooses to take 3 classes one semester instead of 4, he may dig deeper into those 3 classes…or he may find an additional activity/position/project that he enjoys. You never know where that position may lead…
And…sometimes students simply need some breathing room.
Melvin I think k12 schools here are looking into hybrid (if they open).
@AlwaysMoving But that’s only true if enough students opt to take three classes instead of four, and I don’t know how many will go for that.
@melvin123 Amherst is upgrading the HVAC system so air is purified to a significantly greater degree (at least that is my understanding).
@ChemAM I have been thinking about getting an air purifier/humidifier for S19’s room. Last year, his roommate brought one for them. I read somewhere that the virus doesn’t do quite as well in humidity. Every little bit can help, right?
The number of students who accepted their offer for Canada’s University of Waterloo computer science program is 2.25X that of previous years. The number of incoming math students is also way up. Both international and Canadian students are enrolling at a much higher rate than previously. It seems that the faculty accepted a higher percentage of applicants than normal, expecting a higher percentage of students than usual to defer or decline because of covid. The opposite has happened.
Look for Waterloo CS and math admissions to be much tighter for the high school class of 2021. CS already had a very low acceptance rate.
@homerdog Yeah. Couldn’t hurt.
This type of system tends to treat all courses at the same credit value (= 4 semester hour credits per course). 32 such courses is equivalent to 128 credits, slightly more than the nominal 120 credits for a bachelor’s degree at many colleges, so backing down the requirement to 30 courses still keeps the amount of credit-equivalent at the nominal amount. Note that having an equivalency is necessary due to the possibility of transfer credit.
At colleges where courses may have varying number of semester hour credits, the credit value is supposed to correspond to workload put into the course (3 hours of work per week including in-class and out-of-class time per credit, so a 4 credit course should take 12 hours of work per week). However, it is often the case that some courses are more or less work than some other courses of the same credit value (labs, arts, and courses with big term projects tend to be high workload).
Public university courses are not necessarily easier (or less work per credit) than private school courses. Of course, this can vary by course at any kind of college.