Credit Definition and
The Chronicle and other similar organizations have written
repeatedly over the last year about the Dept. of Education’s new regulations
requiring schools to define their credit hour. The concern here seems to
be about the credibility of online and/or for-profit schools and the student
aid dollars that they attract. But complaints about the regulations come
from the broad range of college institutions. Why do traditional colleges
object? One might think they would welcome less competition. They
say the regulations will add to their administration costs, but I think the
concern is about the credit definition itself. The Carnegie definition
which is thought of as the standard is not so standard among many of our most
elite schools and many colleges that don’t meet that standard don’t want to be
held accountable. According to Carnegie, students are supposed to have
one hour of class for each credit. Even if an hour only has 50 minutes to
allow for passing time between classes, many schools haven’t met this standard
for decades.
This summer I decided that I would spend some time to see how
much contact time our highest ranked schools have with their students. I
took the US News top 125 liberal arts schools and visited all their webs sites
to survey their schedule of classes and graduation requirements. I attach
tables (http://user.pa.net/~kjclay/pages/contact_time2.html)
that group the schools according to how much they seem to require of their
students and I give a verbal summary in what follows. I recognize that
contact time guarantees nothing about the quality of a course, but I would also
suggest that schools that economize on teaching time have a high standard to
meet for work outside of class. It is widely recognized that NSSE data show that
students aren’t even close to the work outside of class that the Carnegie
standard requires and Arum
and Roksa have data that shows even less study. Given this, it is
hard to believe that schools that have less contact time demand work outside of
class to make up for the reduced class time. They put the burden of proof
on themselves. They need to show that their students study more outside
of class than similarly ranked schools with more contact time. I doubt
that they can. It seems more likely that these schools want their faculty
to do more research and their students to have an easier path through school.
So how little do the low contact schools require of their
students? There are 25 schools ranked from 3 to 93 that require 150
minutes a week of class for most of their courses and only 32 courses to
graduate. Ten of them don’t even have 14 weeks of class. Generally labs
don’t get extra credit and often languages require more class time.
Sometimes there are a few classes that meet longer. I wonder why that
is? These faculty must feel they can’t teach their course with less
time. What does that say about all the other courses? My view is
that we can make a course as tough as we see fit. The low contact faculty
argue that their courses are tough; that the students just do more independent
work outside of class. But the data I’ve mentioned above say there’s not
much going on outside of class. It seems to me that these schools are
giving 4 credits for 3 credits courses. Faculty don’t have to teach or
grade as much and students don’t have to work as much. That’s good for
graduation rates, school ratings and bottom lines.
There are 29 schools
that look very good as far as contact
hours go, ranked from 14 to 122. I wonder where the conviction
comes from
to resist the rewards that the low contact schools enjoy. This group
certainly
includes some highly ranked schools. Washington and Lee (
ranked 14)
still has the traditional 3 credit system and even longer classes than
usual and 14 weeks of class.
They have 3 55 or 2 85 minute classes. Harvey Mudd (18)
also still has the 3 credit system and three 50 minute classes per
course and 14 weeks of class. You can look at the
list and see that there are many highly ranked schools with contact
time like
this.
At the time this is written, colleges are still required to
define their credits, although attempts have been made to change this at the
house committee level. I understand that the motivation behind the credit
definition requirement comes from concern about online and/or for-profit
courses. But it would be good if an unintended result was that our
traditional colleges moved back toward a work ethic devised over a hundred
years ago. We can do that with contact time easily enough. Getting
students to study as much as they should outside of class will be
tougher. The answer there is to return to tougher grading. But
that’s another topic that few in higher education want to talk about.
See also: Four Day Schools