Most undergraduates at Georgetown complete their baccalaureate experience in four years, completing two semesters of courses each year.
An interesting change seems to be occurring at Georgetown over the years. The percentage of seniors who are taking a reduced load in their eighth and last semester is increasing, from roughly 15% five years ago to almost 30% now.
One of the schools asks students to specify why they are reducing their course load in the last semester. The most popular answers are that they want to have more time for an internship in the spring of senior year, they look forward to a reduced tuition burden, they want to concentrate on their senior thesis, and that they want to enjoy nonacademic, extracurricular activities.
Analysis shows other attributes related to a reduced load – students with more “advanced credits” (i.e., transferred credits from AP exam performance or International Baccalaureate experience) tend to take reduced load, students who are not on financial aid tend to take a reduced load, and students with higher GPA’s tend to take a reduced load.
However, it seems likely that the four-year baccalaureate curriculum was not planned to incorporate a reduced load for the senior year spring term.
One wonders whether Gerogetown might serve its undergraduates more effectively if a “reimagined eighth term” were designed more purposively. In addition to finishing requirements, could the eighth semester be a set of experiences that synthesize all the activities of the prior four years, to provide some thoughtful guidance about their implications for life direction? Are there a set of courses that could be mounted to bridge the gap between the exciting intellectual exchanges that are routine on a university campus and the day-to-day work life of most graduates? Could there be a more formal treatment of the leadership and group interaction experiences common to extracurricular activities? Could there be more opportunities for reflection and synthesis to help students make sense of the totality of their four years? Could there be a set of multidisciplinary, team-taught courses, rich in experiential learning that focus on key issues facing society, with a more practical bend? Would the eighth term be a good locus for a set of bridge courses to work life – skills needed for being part of a work organization like reading and developing budgets, web-based coding and analytics, working with diverse groups, preparation for graduate and professional school examinations, design-based thinking techniques, proposal writing, etc.? Could it be a context for connecting graduating seniors and young alumni, making that boundary more porous?
Indeed, could the “design” of the eighth term be a formal part of each student’s planning responsibility? Could it be a challenge to them to personalize their learning experience, to fit the eighth term to their past academic and work experiences, and to propel them forward as a more fully-formed adult?
If we conceptualize the eighth and final term as not just “finishing up” but the bridging step of a graduate (looking back and looking forward), how could we enrich it?
I think “connecting graduate seniors and young alumni” would be a project worth working toward. But the question: “[C]ould the ‘design’ of the eighth term be a formal part of each student’s planning responsibility? Could it be a challenge to them to personalize their learning experience, to fit the eighth term to their past academic and work experiences, and to propel them forward as a more fully-formed adult?”
Asking juniors or seniors to take responsibility for reflecting on the meaning of their final undergrad semesters is obviously a good idea. But I don’t think the university needs to take this on for them as a full-fledged project. The number of student formulations of their needs might equal the number of students. And in the larger frame, there are many versions of what the four year BA is supposed to be among students and their families and among faculty members. As you mention in your post, some of the choices students make for an 8th semester have a lot to do with their longterm socioeconomic position (Did they receive AP and IB credit, do they have financial aid?) I offer only an anecdote, but this experience led me to respond. Currently I have an undergrad computer science major in my 400 level Borges course. Just this week she told me how exciting it had been for her to take courses outside her field in philosophy, Latin American literature, etc. and that she felt it was a wonderful way to end her time at Georgetown. She doesn’t want to change career direction, but she likes this moment of freedom and exploration. I’m not sure she would see that learning to prepare a budget (she probably already knows this) or how to design a problem (she’s clearly figured some workable methods) would be an improvement on an exciting intellectual experience. I vote for the graduate-young alumni connection. Easier to do and probably a more rewarding path in the long run.
What about a more fulfilling research experience, that gives them the possibility to think deeper about the implications of the results achieved, connect them to the different bits of knowledge that have been exposed to, discuss them with peers and mentors, and put them into a wider perspective?