As we pursue the Designing the Future(s) program at Georgetown, faculty are rethinking basic assumptions of how we do our work. One informative data point we found is that many students take credit-bearing courses during the summers. In total, the number of courses was quite impressive. Further, it seems financially unwise to see such reduced activity on campus for so many months of the year, with expensive buildings not fully used.
It led me to think about how we evolved to the devotion to a 9-month program. A little research led me to a book on summer education (Schools In…, Gold, 2002), which focuses on K-12 education and destroys some myths I carried in my head. The biggest myth, that years ago, children needed to help their farm families during the summer, belies the fact that the late summer and fall harvest was when they were really needed.
I learned that centuries ago there was a tendency for urban schools to run 12 months and rural, 9 months or so. But there was a movement to standardize the academic year across the country. The summer temperatures in buildings without air conditioning probably fueled a powerful argument to drop summer classes. There’s also evidence that for rural schools, while school masters taught during the fall and winter seasons, younger, less experienced teachers tended to teach the summers. There was also the argument that urban schools close during summer to facilitate richer families going to their cooler vacation homes in the mountains and lakes of surrounding rural areas. Once the movement started, the argument that teachers could use the summer to train and get ready for the next year was added to the debate. Finally, there was some belief in the medical profession at the time that the health of students was being harmed by being confined in school buildings all year long.
Whatever the causes, it’s interesting that we’ve come to think of the 9-month rhythm as key to universities. For example, most Georgetown faculty have 9-month contracts. And Georgetown in the summer is a very different place, like many universities, hosting many high school and other summer workshops.
However, there are some signs of erosion of the 9-month default schedule. For example, most executive education degree programs ignore the traditional schedule. Many master’s level programs run all-year long.
Further, the summers themselves seemed to have changed for young persons. We’ve heard reports that the paid job opportunities for students declined during the Great Recession and its aftermath. Unpaid internships seem more prevalent now. It’s too early to know whether that will change, giving students earning power during the summer. But we also know that the internship opportunities in Washington throughout the year are unrivaled and many of our students take advantage of these. So Georgetown students have somewhat lower needs to focus their summers on internships.
What would happen if we challenged the assumptions about summer? What proportion of faculty would prefer 12-month contracts, with teaching, research, and service obligations continuing all year long? If students were offered full course loads during the summer, how many would take up the opportunity? What would the impact on the transmission of the key values of Georgetown if summers were included in the degree programs? Would going all year long permit Georgetown to reduce the total costs to students of completing their programs? How would 12-month operations affect the research productivity of our faculty?
These and other questions arise immediately when I start thinking about challenging the assumption that we must be a 9-month shop. I wonder what others think about this. Let me know.
Many of the elements are already in place but not structured in a way that makes them easily available to those who want to utilize them effectively as if the summer were a regular semester. For many undergraduates, summer school provides a (limited) course selection; some grad programs use the summer effectively as a way to further their students’ education. But a 12 month schedule does not fit every educational goal. Sometimes, the sitting around and NOT taking classes is what is needed, and is more effective than what appears — at first glance — to be more efficient. But I don’t see why we cannot strengthen the summer offering and encourage students to take advantage of them and lower the barriers to students finishing in three years or getting a BA/MA in four by adjusting the some of the administrative structures, course selections, and educational environment to encourage such change. For example, this would mean that upper-level courses taken during the summer (and potentially at other universities) would also count towards the fulfillment of the major/minor requirements. Obviously, this has significant budgetary consequences.
As a PhD student, I would have benefited from summer funding and course offerings that would have decreased my overall time to degree. With the nine-month schedule, I was forced to scramble for part-time work to cover my summer expenses, while essentially putting my education and career on hold. If summer intensive courses were offered, a PhD student could receive the same amount of funding over a shorter period of time, with clear professional / academic benefits in both the short and long term.
As a recent undergrad graduate, current grad student, and higher ed professional, I’ve wondered about summers for a long time. While primary/secondary school aren’t our focus, students lose months of learning over the summer. For university students, summers increase the opportunity cost of higher education. By shortening a four-year degree by nine months, you give students the chance to earn an additional nine months’ income on graduation. If a Georgetown undergraduate earns $40,000 on average in her first year of work, that’s an additional $30,000 to be earned in those nine months.
As a grad student, I’ve studied in the summer for the first time. I actually quite like it. Not taking a break helped me transition from one course to the next without any chance to get lazy. The University is still open, and administrators are still here. While many students and faculty are gone, the infrastructure that supports learning is still operating.
As a separate, extended thought, if financial aid could fund or partially fund the first nine months after graduation, how could students use that time to gain experience, do service, write, and so on? Of course, this is not how financial aid works, but it’s a larger question that could help graduates start their careers at full employment in their field of choice.
I think that a twelve month schedule would impair students ability to improve their foreign language abilities with short term intensive study abroad. As a scholar who needs to do field research, having to be in the classroom twelve months of the year would also be a problem in terms of making progress with scholarship.
Certainly interesting thoughts and outside the box. As usual .