Summer enrollments are up at many colleges this year compared with last year, continuing a recent trend. And as more students attend classes year-round, some colleges are looking to improve their summer offerings, or even to require summer attendance.
“We continue to see slow to moderate increases from year to year, at least for the past three years,” says David Schejbal, associate provost and director of continuing education for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where summer enrollment rose to 10,900 students, from 10,600 last year.
“The bad economy helps summer sessions,” he adds, noting that students are more likely to enroll in summer courses when they cannot find good summer jobs. And with the costs of college rising fast, some students are trying to finish their degrees as quickly as possible.
Les Coyne, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs-extended programs at Indiana University at Bloomington, says a growing number of colleges are becoming more strategic about how they schedule their summer courses -- making sure that as many popular courses are offered as possible, rather than setting summer schedules based simply on which professors are willing to teach.
George Washington University is considering requiring all rising juniors to take a full load of courses during the summer, as part of an effort to better use the university’s facilities year-round. Students would also be expected to spend one fall or spring semester off the campus on a study-abroad program or an internship. The proposed changes would allow the institution to increase the size of each incoming class and thus bring in more revenue.
Dartmouth College has had a similar required summer program in place since the 1970s, and officials there say it works well. But at George Washington, a report from a committee that has studied the proposal notes that there would be drawbacks, such as coordinating all of the students.
http://chronicle.com Section: Students Volume 49, Issue 49, Page A37