At my college, a task force is studying whether we ought to replace our 3-credit system (an undergraduate schedule of five 3-credit courses a semester, with around 124 credits required for the B.A.) with its main competitor in higher ed, the 4-credit system (an undergraduate schedule of four 4-credit courses a semester, with 128 credits required for the B.A.). We’re also studying the possibility of a hybrid structure that would combine 2-credit, 3-credit, and 4-credit courses.
As the memos and in-person discussions among faculty continue, there’s a lot of “on the one hand, on the other hand” uncertainty. If any solid empirical studies firmly establishing the superiority of one system or the other exist, we have yet to discover them. The strongest liberal-arts colleges in the country more often than not offer a 4-credit, four-course system, but there are myriad excellent institutions using the 3-credit, five-course system.
The committees at my college focus on whether the 4-course or 5-course system is better for students, although, of course, they’re also looking into how the different systems affect faculty teaching loads. (The 5-course system obviously requires faculty to teach more separate courses.) We’re also studying how — were we opt for change to a 4-course system — the switch would affect our curriculum, from foreign-language programs to “distribution course” requirements, from departmental majors to the actual content of individual courses. It’s daunting, but the task force has come up with several examples of schools that have managed the change from a 5-course to a 4-course system rather seamlessly. (Nobody seems to have switched the other way, from a 4-course system to a 5-course one, which suggests those of us still using the latter are doing it mostly out of habit and inertia.)
On the face of it, the 4-course system appears superior. Not only would its courses contain more classroom hours and require more sustained research on the part of students, but also they would offer faculty the opportunity to pursue their subjects in greater depth. Moreover, a four-course system makes the already frazzled lives of freshmen (adjusting to college, finding new friends, joining clubs, and sussing out the academic standards of their courses) a bit less complicated.
Proponents of the 5-course system maintain that its breadth (e.g., semesters containing an English class, a chemistry class, a Spanish class, a math class, AND a history class) best fulfills the mandate of a liberal-arts education. The eight additional courses offered in a 5-course system, they argue, permit students more chances to explore subjects outside their majors — a course in the history of photography for a physics major, for example, or a foray into Japanese literature in translation for a student specializing in fine arts. Also, the 5-course system permits students to drop one course and still carry the minimum “full load” of 12 credits. Making up three lost credits in a later semester isn’t all that difficult. But it’s possible that the 5-course system’s flexibility leads students to drop courses more carelessly, often resulting in their needing an extra semester or two to graduate.
Many professional programs dictate most, if not all, of a student’s course options, and many of our departments have tailored their major requirements to state-mandated requirements in such a way that students don’t really have 3 “free” credits to spare. And many of us have, over the years, fit the requirements for our majors precisely into the 5-course system. We’re naturally reluctant to tear apart our courses and sequences. Should we conclude, however, that, overall, students would be better served by a 4-course system, we’d just have to hunker down and redesign our curriculum and courses.
With no hard evidence to back up our decision about which system would be best for our students, a lot of us tend to form our opinions based on hunches, anecdotes, and personal experience — hardly the best way to decide such an important matter. My own undergraduate education at Mount Holyoke consisted of the 4-course, 4-credit system, and I liked it. My husband’s, at the University of Southern California, to the contrary, was based on the 5-course, 3-credit system, and he liked his. While we were undergraduates, though, this was just the way things were, and we didn’t think much about alternatives. I’d be very interested in what readers have to say on the matter. And I’d be eternally grateful to anyone who can lead me and my colleagues to some hard evidence about which system is better.
