As the University continues to try to make an all-around improvement, students seem to be getting less and less in the process. In December 2007 the University Web site excitedly announced that winter session classes will now only be two weeks long and urged students to spend their break productively by signing up. This is a reduction from a three week winter session in previous years. Is squeezing a semester’s worth of information into two weeks really a good idea?

Most three credit winter session classes (the majority of which are on a Monday through Thursday schedule) for 2008 began on January 2 and continued through January 18. That comes out to 10 days of actual class. What does the University expect professors to fit into 10 days? Students cannot possibly be expected to learn three credits worth of information in 10 days, especially when compared to the three credit classes taken during a regular semester. On top of that tuition for a three credit class during intersession is about $2,510 according to the Office of Student Accounts. Is it really fair to charge all that money for technically less than two weeks of learning?

Students who need those last few credits or those who want to be certain they have enough credits to graduate are forced to take winter session classes unless they want to stay an extra semester. Out of an approximately five week winter break, three weeks of class sounds reasonable. There seems to be no point in taking a class for 10 days and paying so much tuition.

It is actually cheaper to go one class above the average of five (15 credits) to six classes (18 credits) during the fall or spring semester. The price of each credit over 17 credits is $785 according to the University’s Web site.

Ten days for $2,510 just doesn’t make sense when a student can instead pay $2,355 for three extra credits (at $785 a credit) and approximately 45 days (a regular semester of about four months) of learning on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule.