http://serc.carleton.edu/earthandmind/posts/term_limits.html#discussion http://serc.carleton.edu/earthandmind/posts/term_limits.html#post13154 Kim Kastens 1282793280 http://serc.carleton.edu/earthandmind/posts/term_limits.html#post13154 http://serc.carleton.edu/earthandmind/posts/term_limits.html#post13161
1) My father was a faculty member at Temple University and I remember my astonishment when I found out that the fall and spring semesters there were different lengths (this was in the late 70's or early 80's; I don't know if it is still true). My father just shrugged this difference off. As an instructor, I would find it very disconcerting now.

2) Penn State, one of my alma maters, switched to 10-week terms in the late 50's. (These were not exactly quarters in Mogk's sense because PSU still gave semester hour credit.) The rationale was that students would no longer take summers off and that enrollment would be roughly even throughout the year. This never happened and in the mid-80's, Penn State switched back to semesters.

One advantage to Penn State's schedule, in which the winter term started after Thanksgiving, broke for Christmas, and finished in late February was that some geologists, such as Lauren Wright, could conduct fieldwork in hot places (e.g. Death Valley) in the winter and not have troubles teaching in two semesters.

3) UNC-Pembroke, where I teach, shortened the semester by a week about three years after I was hired (i.e., about 7 years ago). This was a great annoyance to me because I had become comfortable with the material I covered in the intro courses and I had to take a week out. The explanation was that at some earlier time, the semester had been lengthened by a week as a CYA-gesture involving the state legislature or some other authority (?) and that various senior personnel were annoyed by this and took the first opportunity to go back to the previous length.

In brief, I don't think pedagogic value plays a large role in selection of an academic calendar. It may well be unreasonable to expect so given the large number of other drivers (political, accreditation, "tradition", various budget points of view, disciplines in which seasonality is irrelevant).

I admit I just take the calendar for granted, just as I just accepted without question, when I worked in oil company research, that our monthly timesheets ran from the 20th of one month to the 19th of the next.

Comment for Kim: I went to K-12 in a 6-3-3 system (elementary, junior high school, high school) and so did everyone else I knew. (I graduated from high school in 1976.) That came between the grammar-high school (8-4) of long ago (actually, I think my father went to a junior high school in the 1930's) and the elementary-middle norm of today (here in NC and also now where I grew up, a 5-3-4 system). The shift to middle schools started after that and I also heard that it had more to do with fiscal matters than anything else, but there are fashions too.
]]> Martin Farley 1284069480 http://serc.carleton.edu/earthandmind/posts/term_limits.html#post13161