In case you haven’t figured it out yet, students at the University questionably enjoy a quarter-based educational system. Three times a year, 10 weeks at a time, we drag ourselves through the mud of an academic rut. Every term it is the same old thing.
For the first and last weeks, you basically do nothing. Weeks four and five quickly arrive — along with the midterms. Pretty soon it is week eight, and you have finally just started to understand the underlying theme of the course. By this point, you see the light at the end of the tunnel, and the words “getting a good grade” are replaced with “just hoping to pass.”
The quarter system does have some advantages. While all your high school buddies are heading back to their semester schools, you are sitting back enjoying the wonderful days of a late Oregon summer. Students in a quarter system get the opportunity to take 50 percent more classes than our semester counterparts. This adds variety and more room for those classes we really want to take. The quarter system also makes the torment of having to take a required math class at a liberal arts college much less painful.
Proponents of the quarter system also argue that students can graduate in a shorter amount of time. This is fine for those who are going to college to simply get their credentials, but some students are here for much more.
If you are attending college for its original purpose of gaining knowledge, then the semester system is much more learning-based. Switching to a semester system would provide us all the opportunity to obtain a higher quality education. We could complete an assignment, receive it back and actually have a chance to learn from our mistakes before the next assignment is due. Most classes in the quarter system produce a measure of a student’s performance entirely too late for it to be corrected. This isn’t an excuse for laziness, but a rational observation that a quarter system is a barrier to the actual process of learning.
Being a college student in today’s world is much different than in the past. Students must manage a full load of classes, a part-time or sometimes full-time job and — they hope — with the time left, a social life. In the quarter system, if you have to work the night shift the day before a quiz and do poorly, it will haunt you for the rest of the term.
The semester system should not be implemented just so we can all spend more weeknights at the bars, but we must be realistic and understand that college is much more than just quizzes, papers and midterms.
Fifteen weeks of school gives students more time to take in the information, analyze it and then finally understand it. It is also a good idea for students at a research university to actually have time to do research. Time, though, is at the top of every college student’s wish list, and the quarter system just makes it even worse.
The bottom line is the quarter system pumps students through like a factory with a bad product. The University needs to follow the lead of the nation’s top universities and transition into a semester system for its own good — as well as its students.