It seems to me like 10 weeks per course may not be enough time for some graduate courses if they are not developed carefully. Do colleges using the quarter system like Dartmouth or UC Irvine have about the same difficulty compared to similarly ranked universities using the semester system?
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2How do you propose to test the hypothesis that quarter system programs are more difficult? This seems unanswerable.– Dan RomikCommented Oct 6, 2021 at 18:03
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3Not surprisingly, the professors know they are on a quarter system and don't cram a semester into a quarter. My wife liked the quarter system, since it came in smaller chunks before a final.– Jon CusterCommented Oct 6, 2021 at 18:05
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1@DanRomik I suppose the ideal person to answer such a question is either someone who has taught using both systems and can compare the course load and student performance or the less likely case of a student who transferred and had experience with both. Also, someone who studied at a semester-based system in their undergrad can still give some insight into the differences.– Epsilon_DeltaCommented Oct 6, 2021 at 18:11
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4@Delta_Epsilon well, I’ve taught at both types of programs. But there were too many other differences for any sort of comparison along the lines you are proposing. I still think your question has no meaningful answer that can be given with any level of reliability. Or to put it differently, focus on other concrete details about the programs you are considering, they will give you much more useful information that makes the quarter/semester dichotomy completely unimportant.– Dan RomikCommented Oct 6, 2021 at 18:20
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1@Delta_Epsilon - chemistry. I'd say most STEM classes don't care much, but heavy reading and writing classes (English lit, etc.) might feel more rushed (more major term papers in a year, less time to do a bunch of research/writing for them).– Jon CusterCommented Oct 6, 2021 at 18:38
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I taught at a university that had terms of 7 weeks in spring and summer and semesters of 14 weeks in fall and winter. I taught the same class (Integral Calculus) four times, twice during the terms, twice during the semesters.
Term classes met twice as often as semester classes. We covered the same material and used the same book.
Guess which classes had better grades overall? The term (7 week) classes. There are many confounding factors here of course, but the accelerated nature of the course actually made students focus in and learn the material a bit better I felt.
There is a point of diminishing return (2 week crash course meeting 8 hours a day would be tough of course), but instructors and students who are prepared for a shorter calendar can do just fine.
I also was a student under a system similar to the one described above. I took several graduate math classes in 7 week terms. I learned the material just fine. You have to be prepared to devote twice as much time to studying for the class--but you also have a lower class load, so this is possible. In some ways, I would be in favor of short terms year round.
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4I suspect students took fewer courses when they were more concentrated. That was my experience at a university that used the Dartmouth System - four full quarters per year.– BuffyCommented Oct 6, 2021 at 18:21
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2@Buffy Yes, this is the case. Fewer classes, faster pace. Commented Oct 6, 2021 at 18:23
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Interesting. I was wondering if taking shorter semesters with fewer classes would be more effective for some. Students normally take 3 courses in a semester-based program. Would they take 2 in a quarter system? Commented Oct 6, 2021 at 18:27
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1@Delta_Epsilon I usually took 2 classes in the shortened terms. It would depend on the term as well. When I was writing my dissertation, I "took" dissertation credits. Commented Oct 6, 2021 at 18:30
The University of Chicago is on the quarter (meaning trimester: the fourth quarter is in the summer) system: a quarter lasts ten weeks. Harvard University is on the semester system: a semester lasts 13 weeks.
I received a master's degree (while being an undergraduate) at Chicago, for which I took 9 graduate courses. I received a PhD at Harvard and took, well, certainly more than nine semester courses there. Which one was easier, quarters or semesters? The answer is...the other differences between these two programs (which have similar rankings and draw from a similar cohort) were so much more significant that it is impossible to say what quarters or semesters had to do with it.
It makes more sense to compare three quarter courses to two semester courses than to compare one to one. The nine graduate courses I took fell into three full year sequences: in analysis, in algebra and in geometry/topology. If you were to take e.g. the graduate algebra sequence at these two places, at the end of the year there would not be much difference between quarters and semesters (especially compared to other curricular differences).
For what it's worth: I remember liking 10 week quarters more fondly than semesters. For the last 15 years I have taught at the University of Georgia, which has 15 week semesters. This is really too long, and the Faculty Senate tried to shorten it some years back, but it failed because apparently some administrators and even a few faculty members asked how we would be able to offer "equivalent educational content" in one fewer week. This was of course ridiculous: any instructor knows that you can just go slower / faster, be more / less efficient and so forth from class to class, and you can gain or lose a lot more than 15/14 this way. Moreover 15 weeks is really too long: even with breaks in the middle, everyone is more or less worn out by the end. In fact UGA used to be on the quarter system a while back, and the faculty that experienced it said that they liked it better. But I don't think it translates directly into material covered.
answered Oct 6, 2021 at 19:09
