Students can’t do year-round school

The IU Board of Trustees approved a summer session tuition decrease two weeks ago to help students take year-round classes and graduate earlier.

Trustee Pat Shoulders said the tuition discount and summer semester restructuring might help turn IU into a year-round University.

I’m in favor of anything that saves students money, but there are several things wrong with this plan.

First, many students are tired by the end of spring semester. We’ve taken heavy course loads — some people take 18 credits a semester — and we desperately need a break so we’re ready and eager to get back to work the next fall.

Grade schools that have migrated to the year-round system get three- to five-week breaks after 10 weeks of class. IU isn’t offering that break time, just more class time.

Second, if IU is worried about students taking so long to graduate, maybe it should cut some of the ridiculous requirements.

For instance, why do journalism students need three natural and mathematical courses, a statistics course and an economics course? We already have a required second concentration to give us a more well-rounded background. Cutting those five classes would mean students could graduate a whole semester earlier.

Besides, people already took math and science and history in high school; they already have backgrounds in every subject. Students won’t miss them. It’s not like we retain a lot of that, anyway.

Want a quicker path to graduation? Kill the extra, unnecessary classes.

Third, and most importantly, students need their summers. Most people work during the summer, earning money to pay for college or save up for that nice, after-graduation time during which the bills stack up and there aren’t many career
opportunities.

Some of us do internships. One of the first things I learned when I got to campus during Welcome Week is that journalism students will not get jobs if they don’t have experience, and that means more than just working for campus media. We need internships with professional publications.

I speak from experience when I say trying to take a full course load with an extra 30 hours a week committed to homework leads to little sleep, poor eating habits and bad grades. We can’t do it all at the same time.

Maybe some people can go to school year-round with few breaks and get the money and/or internship experience they need while still maintaining their sanity. But most of us can’t. There’s too much to do and not enough time to do it. We’ll all be burned-out shells by our third year.

Cutting summer tuition costs is a lovely thought, and I do believe it will help some people, but it won’t help the majority of students.

If IU President Michael McRobbie and the Board of Trustees really want to make a difference for students, they should cut tuition costs during spring and fall semesters, when we can all actually attend class.

­— hanns@indiana.edu