Pierce College should not offer more summer and winter classes because these classes are conducted at a faster pace, and the longer class hours may not be ideal for all students.
It is important to remember that these intersession courses are only five-weeks long and because of the short amount of time, multiple lessons are taught in one day as opposed to it being stretched out over two days in the week.
This means students will need to stay focused throughout the whole session and stay on top of their assignments because even though the class is only a month long, it goes by really fast, and before you know it, it’s over.
For instance, if a student took an English class, they would be assigned an essay every week and only have a few days to write it up, as opposed to having at least two weeks to work on it during a regular 15-week semester.
The same can said for tests because in this session students will be tested on the material every week and will not have as much time to study and prepare.
This can take a toll on a student’s mental health because stress levels will rise when they realize they don’t have much time to complete homework assignments.
Also, studying for exams will be a pain because twice the amount of subject material will be jammed into one test.
According to an annual survey conducted by the American College Health Association, of more than 63,000 students at 92 schools, it found that over the last decade anxiety has overtaken depression as the most common reason college students seek counseling services. As the results showed, students reporting a feeling of overwhelming anxiety has increased to 62 percent in 2016 from 50 percent in 2011.
In addition, the longer class hours and class meeting days of Monday through Thursday every week may cause trouble for students who have jobs.
This is because for general subjects the classes are three hours long, but when it comes to the science and math courses such as Chemistry 101 and Statistics, they could go on for five to six hours long. Even though a break is given at the halfway point, some students may lose the ability to hold their concentration for the duration of the class.
Meanwhile, attendance is highly essential to a student’s grade in the course and understanding of the material being taught because one missing day is like a missed week in the regular semester.
However, now it seems like students are not that interested in taking summer and winter courses because coming off a stressful fall or winter semester they may want a break.
Another reason why Pierce should not offer more summer and winter classes is that it is struggling with low enrollment numbers in the fall and spring semesters. Instead it should focus on bringing up the numbers in the time where classes should not be cut.
According to a Los Angeles Times article, summer and winter courses were offered to accommodate the students who were unable to get classes in the regular semester which was a huge problem back in 2012.
It also states that Pierce had to offer an abbreviated winter session at one point, leading up to it not being offered the next session due to budget cuts.
Now, the money being allocated towards offering more summer and winter classes should be going toward classes offered in the fall and spring semesters when there are more students on campus.
If the winter session has been taken out entirely once before, it could be taken out again and cause the students to be on the losing end. Keeping courses simple, steady and balanced will ultimately make many students’ lives easier when it comes to meeting their academic criteria.
