Recently Texas A&M University-Commerce unveiled plans for a potential four-day school schedule. This scheduling change would require students to only attend classes four days a week, lengthening individual class times but also cutting down on the amount of driving students have to do.
Obviously this issue has proponents on both sides, but I believe that if the university takes a hard look at the pros and cons of the proposed four day class schedule, it will come to realize that such a proposition is much more damaging than it is productive.
Let’s take a look at it from the student’s perspective. First of all, it heavily favors commuter students over traditional students. Now I realize that commuter students outnumber students that live on campus, but is this something that the university wants to encourage? After all, if A&M-Commerce wants to become more than a commuter school, then it needs to invest in promoting the interests of those that live on campus. If we want to gain more credibility as a university then this is not the way to go.
I don’t know the average distance of those that drive in, but I imagine a good bit are from the surrounding area. While it’s easy to say that the proposed changes will increase the amount of students that will enroll, is A&M-Commerce so consumed with attracting more students that it will ignore the quality of the education and campus life?
A four day schedule would overwhelm students taking more than 12 hours, specifically music majors. Cramming our already busy schedules would hurt students more than help them, as many students already are taking the maximum number of hours they can a week.
As an Honors College student with a part-time job at the university, this hurts me three ways and doesn’t help me a bit. First of all, I’m already taking 16 hours spread out over five days. Compounding the classes would just add more stress to my already busy life. Also, it would cut an entire day out of my work schedule and cut into the hours I can work on regular days by keeping me in class those hours. Thirdly, how does having Friday off help prepare us for the real world? Isn’t it part of A&M-Commerce’s mission to prepare us for our next step in life? Where does this fit in? I’m not aware of a lot of businesses that have a four day work week.
I can see that this would be beneficial to students that commute a considerable distance, but in reality this is a step backward for a university that wants to prove it is the premier university in Northeast Texas. This change might bring in more money temporarily, but hopefully the leaders of this university have enough foresight to recognize the eventual impact of this change.
What’s the solution? Well, neither the five day or the four day schedule are perfect. No matter what decision A&M-Commerce makes someone isn’t going to be happy. A&M-Commerce can offset some of the driving by offering online courses, but at some point in time the university will have to make the choice between becoming a campus where people want to come to live or a campus that caters to commuters.