Why You as a Student Need Longer Mini-Mesters on the Academic Calendar

A mini-mester (sometimes called a mini-term) is a full semester packed into a short two-week period. It is usually scheduled between the spring and summer semesters or between the fall and spring semesters. Anytime there are two weeks open in an academic calendar somebody is going to try to slip a course in. Mini-mesters usually consist of six 4-hour sessions over a two-week period. Classes can be morning, afternoon or evening courses.

These courses may not be desirable to some students but it seems particularly attractive to students that consider the course boring, painful or a bother. For these students it is an opportunity to just get it over with. Some subjects would not seem to be a desirable venue for mini-mesters because of their difficulty in mastering, i.e., calculus.

These may all be valid issues but there is one issue that would appear to overshadow all the rest. Too much study time is needed. Classes that are held six days for four hours of lecture in each class should necessitate two hours of study time per hour of lecture. This totals up to 24 hours of lecture a week and 48 hours of study time in the same week. A student must spend 72 hours per week in lecture and study for a single 3-hour course. By comparison a normal 13-hour load in the fall or spring would require 13 hours of lecture or lab and 26 hours of study, which totals 39 hours per week. Sounds like a normal 40-work week.

Students who endure a fairly challenging college course in a mini-mester term must totally dedicate themselves to this endeavor. That means no dating, phone calls, text messaging, sporting events, going home for the weekend or just being lazy. The student has 5 hours each day for eating and other personal needs such as doing their laundry. This assumes they don't need the extra time to prepare for tests.

It is not my intention to condemn the mini-mester concept. If I were still in college I would probably want to take advantage of the offering. I have even recommended mini-mesters to a relative because it would put a very undesirable course behind her in a very short period of time. My desire is that someone in the educational arena will try to lengthen the time frame so it is not so intense. If it is a May mini-mester course, the administration should be able to find a couple of days in the August or December academic calendar that could supplement the May mini-mester schedule. I know that the December-January time period is another chosen time frame in the academic calendar for the mini-mester term but surely something can be done.

The education community should be commended for the efforts to provide an academic calendar that meets the needs of the students. The mini-mester may be just too tight a time frame to properly meet an educational need.