Boston University will set up more courses on Friday in the future to “even out” classes throughout the week and balance students’ schedules, Provost Dennis Berkey said last week.
According to Berkey, BU currently has fewer classes scheduled on Friday than on other days, though he said BU’s classes are more evenly distributed than many other universities.
Shifting class schedules will not only help even out students’ academic workloads, but will also decrease crowding within classrooms and ensure better utility of time and space, Berkey said.
In general, most lecture classes are scheduled for Monday and Wednesday or Tuesday and Thursday, with additional discussion sections or laboratory requirements on Friday, Berkey said.
According to Berkey, the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of General Studies currently have the most evenly distributed class schedule of any school at the university.
CAS associate dean Susan Jackson said the college tries to ensure students’ classes are not all on one or two days of the week.
“It’s a long-standing practice in [the College of] Arts and Sciences to distribute the classes over the full range of the days,” Jackson said.
She said class schedules are important to most professors. CAS tries to keep a steady balance of course work throughout the week by scheduling most required discussions on Friday, she said.
But the situation is a little more complicated for classes in the College of Engineering and the School of Management because those schools have additional discussion groups and lab requirements that fall outside of the assigned university class schedule, Berkey said.
“Students and faculty are in classrooms on Fridays more than the formal class schedule would indicate [because of these classes],” Berkey said.
Some professors last week said they feel having lighter schedules on Fridays can be helpful. College of Communication professor Michael Berlin said weighting schedules to the first four days of the week especially helps faculty members working on research outside class, which most are expected to do.
“Faculty members are required to be on campus four days a week,” Berlin said. “Clearly, it is desirable to have the fifth day on a Friday or a Monday so the day can be used in conjunction with travel to consulting or other scholarly pursuits such as research outside Boston.”
Journalism professor Keith Botsford agreed with Berlin, saying that many professors need time to work on their personal projects. But he also said the situation does need some attention.
“The university is dead right to clean up the situation,” Botsford said.
But Botsford said a bigger problem than classes on Fridays is that some classes either do not need the full semester or need more than the semester.
“The real problem is the course structure by semesters,” he said. “Some courses should be year-long.
“Many – especially in journalism – need be only six to eight weeks,” he continued. “If we worked in all sorts of different modules, whether a class fell on Monday or Friday wouldn’t matter.”
Students, including College of Communication senior Jaime Abramson, said changing weekly class schedules would make no difference to those who tend to start their weekends on Thursday nights.
“[Students] will just party in the middle of the week,” Abramson said. “And if you’re planning to go away for the weekend, it’s obviously something you think is important, so you’d just miss class anyway.”
CAS freshman Genevieve Gill also said most students would just skip Friday classes, regardless of how many they have.
“I don’t really think it’s going to make a difference [other than] hurting a lot of people’s GPAs because people are not going to go to class,” Gill said.
University Professors Program sophomore Leslie Stierma said students would simply stay away from registering for Friday classes.
“I think people will start avoiding those classes [during registration],” Stierma said. “I have a required course that’s offered only on Fridays, and I know many people who miss it.”