Idan Ivri Ivri is a third-year political
science student just giving his opinion. E-mail your opinion to him
at iivri@media.ucla.edu.
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The quarter system is a perfect fit for a large school like
UCLA. It complements our breadth requirements and shortens the time
we spend in introductory courses.
The average student in the College of Letters and Science takes
dozens of units worth of GEs followed by various lower division
requirements before finally enjoying specific, upper division
classes in their major. These courses depend on the quarter system
to quickly move students through to the more advanced levels.
Even with the 11-week system, some students take GEs and lower
division courses into their third or fourth year. If UCLA used a
semester system, students would be stuck in these introductory
courses forever. And although the Academic Senate has reduced the
number of GEs required starting for freshmen entering in Fall 2002,
the change was only marginal ““ you still have to take up to
17 GEs and college requirements.
The problem of excessive lower division classes is especially
clear to students who have changed their major one or more times.
They’re forced to take new lower division requirements and
wait even longer before reaching the higher levels in their
department.
No one can be sure, but if UCLA did consider a semester system,
departmental requirements would have to change immediately.
Otherwise, a change to the semester system at a school like UCLA
would probably mean an even longer wait to graduation.
Besides speeding up the time to graduation, the quarter system
actually matches the nature of many courses offered here. Many
larger lecture courses are broad in topic and enroll hundreds of
students. They survey a large amount of material as an introduction
to their department’s studies. Eleven weeks is plenty of time
to spend in survey courses because the professor doesn’t need
to concentrate on a specific issue. An entire semester in a survey
course, on the other hand, would be a waste of time.
I understand that some large courses do cover material intensely
enough and could benefit from the extra weeks in a semester. But,
to a certain extent, the number of students in a course can affect
its intensity. Students in 15-person seminars, which are relatively
rare at UCLA, are more likely to raise questions and steer the
course in new directions than those in 200-person lectures, which
are fairly common. This extra participation made possible by the
small size of a seminar takes a lot of extra time that the lecture
course doesn’t need.
UCLA offers survey courses widespread in many departments partly
because of its philosophy on “breadth” in education.
The administration puts high importance on exposing students to
fields they would not usually consider. Departments like life
science, philosophy, political science and mathematics have large
lower division courses that are designed to cover a lot of material
quickly. The popular history and psychology majors have large upper
and lower division classes. Many students who have not declared
these majors take the survey courses to get a feel for the
material.
For better or worse, this type of breadth does not usually
happen in a semester system. Students in semester-based schools
usually take only six to eight classes per year. Here, though, the
entire organization of UCLA requirements pushes the student to take
as many types of classes as possible.
The semester system does have many advantages, but these mainly
affect smaller schools and wouldn’t appear here. When class
sizes are routinely small, the extra three or four weeks of class
in a semester helps the class get to know each other. At UCLA,
despite many professors’ efforts, discussions between 100 or
more students don’t usually work out so well. Smaller schools
often use the semester system because classes are extremely
specific and students need more time to understand the material.
And while the upper-level courses here might benefit from the extra
depth of a semester, the lower-level courses would lose their
purpose and become barriers to learning.