Letter to the Editor: The new semester-hour system

The editorial in last Monday’s Daily characterizes the move to the semester-hour system as an “ideological shift” which could undermine our identity as a liberal arts college.  The editorial also suggests that the administration has not thought about the effects the semester-hour conversion will have on students.

In fact, work on this project began in the fall of 2013.A committee including faculty from Arts and Sciences and from Engineering, administrators from both schools and the office of the Provost assessed many ways of clarifying our policies and regulations to ensure that students are getting what they pay for: a degree that conforms to all federal guidelines and best practices.Members of this committee also conferred routinely with faculty-student committees, including the curricula committees and the Educational Policy Committee.They looked at numerous student transcripts to assess the effects of this change on typical students.

The faculty of Arts and Sciences and Engineering discussed the semester-hours proposal during the 2014-2015 academic year. In March 2015, the faculty voted formally to “change the requirements for graduation so that they conform with federal requirements. Credit will be assigned to courses in a way that reflects the amount of learning time that the course requires.” In April, the faculty voted overwhelmingly in favor of replacing the Tufts Credit system with the semester-hour system.

Faculty committees, departments and programs are now working on the details, in particular how many semester-hour units (SHU) each course will carry. As we look closely at our curriculum, we are discussing ways to account for the intensive nature of some courses in the languages, arts and humanities that do not require labs or recitations but require a lot of student work outside of class and a lot of individualized instructor feedback. Just about every department will have some courses that count for three SHUs, some that count for more and maybe even some that count for fewer.

In other words, this decision was hardly made without considering the costs, consequences and process.

Students who straddle the two accounting systems will be minimally affected. Courses that students take before the conversion are accounted in Tufts Credits. One Tufts Credit is worth four SHUs. This is the existing policy — and, be reassured, we are not going to change that rule for existing students. The courses you take before the conversion will not get re-accounted: if it was one Tufts Credit when you took it, that’s four SHUs even if, some time later, the course becomes three SHUs, or five SHUs or any number.

So how does this work?  Well, suppose a member of the Class of 2019 has completed 23 Tufts Credits by the fall of 2018 (That’s the minimum required to be in good academic standing, and many students will have completed more credits than that). Those 23 Tufts Credits, by rule, count as 92 SHUs. Under the old system, the student would have required 11 more Tufts Credits during senior year. Under the new system, the student requires 28 SHUs, which will be more like seven to nine classes — fewer than 11. Of course, the student will still have to meet all the degree requirements, including the course requirements for the major, the foundation and distribution requirements and the residency requirement: those rules aren’t changing.

Once the SHU system is in place, students will have information about the time each course requires. Right now, lab courses like Biology 13, lecture-and-recitation courses like Psychology 1 and discussion courses like Classics 31 all count for one Tufts Credit. To a new Tufts student, it looks like those courses are all somehow equivalent. But they aren’t. If Biology 13 is labeled with five SHUs, Psychology 1 with four SHUs and Classics 31 with three SHUs, then it will be clearer to students that the science course will require more time than the literature course.

We believe this will help students choose more realistic workloads, particularly in the first year. And that, in turn, will help students succeed.

Yes, of course, a class that carries more SHUs will count more towards your GPA. This is already true, as any student knows who’s taken a half-credit course or a 1.5-credit course. It seems entirely appropriate to give students more credit for more work, and it would be unfair to change that.

The School of Arts and Sciences is, and will remain, a liberal arts college. Students will still be studying political science, foreign languages, art, mathematics and everything else you currently study. Students will still receive a broad education leading to a bachelor’s degree. Students will still be reading, writing, discussing, exploring and learning. None of that will change. We are simply making clearer what each class expects of its members.

Carmen Lowe is the Dean of Undergraduate Studies and chair of the implementation committee, and Anne Mahoney is a senior lecturer in classics and chair of the Educational Policy Committee.

Editor’s note: If you would like to send your response or make an op-ed contribution to the Opinion section, please email us at tuftsdailyoped@gmail.com. The Opinion section looks forward to hearing from you.