(Part 1 of 2)

Although I applaud the author's effort to wade into a sensitive subject, the analysis is highly topical and needs much more thought.

The statistical evidence the author provides lacks proper explanation of analysis. Could it be that grades of part-time students dropped because of the very reason(s) they had to lower their course load not because of their lowered course load? Could students whose grades improve due to receiving assistance with course selection were mostly students who simply had trouble making the right decisions and not because maintaining the course load improved their grades? By stating that "A" could lead to "Z" and therefore A=Z is simply untrue. It ignores variables "B" all the way to "Y" in the process.

I implore the author to talk to students who had to take a part-time load after talking to a counsellor and try to understand the infinite amount of variables that resulted in the decision. It is simply much easier to make decisions as a person who has financial, social and personal stability than for a person who does not have any of those. It is always a constant struggle of risk versus rewards, percentages and chances, reality versus desire. An 80% chance of succeeding may be acceptable for most students, but for those who are struggling without a safety net, a 20% chance of failure is too high of a risk to take. The risk is not only for themselves but those who depend on them.

It is also too naïve to suggest that a person who has academic success will have financial and personal success. There is more to succeeding in life than good grades. Fortune, social connections and luck are strong, if not major, factors in success, whether people choose to believe it or not. A person without any of those must invest their precious time to develop those factors to succeed. A person with it can simply devote all their time to studying. That is why part-time studies is a necessity to many. It allows those who were not born lucky to work for what those who are born lucky already have. This even applies to entering graduates studies and searching for tenure.

Posted by Jimmy Vuong, Feb 16, 2012 1:20 PM

(Part 2 of 2)

To be clear, I am a part-time student. Due to necessity, if I stayed a full-time student, it would have been both detrimental to my studies and my financial future. For me, my choices were the following: A) to study full time in a subject I enjoy and suffer continual worry of the risk it was adding to my financial future and the stress of personal issues, resulting in lower grades, B) study full time in a subject I did not enjoy to slightly improve my financial future, but still suffer the same stresses and still have lower grades or C) study part-time, solve my troubles and build my work and volunteer experience so that I can return to school and study what I enjoy slowly with good grades. For me, the choice was simple. This is why I decided to become a part-time student. The transition improved my grades, allowed me to work and volunteer enough so that I now have a permanent full-time job, solve my personal struggles and finally allowed me to actually enjoy the courses I am taking right now. By looking at all my former classmates who are struggling to find a job in the workforce or who are living a subsistent lifestyle while in graduate studies, I do not regret my decision. This is not the path for everyone, but by being flexible, institutions would allow everyone a chance to succeed, not just those with good fortune. If you believe that part-time studies is not one-size fits all solution to all problems, then full-time studies is not a one-size fits all solution either.

If we are to grow as a society, we need to be much more flexible not less. Be much more tolerant, not less. And much more accepting of the fact that there never is a simple solution to a problem. There are too many variables to account for and any decisions will affect real human beings, not just numbers in a statistic. There will never be an acceptable number of people we can allow to fall through the cracks. As academics and educators, we must accept all challenges and strive for the best result, not just aim to make things easier for ourselves and push to maintain the status quo just because it worked for us.

I thank the author in taking the first steps in the discussion. It was brave of him. By talking about it, it reminded us to constantly be critical of our decisions so that we will never fall behind in our drive to improve ourselves and society.

Posted by Jimmy Vuong, Feb 16, 2012 1:20 PM

As a full-time undergraduate student in the late 90s, I never came within spitting distance of the romanticized vision of academe alluded to above. My programme was far from progressive or coherent, whatever care was given to its original design. For much of it, I was instructed by contracted staff who were lucky if they knew the subject they taught. From senior lecturers more integrated into the department (i.e., tenured), we students grew to expect being prone to pet or esoteric theories. This is to say: a programme’s delivery mode is no guarantee of its value.

Why is it taken for granted that part-time studies must be shallow and unfocused? Why refuse to respond to the practical (i.e., survival) needs of willing, passionate students on principle? With ingenuity, these students might be as usefully engaged as is their tuition. Why couldn’t a part-time student, after his 2nd or 3rd year, undertake an ‘expensive’ core or elective course through facilitated independent study? Why should any individual be denied the life-changing opportunities consequent to a degree (intellectual and otherwise – and there shouldn’t be any shame around supporting social mobility for its own sake, not for a minute), just because they might have missed their moment, for whatever fateful reason?

Posted by nell, Dec 19, 2011 2:26 AM

Interesting article. For me, going to school PT while I continue to work in my field allows me to afford it, for one, while also advancing in my career by gaining valuable work experience. As a single woman in my mid-30s, if I went back to school FT, I'd require a student loan, and I do not want to incur the debt. Since I am already working in my field (with a college diploma), I don't feel a degree is a requirement for my career path (though, it certianly would not hurt), but moreso a personal goal. For that reason, it doesn't make sense for me to give up all income and incur debt simply so I can graduate faster. Yes, it is hard to work FT and study PT and sometimes, yes, my studies can get neglected, but at this stage I'm not concerned with things like my GPA.

Posted by Dana, Dec 16, 2011 3:43 PM

If you are encountering barriers to access, Jocelyn, I certainly understand your anger. One of the things I have noticed, though, is that what it means "to finish [a] degree" has changed over time. For example, a program might require a student to complete one of five courses from a list in a certain area. When that program was designed, presumably, experts concluded that instruction in a course from a cluster of similar courses would fulfill something essential. Increasingly, students are frustrated if all five courses are not offered regularly. At our institution, we require that every course is offered once every two years; sudents might expect that particular courses get offered every year. And, of course, if students are coming and going, taking occasional courses in piecemeal fashion, they might have only one chance to get a course they really want: so we are expected to offer all five courses every semester. There is a cost to maintaining that kind of choice, as I am sure you can appreciate. I believe it would be reasonable to expect that we always have something available to help you progress, to help you work towards completing the requirements of your degree, but I do not think that it will always be viable to schedule the full range of options and choices for people not following the sequence established when programs were designed. While this might not describe the source of your anger, in particular, it does explain some of the frustration I hear from students who infrequently take a full load. They have a very specific sense of what their degree should encompass, and that is very hard to achieve under less than ideal conditions.

Posted by Craig Monk, Dec 12, 2011 9:40 PM

This makes me really angry. I want to get a degree to be BETTER - it's not going to dramatically change my life or my career - it's "just" going to give me a more interesting live. As a public institution do Universities not have an obligation to allow students to finish their degrees, beit part time or full time? I do not expect education 'my way' - I want it to be accessible. I'd have much rather finished a degree in 4 years after high school.

Posted by Jocelyn, Dec 12, 2011 8:00 PM

Thanks, Margo. Clearly, you have provided us all with a great deal about which to think. I should stress, however, that what I consider "genuine" part-time students, the kinds of students with which you are concerned, I think, continue to have my unqualified support. After my freshman year at Memorial University, I left to take a job at a magazine and pursued my undergraduate degree part-time. I could not do it, could not -- at that age -- manage my time properly. I quit that job and went back to school.

My argument, of course, is that full-time students who cut back, often first for financial reasons or simply to "ease" themselves into university, fail to engage with their institutions, with their professors, with their classmates, with cognate disciplines and so miss the very intangibles of the education that, I maintain, should make it more valuable than simply an endurance test. But you are right to suggest that, if this enterprise ever disintegrates into "get 40 courses however you can," we will be left with little more than some assessment of perseverance.

These students need to be able to devote four years to this enterprise with minimal outside distraction. I have an obvious bias, an obvious vested interest in seeing more funding made available to them, I recognize. But what good is any investment made in half measures? Even a comment as thoughtful as yours, steeped in experience in the system, calls outcomes into question. But I would argue that we are judging outcomes produced under far less than ideal conditions.

None of this addresses the obstacles to your students -- whom I, without much art, also call "part-time, part-time." They might have, by necessity, the drive and determination to focus on the work, to make the connections necessary to get what they need out of the experience. But I have never been sure that programs designed for full-time study serve them well. That is why enterprises like "Weekend University" are so valuable, in my opinion.

Posted by Craig Monk, Dec 12, 2011 10:57 AM

Sadly, one of the reasons for buffet-style learning is the idea that everyone needs a university degree in order to get a job. The university experience, then, is merely an endurance test, much like high school was: "get through but don't worry because most of what you learn won't be applicable anyway." Genuine learning takes time and effort, whether students are taking 3, 4 or 5 courses. The critical reading, thinking and writing required in that kind of learning is difficult and often daunting to those who have no real idea why they are in university in the first place.

As former co-ordinator of Weekend University, a U of Calgary program designed for the adult student who wanted a degree but could only take classes on Saturdays or in the evenings, I am not willing to toss part-time studies out with the murky bathwater that is the post-secondary world today. Are our universities putting pedagogy at the forefront? Are they creating a Tayloristic efficiency machine to crank students through as quickly as possible, with maximum flexibility of courses, much like we choose between potato or macaroni salad in cafeteria? Or are we designing educational systems that flow, that make sense, that have an internal integrity that would make taking course X before course B not only impossible but pedagogically invalid?

I would happily put my hundreds of part-time students up against any group of full-timers provided both groups were controlled for drive, desire, purposefulness and life pressures. I've seen part-time students be the medal winners for our department. I've seen others go on to do MA and PhD work. After 20 or so years of teaching university, my heroes are the part-time students raising kids, fighting diseases, helping aging parents, helping raise siblings, working to support their immigrant families. They work. They learn. They struggle. They are amazing.

Back in the 60s, Jerry Farber wrote, "The problem isn't with Mr. Charlie; it's with what Mr.Charlie has done to your mind." The Mr. Charlie in our present situation is the commercialization of our degrees to the point that students are as distant from their education as any labourer from the fruits of said labour (a la Marx). We tell them to invest in higher education: we neglect to tell them to invest in higher learning and that said learning requires an investment of self, not just money. Once students figures that out, it won't matter whether they take 1 or 6 courses: they'll do well.

I find Dr. Monk's article thought-provoking but will continue to champion the part-time student and be a thorn in the side of my university to recognize that there are many reasons for people to do their studying part-time. Honour those reasons and those people. Applaud their tenacity. Believe in their capabilities. Celebrate their successes. They are my heroes.

Posted by Margo M. Husby, Dec 9, 2011 6:23 PM

I am so glad that you had this positive experience, KEM; I worry sometimes that we are not properly tooled for mature, working students -- the kinds of students for whom we should accommodate part-time study. Yesterday, a third-year honours student told me that after discussing Jameson in class -- yes, Jameson is still the core reading for postmodernism -- she saw her environment differently. Why doesn't a university have a front door? What university is in a forest; why do we have a Devonian walkway? Why do her friends expect her to comment on things immediately on Twitter, and what does this lack of reflection mean? It was a fabulous moment. And, I suspect, you could make these kinds of connections, as a mature student, more readily than, say, your kids can. So why have we been encouraging students, at the point where they are more skeptical of the value of their studies and less capable of making connections, to ease in, to pick and choose at random. Some skills can be learned piecemeal: not the skills of the liberal arts.

Posted by Craig Monk, Dec 9, 2011 11:34 AM

I completed my undergraduate degree as a mature student while working full time and with the responsibilities of a family. It took me 5.5 years to do it by taking usually three courses a semester, including summers. I dedicated myself to my studies without compromising the obligations to my job or the relationship with my family. Immediately upon graduation I started an MA, under the same circumstances, and completed it in 2.5 years (2010). My advantage over many students of a typical age in post-secondary was the drive of really wanting a university degree. Based on what I saw in my classes, there was an obvious divide between those who were fully immersed in the experience and who made it a priority, and those who did not and were there because perhaps it was the thing to do after high school. Absolutely I agree there are legitimate reasons for taking a reduced course load, but despite that need (or choice), it is ultimately up to the student to decide to put their studies first, and dedicate themselves accordingly. By all means, students fresh out of high school may initially need the guiding hand of an adviser to help them establish focus, but should it be the responsibility of post-secondary institutions to bend and flex their operations in order to coax continuing students to make their studies a priority? If so, then I have completely misunderstood the concept and value of earning a higher education.

Posted by KEM, Dec 9, 2011 10:23 AM

I admire your persistence, Rishona: congratulations and good luck with graduate school. At my institution, we have some so-called "canned" programs for undergraduates where there is little choice and rigid timelines. They are usually pursued over twenty courses (two years) for post-diploma or second-degree students. Participants often bristle and envy their classmates whose programs have more choice. The problem, I think, is that we never talk about the hidden costs of this choice. How much is too much? If a student can take one of five courses from a list to satisfy a requirement, do we have an obligation to offer all five every semester? Every year? Every two years? There is value to the small class experience, though it can be exaggerated, but I like classes that are small by design, not small because one cohort is spread over a range of choices. To timetable so that students on a reduced load can progress as directly as students who are following the curriculum as designed requires a lot of extra capacity that goes unused. But that is the kind of hidden cost for institutions in the status quo; you have been eloquent about the cost to you. Your program took longer; you have been delayed in starting your career. And, I suspect, that the way your studies piece together now also has something to do with how they are aligned and concentrated, something lost in an undergraduate program sold as a large buffet.

Posted by Craig Monk, Dec 9, 2011 10:22 AM

Speaking as a student who started and stopped college many times, often working 2 sometimes 3 jobs to make ends meet, I completely agree with this article. One point that I would like to highlight that wasn't touched upon was the fact that even with a full-time course load, it sometimes takes 5 years to graduate. For instance if you change your major, or pick up a minor, you can easily add on a year to your studies. When you try to plug away at it on a part-time basis, you are now looking at 6, 7 or 8 years of schooling. It can be difficult to not get discouraged...and stop along the way. Also the longer that it takes you to complete your degree, the more tuition and fees you end up paying (because inevitably, they will continue to rise year after year). In fact, I seriously wonder at the degree completion rate of part-time students vs. full-time. My guess is that the percentage of part-time students completing their degrees even within 10 years, is lower.

And there are few things worse than plugging away at college for years and not earning your degree in the end!

In comparison, I am now in graduate school on a part-time basis. It's a totally different ball game; because I came into it know that I just needed 36 credits and with picking up a courses year-round (Spring, Summer & Fall), I would be done in two years. Set plan...few electives...less variables. Much better experience and chances for success!

Posted by Rishona Campbell, Dec 9, 2011 8:39 AM

I am really glad that you mentioned the medical school admission issue, Stephen. I have encountered many students who have been disappointed by how others, including scholarship committees, interpret negatively their reduced loads. Our students were all students who had done poorly, all students directed by regulations to cut back. And all of them wished to maintain a maximum load. That we could help them improve by helping them choose appropriate courses is the real success story, of course. But I could not agree more about the dangers of generalising about load. After all, there are many signals telling people to take fewer courses. What does it say when, with help, struggling students do better by doing more? My argument, beyond advising, is that there is so much of the experience sacrificed, potentially, when students chip away rather than immersing themselves. And, yet, as we pursue worthy access goals we are afraid to discuss whether some experiences are more beneficial than others.

Posted by Craig Monk, Dec 8, 2011 6:06 PM

To what extent did your study control for selection bias of students? I know from my advising practice the more timid, less well prepared students are more likely to take reduced course loads or be advised to take reduced loads by parents, high school or university advisors. Are these students simply the ones less likely to succeed in the first place? If they do have obligations elsewhere to financial or other realities, its important to try to disentangle this before drawing conclusions about the relative merits of specific course loads.

In my neck of the woods (SFU Science) I do encourage students to be very reflective about their course load and often cite the fact that too few courses can be correlated to lower performance. Ultimately, they make their own choice, though.

They want to optimize pressure to perform. We tend to advise that a less than 5 course load is okay to begin with, but that 5 courses is important to attempt. Pre-med students especially will find that, due to the way medical school admissions looks at partial loads across the country, 5 courses is almost an unwritten rule (and sometimes a written rule) if they hope to get admission.

Posted by Stephen Price, Dec 8, 2011 3:16 PM

You raise an interesting point, Kevin, and my position is that, in the same way that we can assess who gets an extension on an assignment or who gets time-and-a-half to write a test in a separate space, we can support people whose need to reduce load is justified. My wider point is that our programs were developed so that people study x while they study y, and get something out of that connection, and the next semester they go on to do z. Now, we have reduced this to simply ensuring that people have x at some point before z. My students do not use my office hours; they do not linger and discuss things amongst themselves between classes. Increasingly, they do three classes, back-to-back-to-back, and they race off campus. One of my brightest students said to me last week, "Life gets in the way." Indeed it does. While I grant that there are situations in which three or four classes is justified, we were originally designed to get best results out of four years of taking five classes each semester. And as long as our results are going to be called into question, we cannot overlook the fact that how programs are delivered has something to do with that.

Posted by Craig Monk, Dec 8, 2011 8:50 AM

While one can appreciate that students taking reduced load and working extra hours to fund the car or the cellphone account at the expense of taking their courses seriously is maybe not the best decision, it seems naive to me to presume that those reasons are the only reasons that drive students to take a reduced load.
There may be a lot of different reasons why students MUST take reduced load. These reasons may vary widely encompassing everything from single parenthood and elder-care, to personal disability concerns. To start talking about how institutions could give incentives for full-time classes, or penalize reduced load would be just another example of the institutionalization of barriers to individuals who must do things differently from the "average" student. These students do not ask that they be evaluated on some different scale. They simply ask that they be given a chance to show what they know even if sometimes they must do things differently. Differently like take reduced load. Every time that we introduce a new institutional requirement without FIRST considering the impact on these students, we just unthinkingly throw another roadblock up in their educational journey.

Posted by Kevin Reinhardt, Dec 8, 2011 7:18 AM