Schools, Colleges Experiment With Full-Time Operation: Four Quarters, Summer Sessions

Of all the carry-overs from the last century which vex and frustrate educators, there is perhaps none more inefficient than the legacy of a school calendar built around an agricultural life which demanded time off for summer work on the farms.

Traditional Barriers

Pressed today as never before by the rising costs of buildings, a shortage of competent teachers, and inability to pay those who are available a decent wage, schools have sought almost desperately to break through the barriers imposed by the traditional school year. Starting with summer sessions in schools and colleges, the last two decades have seen a series of imaginative studies of the entire problem of the academic schedule. Somewhat to the disappointment of professional educators, many of the experiments have failed, and many of the study reports have been essentially negative in their recommendations.

The failures, however, have not been complete: while helping to destroy the myth that all school boards and trustees were negligent in failing to institute revised schedules, they provided a far clearer understanding of the potential, as well as of the inherent difficulties, of trying to modify the academic year.

Twenty-five years ago, in the midst of the depression, two Pennsylvania towns, Ambridge and Aliquippa, tried one of the first serious experiments in applying new ideas about the school year. Both towns were operating under the pressure of necessity--they did not have sufficient funds to handle the school-age population using conventional methods.

In the Ambridge and Aliquippa experiment, known as the four-quarter plan, the year is divided into quarters, and vacations are distributed equally among four terms. Three-quarters of the student body is always in school.

Ten years later, during World War II, Fort Worth, Texas, instituted a similar program to take care of a flood of new students. But, as soon as they had a chance, all three communities abandoned it.

Parental Opposition

The difficulty was not the program itself--educationally it "worked well," according to Dr. L. M. Wilson, superintendent of schools in Aliquippa at the time. But parental opposition to the staggered vacations and to summer work was overwhelming. Wilson explained that the school-board had "promised" to return to the old program when sufficient money was available, but strong community pressure was an important factor.

In the last three years, there has been a strong rebirth of interest in full-year educational systems. A public school have each undertaken a major study. Although the recommendations were strikingly different, the findings had a great deal in common.

In 1957, Thomas B. Stanley, governor of Virginia, proposed that the entire Virginia public school system should be put on a four-quarter program much like that which had been tried with little success in Aliquippa, Ambridge, and Fort Worth. The plan, which had met with great parental disapproval, was shelved when the segregation crisis occurred, and there is little prospect that it will be revived. Despite its failure, the Virginia proposal represents one of the first serious moves by a state system toward the full year school, and is memorable for that reason alone.

Two other studies have been made, however, which promise to have far greater effects: one because it is almost a definitive case against the four-quarter program; the other because it led to concrete action which represents a step toward full-time use of a college.

Phillips Exeter Academy made its study at the suggestion of a member of the Board of Trustees. A committee of four faculty members and the treasurer of the school worked full-time during the summer of 1957. Their conclusion, that Exeter should not go on a full-year schedule, was supported by a rebuttal of some of the favorite arguments of supporters of the four-quarter proposal. Their report is, however, an extraordinarily persuasive statement of the appeal of a full-year program if applied somewhere more suited to it than Exeter.

Full-time use of the school plant is only the first advantage of the four-quarter program. This argument appeals especially to a business-minded board of trustees, but it represents a distinctly one-sided view.

One-third More Pay

The most important possibility is that it would allow teachers to work all year round. By using their skills full-time, teachers could probably earn more than one-third more pay, since administrative cost would not increase proportionally. In a school with initially high salaries like Exeter, the increase would make them competitive with industry, and in other schools, salaries might at least rise above the subsistence level.

But the high salaries now available at Exeter actually constitute a difficulty, for many of the older teachers are already well enough paid so that they would be very reluctant to start teaching full-time. The long summer vacation is one of the natural disadvantages of teaching, but it is also one of the great appeals.

For other schools, summer operation would also present certain peculiar difficulties: requirements for promotion in many public schools, for example, presume that teachers can study during the summer, and gain additional academic credits. And both public and private schools face the risk that working full-time might make a teacher "stale." This danger is especially acute in boarding schools like Exeter, for when the teacher lives in the same building with students and sees them a great deal outside the classroom, teaching becomes a full-time job, instead of an "hours only" occupation. In colleges where the work load is far lighter, the change in curriculum might seriously disturb the balance between research and teaching.

One feature of the four-term year which particularly appealled to the Exeter group was its flexibility. Special plans of study for the gifted or the weak student could be easily achieved within the present schedule, but that such a feature would automatically accompany the four-quarter program was an argument for its adoption.

Teacher Fatigue

But the committee felt that the opposition of parents and the risk of decreased educational efficiency outweighed all the advantages of a four-term year. Against the additional attractions for potential teachers, the committee felt that fatigue and the difficulties of rehousing those who were not teaching during a particular term were serious problems. Against the economies of full-time operation, the opposition of parents and students was a decisive obstacle.

In addition, Exeter faced two peculiar obstacles, which are perhaps limited to the small group of schools and colleges which enjoy the kind of success Exeter has attained. When a school has 1500 applicants for 250 places, and an educational formula based on multi-million dollar gifts (from the same Edward Harkness who gave Harvard's houses and Yale's colleges), it seems doubly risky to introduce radical changes which could virtually wreck the school if they failed. The committee discussed the possibility of setting up a pilot group within the school to test the plan, but concluded that no really significant results could be obtained in a group of practical size.

In addition, since Exeter derives more than a third of its income from a large endowment (higher per student than Harvard University's), experimentation with the curriculum offers minimum financial benefits. If Exeter increased its size and went onto a four-quarter schedule, it would actually lose money (per student), despite the increased economic efficiency. Although the loss would be a matter of less than $40,000, and could easily be covered by a nominal increase in tuition, the fact remains that, for Exeter, or any school or college with a substantial endowment, the financial gain of the revised curriculum is largely lost. For most schools, the prospect of cheaper education would be the main reason for change.

But the motivation is not solely economic. The faculties of institutions such as Exeter or Harvard feel that they have a unique experience to offer, and any way they can find to offer it to more students is, of itself, justified.

Bard College, in Annandale-in-Hudson, is free of many of the difficulties besetting Exeter. Working on a $13,000 grant from the Fund for the Advancement of Education, it initiated a pilot study to determine the practicality of a four-quarter program. The original announcement sounded like some sort of educator's daydream:

Bard's Objectives

"1. Keep the College plant in operation 12 months a year;

2. Permit the College to accommodate about twice as many resident students as its facilities would otherwise allow;

3. Increase the number of student taught by each faculty member by one third without materially altering the system of seminars, tutorials and individual conference courses that has distiguished the Bard program for the last quarter of a century;

4. Permit able students to complete their collgee requirements in three years instead of four; and

5. Require independent academic work while students are not in residence."

The pilot study introduced independent work for academic credit into the Bard curriculum. Defined in extremely broad terms, this independent work was to be done during what had been known as the "field period"--the January-February period which had previously been devoted to work experience directed towards the student's interests.

Bard continued its study during the 1958-59 year when the pilot study was going on, and finally decided to modify the project considerably from the original arrangement of arbitrarily assigned quarters of work and vacation. Last July, James H. Case, President of Bard, announced that a new schedule had been adopted for the current academic year. Instead of using a pure four quarter program, Bard will maintain its two fifteen-week semesters, and add two half-semesters, one in the summer and one in the winter.

The college hopes that this plan will permit increased use of the college facilities without the concommitant disadvantages of antagonizing faculty and students.

The summer session, running from mid-July to early September will be voluntary, as will the winter session. During one of the two half-terms, the student is required to do field work. The college will give courses, often doing experimental work in the brief term. This winter, for example, there will be one course given: "The Breakdown of the Nineteenth Century World View."

Increased Enrollment

It should be possible under this plan to graduate in three years, Case said, and the present enrollment of 250 should be increased by 50-60 per cent. But there is no sign that the full-year program originally envisioned will ever be used. When he announced the new program, Case said, "There seemed no way to make it [the four quarter proposal] acceptable, under present conditions, to students or faculty."

The four-quarter program, which has been so much discussed, thus seems to have little chance for acceptance. To institute it would probably cause a minor social revolution, at least on the secondary school level, for spreading vacations through the year would change the entire complexion of the student employment situation, now based on the great number of jobs available during the summer when most older workers like to go on vacation. Such a revolution would probably have to occur before any public school system could adopt the proposal on a large scale, for otherwise opposition would be overwhelming.

Productive Summers

There is, however, little doubt that something must be done to make the summer educationally productive. A vacation period may be vital to the maturing process and education outside the classroom, but it is inefficient, not only because it wastes plant hours, but also because it fails to utilize a third of teachers' available time.

Until teachers work for a full year, they will have some difficulty in getting a salary remotely related to either their usefulness or their traning. True, full-year work will not keep teachingpay high for it seems impossible to sustain high public pay scales, but it would bring wages to levels from which realistic pay could be maintained.

The most hopeful prospect at the moment is the summer session. As an institution, it has existed for years, but only recently has the summer session become something more than a device by which the brilliant can accelerate their education while the weak catch up with the work they failed to master during the regular year. And even in the relatively long existence of college summer schools, the session has generally been regarded as something for those with unusual needs or interests--teachers or exceptional students who want or need to spend more of their time in classes.

Ransom Lynch '37, one of the members of the Exeter group, sees summer sessions, rather than the full-year school, as the coming trend. He explains that the difficulties of expanding a summer session are far less than those of creating an entirely new curriculum, and points to the National Science Foundation-supported summer sessions in public secondary schools to prove that there are possibilities outside of colleges. Even in schools where there is no selectivity in general admissions, special summer sessions are often restricted to the especially intelligent.

Stanford has taken another approach--integrating the summer session into the regular academic schedule so closely that the school operates effectively for four quarters a year. This cannot be called the four-quarter system, however, for there is no general rotation of vacations (though Stanford permits a student to leave for any term he wishes, with no red tape). Many teachers are able to work for the full year, and considerably more students can attend the University.

In addition, Stanford has a branch in Stuttgart, Germany, which grants full academic credit for courses taken. The combination of these options gives Stanford one of the most flexible academic programs in the country--a student can take a vacation any time he wishes, finish college in three years, or gain degree credit while living abroad.

Harvard and other colleges have not yet adjusted their curriculum to the summer session. It is far more difficult, for example, to take a useful number of courses when the summer term is not even approximately the same length as the others. Stanford has made things easier by dividing the regular year into three parts, instead of the normal two.

Eliot's Proposal

The summer school is gaining popularity on its own, but while it offers some students and teachers great opportunities, it fails to cope with some of the problems which the widely discussed four-quarter plan could handle.

Back as far as 1883, President Eliot had proposed to the Board of Overseers that the Harvard curriculum should be modified to let a student complete his college work in three years. For twenty-five consecutive years he put the proposal before the Board, and each time it was rejected.

Forty years passed before Harvard again considered the idea of a three-year college. In 1949, President Conant requested a full and thorough examination of the entire undergraduate curriculum, to see if a three-year college program were possible.

Although he made his proposal in very strong terms, it was not carried through, perhaps because Harvard felt that it was already in the midst of one major experiment--the General Education program. However, this proposal too would have done little to ease the position of teachers; the problem of full use during the summer would have remained untouched.

All these programs for giving students a chance to learn during the summer fail to solve the real problem: until the summer session is compulsory, only a minority of students will attend, and a third of the year will still be wasted. A few students who want extra learning will not make up for the majority who are content to stay with the old schedule. Only a radical approach like the four-quarter program seems likely to break through the inertia and provide the efficiency, economy, and opportunity which the more conventional proposals seek to duplicate.

Established Formula

At present no major institution appears ready to adopt the four-quarter program. From secondary and prep schools to colleges, parents and students seem set against it; and where the pressure of admissions permits the institution to dictate terms, the problem of fixed income from endowment and of success based on an established formula seem insurmountable.

If the outlook for such solution is dim, however, the necessity is overwhelming. Without it, there is little prospect that the immediate shortage of teachers can be solved, that the ever-rising cost of classrooms can be met, or that the rising tide of those who wish to be educated can find a place in our schools and colleges.