Our students also depend on the quarter system to be able to take more courses towards their degree. Less semesters for courses might necessitate curriculum changes at the department level so that students complete their degrees and my department just spent years on a major curriculum overall. I am not particularly fond of teaching in a quarter system, but I think the drawbacks of changing it outweigh the benefits, especially as we have not seen data supporting what improvements could be gained by the change.

I believe a 16 week semester will allow for deeper learning. 10 weeks is just not enough, especially when faculty use week 1 for course introduction, and move final projects to the last (10th) week. Semesters give students time to process; engage with more readings, go deeper with concepts; and it’s an opportunity to teach using formative and project-based assessments (which are very difficult to undertake in 10-week quarters of instruction.

As a student and as a faculty member, I’ve experienced both quarters and semesters, and am familiar with the advantages and disadvantages of each; to the extent that I prefer quarters over semesters, the difference is slight. However, unless there is some clear, evidence-supported indication that a transition will result in meaningful improvements in a campus’s capacity to fulfill its mission, the burden the transition inflicts on the campus’s faculty, staff, and students is unwarranted.

I study joy-centered pedagogy and my guess is that when we slow down and prioritize meaningful connections in class, there will be more room for joy. Isn’t that what we all need right now?

My administrative recommendations are to 1) increase the units for classes so students are not held back (this eliminates the time to degree issue) and 2) mandate that CAP lighten research expectations for faculty for 2-3 years while the dust settles.

Switching to semesters also would not lead to reduced graduation times for students without reducing major requirements and thereby diluting the quality of UC degrees. Students already struggle to complete their degrees on time due to increasing enrollments, but insufficient faculty and classroom capacity. A switch to a semester system would mean many courses only being offered twice a year, rather than three times a year. It would also mean that summer courses would have to be longer to accommodate the increased material of a semester-long course, making it more difficult for students to take classes for part of the summer and work or pursue an internship in another part.

UCOP and the Regents have shown themselves increasingly not to abide by standards of shared governance. Thus, the de facto reality is that faculty are employees with a sometimes adversarial relationship to top-level management. For this reason, we should unionize to protect ourselves from UCOP and Regents’ misuse of authority. I am using the occasion of the proposed change to semesters as a trigger to encourage faculty unionization at UCR, and I am finding a receptive audience.

In UC BioEngineering, we have a UC system wide consortium that has an annual meeting And other events, being on the same calendars would make our partnership events more seamless.

I’m sure it also Has other massive benefits for the UC system and intercampus Administration and relations.

The only downside I see is the painful transition., And if that is not managed right, it could have serious consequences on both faculty and students.

Instead of a 10 week quarter system where in the first week nothing really happens; half way through the quarter, students go on a mid-quarter break, and nothings is allowed to happen in week 10, the so-called “dead week”.

Leaves effectively only 7 weeks for serious intructions, or 6 weeks if one accounts for at least one medically necessary absence.

Plus having to start and wind down a quarter three times during an academic year; one of these three times with just about a week time for turnover.

Beside it would bring the UC system in line with many it not most universities world-wide and their calendar for conferences etc.; meaning attending internagtional conferences would be much easier to co-ordiante with one’s teaching obligations.

From the faculty perspective, quarters make it easier to shift teaching duties around during the year to free up time to focus on research (e.g. teaching 2-1-0 classes over the 3 quarters instead of 1-1-1 is quite manageable in a 10-week term. Doubling up for a 15-week semester would be much harder.

But, more than that, the flexibility of the quarter system has allowed for a significant increase in the time I can (and do) devote to research. I am significantly more productive as a research faculty (which is, let’s not forget, the primary factor by which we are measured) on the quarter system than I was (or would be) on the semester system.

More important to me is that we have increasing demands on our time, and I believe that moving to Berkeley’s semester schedule would help ease some of these demands. (Fewer days in the classroom, and fewer spring breaks spent grading winter quarter assignments while finalizing syllabi for spring quarter.)

On the research front, I run a center that includes many non-UC faculty, and being on a semester schedule would be better for facilitating research.

I also wanted to note that I have become increasingly convinced that a unionized faculty is the only way to get the administration to respond to faculty concerns. The faculty senate is increasingly sidelined while faculty are asked to teach without TA’s, do research with grants where the budget no longer works, and ignore the administration’s violations of UC policy regarding policing. I don’t have substantial insight on unionization strategy, but I hope that your actions here won’t dissuade folks like me from seeing the union as an important vehicle for solidarity and representation (it seems to me like advocating for compensating faculty for their time spent switching things to the semester system is something everyone can agree on, and to the degree that not much is offered here, it makes the need for the union even more clear?) .

I am not privy to the process, but I worry about adequate consultation.

I find that during months that I’m teaching, it fills most of my time, so I barely get any research done. This feels like it would mean instead of 6 months a year to get research done, I’m getting half of that time taken away.

I also worry about losing the alignment with secondary education schedules, so anyone with kids would have schedules for summer travel thrown off.

Having only attended as a student in semster systems, and taught full-time previously at two semester institutions, I found the quarter system tricky to adjust to when arriving in fall 2019. There are certainly advantages to the semester system when it comes to students having more time to learn and practice important skills such as writing, clinical practice, or other critical tasks that require a feedback loop.

Yet, I can also say that the ability for faculty to do research–especially extended projects—during the semester system year is extremely challenging, as is giving talks, attending conferences, or other outreach efforts.

At the liberal arts semester system I worked in, the trade was to emphasize teaching and diminish the rate, and in some cases, robustness, of research so that mentoring, student-class research projects and other creative efforts also counted as research toward advancement. It was simply not possible for faculty to teach 34 weeks a year and conduct/produce research at the same rate.

This is especially true for faculty who are single, women, or other non-traditional family structures who would teach back-to-back semesters and have to do all their research in the summer or holiday breaks, including travel if necessary, accessing archives, visiting labs, attending conferences, all during the portion of the year when they could somewhat attend to their own health, well-being, and family lives more fully. All other things equal, those without a nuclear family structure, year round child care, or support system to enable year round research are increasingly tapped out and falling behind on advancement.

Any change will offer the opportunity for creative solutions. Yet, I have found that it is considerably more realistic to develop creative solutions in a quarter system to facilitate student achievement and pedagogical feedback loops than it is to reinvent time. Likewise, materializing relational supports, financial resources, and life-work balance to teach all year and research all summer are not merely an issue to be solved by creative brainstorming. They cannot be materialized for many faculty.

Many faculty will lag in their research advancement and overall work-life balance in this switch, *unless* the switch also comes with (1) more regular semesters off for sabbatical research, (2) a re-allocation of all faculty advancement criteria, (3) a redirected focus from research to other metrics achievable during the school year.

In addition to substantially increasing faculty workloads (transitioning would be no easy task — think of how laborious it would be to reimagine all of the courses you’ve designed, craft an entirely new slate of lectures, reconceptualize and -scaffold entire assignment sequences, etc.), it would detract from our teaching in the sense that the quarter system offers many of us the flexibility to design a wider range of courses that might expose students to new questions, ideas, fields, and methods. I wish I had had the opportunity to take courses on a quarterly basis as opposed to a semesterly one as an undergraduate. I would have been exposed to so much more and I wouldn’t have had to make so many impossible choices in terms of my intellectual trajectory.

Learning and teaching on a semesterly basis also results in a good amount of wasted time and energy. Having taught 15-week courses for years, I can say from experience that students are entirely burned out by week 11. It is difficult to accomplish much, if anything, during those final weeks. It’s wasted pedagogical time. The quarter system, on the other hand, offers more periodic respites that are necessary for students. It also allows courses to move such that students never get bored — they are kept on their toes in a good way. I find I can be more inventive with my teaching, too. For instance, courses on more niche but no less generative topics have a home on the shorter time frame of a quarter. This is not the case with respect to the semester. It will restrict the kind of teaching we are able to do. Pedagogical innovation is I think better supported on the quarter system.

I also want to add that I am better able to serve as an advisor and mentor to individual students on the quarter system than on the semester. For instance, non-teaching quarters allow me to give students more of my time and to provide more individualized support. This flexibility goes away when you are working on a semester system, which provides little if any breathing room. Workloads are ballooning. I would urge administrators to consider how this move could very well result in making faculty less and not more available to students.

Moving to the quarter system also strikes me as disastrous for faculty research agendas. The quarter system affords the flexibility necessary to attend conferences without canceling course meetings. It affords the breathing room necessary for faculty who are already significantly overburdened to maintain traction on our research agendas. It permits more flexibility for conducting necessary archival and on-site research. There is already dwindling material support for research in many fields. The UC is, of course, renowned for the scholarship its faculty produce. That is a major draw. Doing anything to compromise faculty research — which is already undermined in various ways by the ballooning workloads I mentioned (in addition to attacks on higher education from without) — would be a serious mistake. Research is also integral to teaching, of course. The reason I am able to offer my students an ever-expansive, inventive, and attractive slate of courses is precisely because I remain current in my field and am positioned to contribute to its cutting edge (like all fields, mine is ever-changing — the work to remain current never stops and if we don’t remain current, our teaching suffers and so, too, does student learning).

I strongly encourage the UC to leave a decision such as this one to its faculty for us to determine on a campus-by-campus basis. We know our fields and our students. We are pedagogical experts. We are well positioned to make this decision. In the event the UC does not rethink its decision to largely exclude faculty from the decision-making process, I would then strongly urge against taking a one-size-fits-all approach. Mandating a shift to semesterly teaching is not in the best interests of students or faculty. The quarter system is in fact integral to what makes the UC attractive to students and to faculty — and it is integral to the research and teaching for which the UC is revered.

Extending the length of classes already adapted to a quarter system will also not help students. It will also needlessly delay graduation times as they would need to wait semesters to enroll in classes as opposed to only quarters.

I am honestly unable to come up with one good reason to switch to semesters. Having experience in both the semester and quarter system, I can with confidence state quarters are superior and better for students and faculty. As a student, semester felt long, many times inefficient. In contrast, when I took classes in the quarter system, I was able to focus with information provided in manageable “chunks”. The quarter system also meant I was able to take more classes in a shorter amount of time because they were focused.

UCOP’s pursuit of this policy mocks our vaunted system of shared governance. If this move is pursued unilaterally, as now contemplated, faculty will lose all trust in UCOP.

All of my friends and colleagues at the Cal State system all feel burnt out by their heavy teaching workload and told me they are envious of the quarter system I enjoy in the UC. They wish they had it so they can do their research as well during the academic year. This past year I did a year long faculty burnout workshop series at my school and one major complaint among the faculty is the increased workload of doing more for less. By switching to semester, you are asking professors to teach 20 more weeks of classes without guaranteed colas or more institutional resources. UC is seriously understaffed and has not filled positions to give us the Infrastructure to support our students.

One of my courses is to organize a speaker series and bring national speakers to our campus. At 10 weeks I can plan this class effectively and manage it logistically well. However, 15 weeks will involve 15 different speakers which is way more work to bring and plan speakers to campus (I also do my own version of a separate lecture on the speakers’ random topics and expertise on a separate day in the same week).

I am currently a super-involved mentor and sit on numerous student service committees and swept every service/mentoring award at my school. If we switch to semester system, I will be forced to pull back from all my commitments to maintain life-work balance, which is becoming harder to maintain in these difficult times.

Students especially so many who are double majoring and minoring will have an easier and faster time to graduate given the shorter 4 unit classes. I highly recommend against this move. It is done and another example of top down decision-making without care or concern for faculty input or opinion/experience. Please reconsider this move to give faculty the best chance to succeed on their own terms. Every campus is different with diverse student needs.

My biggest concern, however, is burnout on the quarter system. Fall quarter is reasonably manageable, with a three-day weekend and a 4-day one for recovery and catch-up. Winter break is reasonable in terms of recovery time (though semester schools typically have one additional week). But Winter to spring quarters, with only one week off during which we’re grading from Winter classes and prepping our spring syllabi, essentially constitutes a 24-week mad dash to June. It is devastatingly exhausting. Students experience this burnout too, especially at the graduate level where they really need to be researching their final papers already in Week 1, without having had much if an introduction to the field or the topic of the class. I would argue for semesters with a 2-week spring break.

For students — especially at our campus with many 1st gen attendees – a quarter system means that students can take a “time out” to cope with family/financial issues then step back in to their education after 3 months. Under a semester system they would have to take half a year out. Similarly.. for students who have just a course or two to complete their degree then a quarter system is more helpful than a semester one. Moving to semesters will likely differentially impact students who come to UC – students from some populations will be more affected than others. It maybe won’t make too much difference to students from relatively well off backgrounds who will finish in 4 or 5 years no matter what – but for those students who already face challenges I think it will add some barriers and make us less welcoming/ not help their graduation rates. Why would we do that?
For faculty it will represent a material change in work conditions. Faculty “compensation” is a combination of salary + benefits + research and teaching environment. The quarter system gives more flexibility to faculty over their research and teaching. As such it is a tool we can use as we seek to attract and retain the best scholars. We know that we sometimes lag on salary issues. But we can offset some of that salary competition by our more flexible research and teaching environment. If we move to semesters we get rid of that flexibility and so give away a plus (and maybe put upward pressure on salaries). Yes, I know Cal is a semester school. But it also has higher salaries and higher prestige so it clearly is in a very different position from most of the other campuses. At least it was. As Cal faces competition – especially from UCLA – Cal might want to look into moving to a quarter system as a way to help attract/retain.

The quarter system gives greater flexibility to both students and faculty. If we give that up I think we need to be sure we are going to get some concrete and sizable benefits in return.

Finally, I would note that the system faces a lot of challenges. There are budget woes, budgeting issues on a number of campuses., there is a decline in pubic regard for higher ed there are clear problems in workings of UC as an organization across 10 campuses. I think a better use of resources would be to focus attention on those substantive problems rather than this “solution in search of a problem”

Flexibility for research will also be significantly reduced because it will no longer be possible to “stack” courses into two quarters to increase time for dedicated research. This is particularly important in fields that require extensive travel for research / field work, or need concentrated time to write books. Increased sabbatical credits may offset this.

The costs to remake campus systems will also be substantial. This cost will be incurred by most of the UC campuses since most campuses are currently quarter systems.

From a pedagogical side semesters do offer more time for more intensive study of subjects as well as more time to space out tests, exams, and assignments. Research seems to be mixed on whether semesters or quarters actually lead to higher levels of educational attainment.

From a calendar perspective, semesters better match the California highschool calendar which runs from August to May. However, it makes little sense to take a one month break in the winter between semesters as Berkeley does. Some of the negative research effects might be reduced somewhat if this break was shortened in half allowing a longer continuous break in the summer months.

On the quarter system, students are able to make more classes than on the semester system, adding to the breadth of their knowledge.

It would undoubtedly have a negative on professors’ research productivity. On the quarter system, we can teach four courses over two quarters and take one quarter to work on research. This would not be possible in a semester format.

And programs which undergo special accreditations such as CalTeach should be given additional funding and staffing to assist in the transition as well.

Thanks for providing an opportunity for input.

The question is not whether semesters are better than quarters, or vice versa. The question is whether the UC administration is going to provide any support to actually do this switch, or will the faculty be left on their own (as was done in recent incidents related to graduate student strikes, for example). I have no confidence that the administration is going to do the right thing. If this transition happens, the only reason it will not be horrible for the students and the faculty is because the faculty will bear the brunt of this change.

For our students, the quarter system allows them to take a greater array of courses during their careers than they would on the semester system. The result is that students are more likely to take courses outside of their major, which means our political science students are more informed about subjects beyond political science, and students in majors like biology and agriculture are more informed about political science. I cannot count the number of times I’ve had a conversation with an undergrad who, by virtue of their high school record, could have gone to a different school of equal or higher rank with the same scholarship package, and who lauds the quarter system as one of the best parts of their undergraduate experience.

As for faculty, without a doubt we would not have managed to attract and retain the amazing faculty we have if we were on a semester system. The quarter system is an invaluable perk. Simply put, the quarter system allows us to punch above our weight in terms of our faculty hires and retentions. Shifting to a semester system would be devastating for us, gutting our morale and, I suspect, our rankings.

Please, please do not shift us to the semester system.

When I was interviewed here, I was told that one of the key differences of the UC system compared to other universities is its model of shared governance, where faculty are actively involved in making campus-wide decisions. However, I don’t see that principle being upheld in this case.

Furthermore, we have all experienced the challenges of transitioning to Aggie Enterprise. I imagine the transition from the quarter system to the semester system will be far more complex. Yet, there has been no communication or detailed plan shared regarding how these changes will be implemented or how potential challenges will be addressed. Have those pushing for this decision fully considered how they will navigate this transition?

RESEARCH
Research on a semester system is so much easier when we’re not trying to navigate so many instructional transitions during the academic year. it’s also easier to hire research assistants who can show up consistently throughout the year for research activities as their course-taking and TA schedules become more stable. Grant and conference deadlines and activities are also determined largely in response to typical semester calendars.

TEACHING DIVERSE POPULATIONS OF LEARNERS
My sense, as a professor with research expertise in social contexts of learning for culturally and linguistically diverse students, is that semesters are also much easier to manage for students who are trying to learn the culture of the institution and norms of a new instructor and course. Socialization into the disciplinary language demands and expectations of subject area is also easier within the context of longer engagement in fewer courses. As an autistic professor with autistic children, I can also attest to the fact that semesters are much more accessible for neurodivergent students who may take longer to adapt socially to a new course, struggle with transitions in routine and expectation, and take time to figure out appropriate strategies to manage the demands of each new course.

EQUITY FOR WOMEN AND OTHER PRIMARY CAREGIVERS (to children and elders)
It is so much easier to set up family life and especially paid childcare or elder care when one’s work schedule is more stable. As mother to autistic twins who are unable to attend school– and six-year caregiver to declining elders with dementia– it has been so challenging arranging for aspects of care that I *need* to support and aspects of care that I can hire out when my schedule changes substantially every 10 weeks.

To APC on systematic academic calendar workgroup:

I would like to provide my input regarding this issue as a humanities professor at UC Davis.

First, I am disappointed that there has not been a discussion of this issue first at the individual campus level, as all campuses in the UC have different profiles. I hope that if this discussion goes further, there will be robust discussion at all individual campuses rather than a brief email sent out to all UCs at once, so that the localized issues become clearer. In a huge institution like the UC system, I believe the notion of a one-size fits all will not work, especially as there are so many institutional differences across all the UCs. At least, there should be more discussion at the local level when examining such a large issue as changing to a synchronized calendar.

Second, I would like to point out some issues that the simple chart provided with pros and cons noted in the “Background paper appendix 2” document does not adequately illustrate.
a) With the quarter system, students can take more courses and this is important not just for “double majors” as the Background paper notes, but also triple majors as well as those who minor in various subjects (in addition to their major). This is critical for smaller humanities programs as many UCD students who are in STEM or other programs with larger numbers of majors also opt to major and minor in smaller programs. Our Japanese program is one of the largest in the UC, but I believe programs like ours will see a decline in majors since the semester system will not allow for double or triple majors (or majors with many minors) when students already have to take many courses in STEM etc. Enrollment in language courses (for those who will not take them as part of university requirements or majors) will also decline due to the limits on coursework. I think this shift will particularly devastate humanities programs that are even smaller, particularly at UCD. It is also detrimental for students, as I have many students who have told me that the combination of STEM type degree plus humanities degree really helped them—not only for the job market/graduate school applications but also in their development of critical thinking and foreign language skills.
b) The Background paper mentioned that UC Irvine earlier was concerned about the detrimental effect on scholarly activity that would result from a shift to the semester system. This is not emphasized in Appendix 2, although it mentions that instruction can be covered in 2 quarters rather than 3. This issue of scholarly activity is important, and should be considered a major issue for faculty, even for campuses that do not allow for a nonteaching residence quarter (such as “0-2-2”) but only allows quarter teaching models such as “1-2-1.” Before coming to UCD, I was tenured faculty at a Big Ten school on the semester system, and it was exactly this non-teaching residence quarter model that was a huge incentive for me to move to UCD. I would say that taking away this attractive aspect of the UC system (the quarter system) will be extremely detrimental to recruitment of faculty. While there are many aspects of living in CA that will be attractive to recruits, there are many other aspects such as the high cost of living that will prove prohibitive and can only be offset by other incentives.
c) I would also like to add that Appendix 2 notes that the sabbaticals for semesters will be “longer and less frequent” while quarters are “shorter and more frequent.” This is true, but it is actually more complicated because the UCs employ the “sabbatical credit” system. Any changes to a semester system should also entail examination of sabbatical frequency and sabbatical systems amongst comparable universities that use the semester system —I only see discussion of instructional days in this report, which is only one aspect of faculty time. For those of us in the humanities, sabbaticals are needed for the completion of book-length works. At my prior Big Ten school, we could take sabbaticals with fewer years of teaching compared to UCD, and when we received major outside fellowships we did not have to use “sabbatical credits” to offset any lack of funds, but the fellowships were topped up by the university to match current salary, as long as the fellowship was a prestigious one. These times spent away from teaching and service (leaves from the university) usually counted towards the next sabbatical as well. In the UC system, sabbaticals take longer to accrue (for people taking a year-long sabbatical), and when we receive an outside fellowship, even if prestigious ones, we need to use our own “sabbatical credits” to top up to our usual salary. And this “sabbatical” will not count towards the next sabbatical. While this is hugely disadvantageous, the benefit of the UC system combined with the quarter system at least at UCD, is that we are able to take shorter sabbaticals (sabbaticals are more flexible) and we are able to conduct more research during the school year due to the 2 quarters teaching schedule. In thinking about scholarly productivity, therefore, we cannot separate sabbatical/leave issues from the academic calendar. If the UC is considering a move to a uniform semester system without changing some rules to match comparable institutions with regard to sabbaticals and outside fellowship rules for leaves, I think this will be devastating from a recruitment standpoint and will lead to less productivity for those of us already here.

1. The transition costs would be tremendous: All but two of the UC campuses (Berkeley and Merced) are on a quarter system. Given that Cal Tech and Stanford are also on quarters, I assume that state businesses have already accommodated it within their recruitment, internship, etc., programs, necessitating that they make changes as well. Faculty would need to reconfigure, and in many cases dramatically expand the length, of long-existing course offerings. They’d also have to dramatically reconfigure curricular requirements. And I’ve only touched on some of the transition costs: the list is long, and the costs are weighty, whether in time, money, or confusion (among students, faculty, and staff). (I went through such a transition as an undergraduate at UT-Knoxville, and it was a nightmare.)

2. Quarter systems allow a greater variety of classes: Many classes that could not be justified on a semester-long (15 week) basis can be justified on a quarter-long (10 week) basis. Consequently, moving to a semester system would homogenize course offerings, reducing diversity and experimentation.

3. The quarter system, because it makes yearly research quarters possible, is a powerful faculty recruitment tool: Being able to tell potential hires that they will only be in front of a classroom 20 weeks per calendar year (as opposed to 30 in a semester system) is a big selling point for us—and by “us,” I mean all campuses but Berkeley and Merced. Liberating 10 weeks a year for research is a huge bonus, especially for junior faculty rushing to meet research expectations for tenure. Trying to arrange yearly research semesters on a semester system, on the other hand, would be logistically daunting (unless overall teaching loads were commensurately reduced, of course—but then could curricular needs be met?). Throwing away one of our best recruiting tools would be imprudent, to put it mildly. I personally find it to be one of the most attractive features of our system.

4. Imposing this decision on all campuses, regardless of their traditions, needs, and preferences, would be inconsistent with subsidiarity: In general, I think that decisions should be made at the most local level possible, in this case at the campus level—and, within campuses, at the level of the college, department, etc. I struggle to see what the problem is with continuing a system (viz. of mixed calendars across campuses) that has worked perfectly well until now. Berkeley switched to semesters in 1983, and other campuses are free to make that decision if they wish, on the basis of their own traditions, needs, and preferences. The benefits of uniformity would have to be quite large to justify the imposition, and I don’t see how the benefits could conceivably be that big.

A second advantage of the quarter system lies in its compatibility with trans-disciplinary and transnational teaching programs. In the case of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies for example, the flexibility of multiple shorter quarters making up the degree programs enables the offering of a wider range of shorter courses than would be possible under the semester system.

I think the transition for students and student advisors would also be incredibly confusing. I’ve served as the advisor for two different majors while they were in much more minor transitions (e.g., changing a single major requirement to include an additional option), and the confusion there was already very high. For students who begin in a system with quarter-long courses, transferring midway through to semester-long courses seems incredibly stressful and difficult.

Dear colleagues,

I am a professor at UC Davis for 26 years.

I oppose a common calendar among all UCs for several reasons.

(1) it actually helps that different campuses have different calendars when it comes to collaboration across campuses, because faculty have vacation periods and major breaks at different times, and this enables different faculty to take the lead on projects when others are unavailable. This really helps with proposal writing and research management.

(2) You’d think it would be beneficial to time breaks together but it has negative consequences for applicants. I have 2 high-school aged kids and the problem is that several UCs and several high school systems all have break at the same time. That means that when I want to take my kid to visit colleges, they are unavailable. The UCs that are big research schools tend to at least have people around, but I can tell you that the less research oriented campuses- UCSB and UCSC- are so shut down it’s crazy during spring break. I hadn’t understood how far behind UCSC and UCSB were in their research work compared to UCD, UCSD, and UCB until I saw all the lights off, doors locked, and nobody around those campuses. So their spring breaks are a waste of time for applicants to visit in those periods. Well, if everybody has break at the same time, then high school kids can’t use their spring break to go visit all these schools. It’s better if the UCs have a shifted break so some campuses are open whenever high schools are on break. As a parent, it’s not necessarily better if my kid’s high school and UCD are off at the same time, because I can organize care for them anyway, or even adjust my schedule if their break is different.

(3) In Australia, schools in the different states get off for their 2-week breaks at the end of each quarter at different times on purpose. By doing that, vacation regions can extend their economies and avoid facing a massive over tourism all at the same time. That works much better, and the scale of Australia is about half the size of California so it’s not far off from a reasonable comparison to think about.

(4) I was an MS student at Berkeley under the semester system and I did my undergrad and PhD in the semester system. At UCD I’m in the quarter system. After being on the quarter system, my opinion is that it is far superior for learning than a semester system. Why? Because… students today simply lack the attention span to do intensive work on a topic for 18 weeks. As it is, they don’t read (that’s in the national news), they don’t want to take high-stakes exams (they write strong negative course evaluations when I give close-book tests now) and semesters have far more content in a final exam than a quarter does. Pedagogy research shows that people learn better with more frequent, lower stakes assessments, and this is consistent with the quarter system. The quarter system allows for more regular breaks for mental health and recovery, whereas the semester system leads to just one big break in January. The content of 10 weeks is very effective. By week 9 everybody is bleary-eyed and they just don’t seem to care much any more. If I had to go another 7-9 weeks more, I just don’t see that they would learn well.

(5) I love having September off when everybody else is in classes. September is a very productive month at a time of year that is better to be off than late May or June. In September, I can go give lectures at universities around the world to do outreach and meet the needs for my major promotions, which is not possible if my summer is timed with theirs. Otherwise, I’d have to skip my classes to do it. September is also a great time to do field work in preparation for the upcoming wet season.

If UC switched to semester system, I cannot see myself reconfiguring all my classes at this stage of my career, even with many years to go. It’s a waste of time. I would imagine people on the semester system would at least agree with that, if they had to switch to quarters. Many more UCs are on quarters, so if we all had to switch it’s a very costly process for all of us. I just don’t see that as fair, necessary, or beneficial. The relative benefits o being on the same schedule are just too small.

Well, that’s my input as a rank-and-file professor. Thank you for considering my viewpoint.

For faculty, this switch would also be highly problematic. I am not against having more time to convey course skills and material–that would be great! But I don’t see any discussion of how this change would increase faculty teaching loads (assuming we switch from a 4-course-load on quarters to a 4-course load on semesters), and the enormous amount of work it would take to revise courses, major requirements, GE requirements, etc. I value having at least 1 quarter with either no teaching or light teaching. That flexibility would be gone on a quarter system. In regard to the switch, would we all just lose a significant part of the relevant summer?

I am shocked that such a large change could be contemplated without a vote by the academic senate. What happened to shared governance?

2) Even if UCOP and the Trustees want to change to a semester system, this decision needs to be based on data. Is there data that supports the idea that a semester system is better? And in what concrete ways and areas? Is there data that runs counter to this? It seems like there are highly ranked institutions on the quarter (U Chicago, Stanford, etc) and semester systems. As such, I’m not sure if there is data that proves it one way or the other.

3) In addition to data, it seems that students have historically wanted the quarter system because it allows them to take more courses and engage more faculty. We need to account for student experience in this larger decision.

4) Lastly, and most importantly, this decision needs to be done in a way that models robust and proper governance at all levels. What I mean by this is that this decision needs to be made in a way that allows for robust faculty participation and governance in the decision, since this greatly impacts our daily work life. This decision cannot be made simply by the whims of the upper administration. As such, it seems important that this decision not be made with only a workgroup. This creates a very bad precedent for future decision making, since these decisions with such a large impact should involve more active participation of faculty.

Waiting until summer for these engagements is often impractical, as it can be a highly inconvenient time for my collaborators. In many cases, their academic calendars do not allow for meaningful collaboration during the summer months, making it essential for me to travel and work with them during the academic year. If we were to transition to a semester-based system, I would lose this critical flexibility, significantly impacting my ability to maintain and expand my research activities.

For this reason, I am strongly opposed to this change. If UC Davis or any of its sister institutions aim to prioritize teaching over research, then perhaps such a shift could be justified. However, even in that case, there is no guarantee that we would achieve the intended benefits. Research excellence is a defining characteristic of leading institutions, and moving to a semester system could compromise the very strengths that set us apart.

With regards to the effect on our students and the worklaod it would create for faculty, I sent this email to calendar@ucop.edu on Jan 31. 2025:

Dear APC workgroup,

I am emailing to provide input about the idea of moving the UC campuses to a semester calendar, as per the email below.

This will hurt our students and hurt our faculty, with no clear benefits.

Scientific studies show that quarter systems are better for our students than semester systems: as reported in Bostwick et al (2022), semesters lead to lower first-year grades and longer time to graduation, with negligible-to-nonexistent benefit to summer internship employment. Therefore, switching to semesters would be the antithesis of everything we’ve been trying to achieve with efforts to increase on-time graduation at UC Davis.

In addition, a switch to a semester calendar would be extremely disruptive to an already overtaxed and exhausted faculty. Redesigning classes and curricula to fit this would take a massive amount of work. As someone who advises in a multidisciplinary major that uses classes from over 20 different departments to form our major curriculum, I can’t even fathom the amount of work that it will take to redesign our major based on each department’s approach to such a switch, on top of having to change my own classes.

Our faculty have just gone through a gauntlet of redesigning our classes to be remote then hybrid then in-person again but with lagging student attendance and students behind on their education due to the global pandemic. We’re now facing even more class redesign challenges with the expansion of AI technology. This is on top of increasing stress from retirements outpacing faculty hiring leading to a shrinking faculty to teach ever-increasing study bodies as well as shrinking budgets and grad student support given salary changes and budget constraints. Finding people to cover basic needs for teaching and committees is already difficult; a significant number of us are on service and teaching overload. Then add all of the stress about federal funding that started this week and promises to continue.

We are at a breaking point. Adding anything so time-consuming as a switch to semesters is asking too much of our faculty. And to do so for something that hurts, not helps, our students, is just baffling.

Thank you for listening.

I have studied and taught at multiple universities over my 40 year graduate and faculty career. The quarter system has value, flexibility, and balanced the year with clean breaks between “chunks” of intense learning.

One major problem for humanities faculty in shifting to a semester system is the loss of a dedicated research quarter—a vital period for achieving research productivity. Humanities scholars are typically 9-month employees who often teach four courses per academic year, a teaching load that is considerably heavier than that of many STEAM colleagues. Transitioning to a semester system would eliminate this crucial period for research, forcing humanities faculty to juggle their heavy teaching loads with research responsibilities throughout the academic year. This disruption could significantly hinder their ability to produce high-quality research, thereby impacting both individual academic careers and the overall intellectual vitality of the university. Without a focused research quarter, humanities departments may experience reduced scholarly output, which in turn could affect the institution’s reputation for academic excellence.

Providing dedicated research quarters is one of the central ways the UC supports its faculty’s research. If this change were to go into effect, I think it’s likely that our most talented and esteemed colleagues would start leaving for more prestigious private universities, who are able to support their research in more tangible ways.

Our best and brightest faculty leaving would be a huge hit to the reputation of the university, and this would negatively impact undergraduate and graduate education alike.

The amount of time, energy, and money necessary to make such switch would negatively impact both staff and faculty. The opportunity cost is huge–surely there are better uses for these valuable resources.

From the faculty labor side, every course that I teach (and most of the courses my colleagues teach as well) would need to be substantially reworked not only to teach on a different timeline but also to respond to the curricular adjustments that would have to accompany this process. This would be a substantial amount of labor that should be compensated in some form. As someone who teaches a large number of distinct courses, I would have to do roughly 3 years’ courseloads worth of new course preps to convert all of the distinct classes I teach to a semester calendar. During that multi-year period of having to prep new semester versions of courses, this would have a significant negative impact on my research productivity. I imagine many faculty would find themselves in a similar situation of extended losses to productivity over multiple years due to increased time spent on teaching. For faculty trying to get tenure or another promotion during this transition period, these effects could be particularly devastating.

I am also concerned about the permanent negative impact that the change would have on my and others’ research. Under a quarter system, it is generally possible to complete teaching in 2 of the 3 quarters, leaving the third quarter much more open for research and making collaborations with researchers at other institutions more possible during that time. Moving to a calendar where it was not possible to “stack” teaching in just part of the academic year, I think my research productivity (and many others’) would decline significantly. As someone whose research is largely based in the community and does not take place on the university campus, having decreased flexibility to actually be at my research sites during the academic year would be detrimental to productivity.

Finally, I will offer my perspective as someone whose own undergraduate experience was disrupted by a transition from quarters to semesters at my alma mater. That transition was incredibly disruptive to students for years. While I think the institution handled it as best as they could have, there was still so much uncertainty for students about how graduation requirements would be affected, how already completed coursework would “translate” to the new system, and how course availability would be affected by the transition. This made for an incredibly stressful 4 years and significant disruption to our learning environment. Due to the shifting curriculum, I ended up being unable to take a course in a crucial area that I needed as preparation for graduate school and struggled to catch up on this topic during my PhD due to a lack of adequate preparation. The transition also led to several faculty members in my department making the decision to retire early due to the unreasonable labor expectations associated with the change. I fear that both student and faculty retention would be very negatively impacted by this decision, and I urge the UCs to reject this change.

Still, lest we imagine this is merely a matter of faculty self-interest, the potential impact on students is even more dire. Particularly on campuses like ours where we serve a majority of students from under-served and/or first-gen communities: quarters offer a much greater breadth of education (students are able to take far more courses in a year, compared to semesters); students thus have the ability to complete major/graduation requirements more quickly; and, as the linked research article demonstrates, the likelihood of overwhelm and dropout is much higher when they have to slog through longer terms—students who are struggling can power through 10 weeks much more easily than 15 or 16, and it’s easier to break/pause to deal with family or financial issues in quarter system. Meanwhile, anyone who has taught on the semester system knows that students get completely burnt out by week 10 or 11, and the last few weeks are a hopeless slog for all concerned, often resulting in “filler” material. This change would all but ensure that students from difficult or under-served backgrounds will find it even more difficult to graduate on time, making the UC even more inaccessible than it already has become thanks to tuition hikes. If UC seeks to increase enrollment rates at a time when all of higher education is struggling to enroll students, rest assured this will lead to the opposite.

Many of us are asking: what problem is this trying to solve? The answer, of course, is self-important, self-aggrandizing administrators seeking to climb the administrative ladder and/or reduce administrative costs. How about we look instead at the other major issue that has led to the decline of the UC system—administrative bloat resulting in deep inefficiencies, with administrators making outrageous salaries, while faculty struggle with cuts to staff support and massive increases in healthcare costs that leave us all overwhelmed and unable to do our jobs? The massive disruptions and costs of transition will fall mainly on under-resourced departments and faculty.

And, where have our Senate representatives been this entire time? Why were faculty not alerted to this initiative as soon as Senate leaderships across all the campuses found out, last fall? Yet another example of Senate being utterly establishmentarian/acquiescent and unable to look out for faculty welfare in any meaningful sense.

Faculty need to have the right to vote on such a massive change to their most basic working conditions and to the structure of the system. There needs to be a vote of no-confidence in the Provost for trying to push this through without the consent of faculty via divisional Senate votes. Shame on you.

Impact on faculty: At present, UC faculty teach 4 courses per year. Under the quarter system, many of us have the option to bunch and have a non-teaching quarter, during which we can conduct research, write and see to publication requirements. Additionally, faculty who do not choose to bunch have at least 2 quarters in which they are only teaching 1 class. Under the semester system, none of this would not be possible.

A great deal of faculty time and energy would be spent on converting 10-week courses to the semester system. This would detract from courses that have long been designed under the quarter system and would also detract from faculty research/writing time to make these changes.

Cost: It is astounding to me that while only 2 campuses are on the semester system, UCOP is considering, in this economic climate of which we don’t see an end any time soon, switching all other campuses to semesters. During a time when our insurance premiums have increased precipitously, and UCOP is continuously decrying the increasing cost of everything, I don’t understand the financial thinking here. I have also not seen a well though-out rationale for this change. Reasons, yes: but not a thorough rationale.

As a faculty member, being forced to shift my teaching from the quarter to semester model would have a catastrophic effect on my research and writing productivity. Such a shift would require me to spend a considerable amount of additional time and labor restructuring all my courses while also robbing me of multiple weeks per year of dedicated researching and writing time. I predict that such a shift would set back my next book project by several years and significantly delay my ability/eligibility to perform important service work for my department and the university.

The gain on the student education seems to be completely negligible. Although a quarter system is fast pace, it does have the advantage of not letting much room to procrastination.
On the faculty side, it would be easier to have to teach 2 different classes per year instead of three, but the transition will be very painful.

Since Covid, every academic years had major events (strike, protest, and now an uncertain future.
We should be spending efforts in streamlining faculty jobs (including better online tools: canvas, yuja, gradescope, MP just to name few, that are so under-performing that we waste valuable time, including our students) so we can deliver a better education and experience to our student pool, instead of doing busy work.

The cost–both financial and in labor hours–of transitioning so many UCs to the semester system is highly prohibitive. Doing so amidst budget cuts seems to lack any economic sense and is simply mind-boggling. Doing so without consulting faculty and staff and thus bypassing self-governance is undemocratic and clarifies that the university is not actually about education.

As a junior scholar who is only starting to work on my first book and who needs ample time to develop their research, I cannot stress enough how central this factor was to my decision. If the institution were to move away from this system, I would not only feel that I was hired under false pretenses, I would also be pushed to reconsider my long-term commitment to UC Davis in light of the financial, geographical, and institutional advantages of other locations.

Here are four reasons—though many others could be mentioned:

The transition costs would be tremendous: All but two of the UC campuses (Berkeley and Merced) are on a quarter system. Given that Cal Tech and Stanford are also on quarters, I assume that state businesses have already accommodated it within their recruitment, internship, etc., programs, necessitating that they make changes as well. Faculty would need to reconfigure, and in many cases dramatically expand the length, of long-existing course offerings. Faculty and Departments would also have to dramatically reconfigure curricular requirements. And I’ve only touched on some of the transition costs: the list is long, and the costs are weighty, whether in time, money, or confusion (among students, faculty, and staff).

Quarter systems allow a greater variety of classes: Many classes that could not be justified on a semester-long (15 week) basis can be justified on a quarter-long (10 week) basis. Consequently, moving to a semester system would homogenize course offerings, reducing diversity and experimentation. (On a related note, quarters make it much easier for a larger number of students to study abroad because of the reduced time commitment forced on them.)

The quarter system, because it makes yearly research quarters possible, is a powerful faculty recruitment tool: Being able to tell potential hires that they will only be in front of a classroom 20 weeks per calendar year (as opposed to 30 in a semester system) is a big selling point for us—and by “us,” I mean all campuses but Berkeley and Merced. Liberating 10 weeks a year for research is a huge bonus, especially for junior faculty rushing to meet research expectations for tenure. Trying to arrange yearly research semesters on a semester system, on the other hand, would be logistically daunting (unless overall teaching loads were commensurately reduced, of course—but then could curricular needs be met?). Throwing away one of our best recruiting tools would be imprudent, to put it mildly. I personally find it to be one of the most attractive features of our system.

Imposing this decision on all campuses, regardless of their traditions, needs, and preferences, would be inconsistent with subsidiarity: In general, I think that decisions should be made at the most local level possible, in this case at the campus level—and, within campuses, at the level of the college, department, etc. I struggle to see what the problem is with continuing a system (viz. of mixed calendars across campuses) that has worked perfectly well until now. Berkeley switched to semesters in 1983, and other campuses are free to make that decision if they wish, on the basis of their own traditions, needs, and preferences. The benefits of uniformity would have to be quite large to justify the imposition, and I don’t see how the benefits could conceivably be that big.

Sincerely,
Ethan Scheiner
Professor & Co-Chair, Department of Political Science
University of California, Davis

For the summer transition, however, faculty should be compensated above 9-month salary for that year, as the first summer of transition will be less than three months.

One of the greatest benefits we offer to our students in the International Relations major is the ability to take a wide variety of very different types of classes. The classes they take come from a variety of departments including political science, sociology, history, economics, human rights, and the many various language departments. While rooted in the social sciences, our International Relations major has several tracks, some of which focus on international aspects of the environment, health, and natural resources. Classes from the various sciences therefore also feed into the major. Overall, we draw on courses from over 40 departments and programs for our major requirements.

The move to a semester system would, first, require the International Relations program to significantly revamp its major requirements, as students would not have the opportunity to take as many classes as we currently require. This is not as simple as just “cutting” some requirements here and there. The pedagogical implications of what requirements we cut and how we balance those cuts are far-reaching.

In particular, the move to a semester system would significantly limit the breadth of knowledge students can gain from the major — they would only be able to take 2/3 of the classes they currently take. Breadth is not only an important pedagogical component to the International Relations major, but it also provides important skills that students can use to help them secure jobs after they graduate. Having a wide breadth of knowledge provides them with a wider variety of skills than students who get to take fewer classes are able to acquire. This widens the possibilities for them for future careers, as well as makes them more competitive on the market. Losing that breadth of knowledge and skills would, I believe, really not only hurt our students intellectually, but also hurt their ability to compete effectively for jobs.

Overall, I believe the move to the semester system and the loss of breadth of knowledge that would result would be a real detriment to our students – all students, but especially those I serve in International Relations. I therefore strongly disagree with the potential move.

It’s like a herculean task just to get even small changes through the complex and baroque faculty senate process. And the current context in which we find ourselves, where there’s a new crisis on a weekly basis that’s upending all of higher education is NOT one in which we have the luxury of taking on something like this, regardless of the perceived benefits.

If this change is imposed on us, I will SIMPLY NOT PARTICPATE. I’ll take sabbatical leave while the meetings are happening, or if that doesn’t work, I’ll retire. I just won’t be a part of this. Life it too short to spend it on this nonsense.

Another question, though, is what would happen to course releases to those of caught in endless campus service roles. I assume the teaching load for faculty currently expected to teach 4 quarter-long courses would fall to 3, and that those serving in roles that currently receive 1 quarter off would receive 1 semester off, and that those roles receiving 2 quarters off would receive 2 semesters off. This is necessary as the course releases for those of us who shoulder these responsibilities are already too low and we are having difficulty finding people to volunteer for these positions.

This change will have serious consequences for research productivity, particularly for tenure-track faculty. We will still be evaluated by the same tenure standards, but without the same conditions to meet them—an inherently unfair situation. The burden of this transition will disproportionately fall on junior faculty, who will have to work harder to achieve the same research output but with significantly less time.

If there is a way to ensure a non-teaching semester, I would support the change. However, if no alternative is provided, this shift feels deeply unfair and unsustainable, especially given the already demanding workload of junior faculty who are still developing courses.

A move to semesters would be extraordinarily disruptive to research patterns. UC Davis extracts more service from our faculty than a state school where I taught for a decade in which the focus was on teaching. Here I have more service and a comparable teaching load, made manageable by the quarter system and the ability to isolate extended times during a quarter in residence with only service and no teaching so that I can complete the research and writing required by my contract with the UC.

Students would be negatively impacted in our department and across the university. Student learning outcomes would diminish while contact hours would soar, a situation that would be untenable for many of our students who must work to support themselves and their dependents.

Faculty morale would take an additional negative blow at a time when morale appears to be at an all-time low for many understandable reasons. In my department we would be thrown into a situation that would necessitate a total re-thinking of our curriculum. That would waste years of efforts to refine curriculum to respond to student demands and to better prepare them to excel in a shifting job market upon graduation. The effort required to retool for a shift from quarters to semesters would be immense, and for nothing.

From 1991-2008 I taught at other universities, public and private, as an adjunct and then tenure-track professor – always in semesters. I know firsthand how the rhythms of the semester led to less learning in relation to contact hours. Students perceive each course meeting in a quarter system as having a higher value because we meet so few times; the result is a higher percentage of students attending and participating in course meetings with the quarter system. In semesters there was the sense among students that they could miss class more frequently, with fewer negative impacts.

One reason I was recruited to the UC was the promise that faculty research was valued and that teaching schedules could be coordinated to facilitate research, writing, and productivity. A shift from quarter to semesters would likely lead to a loss of faculty who would understandably see this as destructive to our cultures of quality research and dissemination.

These are strong arguments against a shift to semesters. Thank you for the opportunity to have faculty voices heard.

Potential impact – excellent.

For students it would also be disastrous, limiting student courses that are required for the major and electives as students would take 1/3 fewer courses during the course of their undergraduate career.

Generally, intensive lab courses have not recovered from COVID. They don’t work well remote. There has been no serious concern on our campus expressed or action taken on this issue, and the educational experience of our students has been made substantially worse.

Meanwhile, we have many more STEM students, and all know that intensive lab is a gateway to graduate school in physics and certain slices of industry. We are between a rock and a hard place.

On the other hand, the UCSB College of Engineering departments typically work hard to design the scheduling of their curricula so that transfer students from junior colleges – who typically enter our degree programs with no prior engineering coursework – can complete our undergraduate degree programs in 2 years. A conversion to semesters would likely make this route impossible, requiring transfer students to instead take 3 years to complete our curriculum. I personally think this would lead to better learning outcomes for these students, but this benefit must be weighed against the significant increased financial cost that these students would incur.

Regardless of the above considerations, if the conversion to a semester-based system is to occur, **the transition MUST be properly resourced** (with administrative support and funds directly to colleges, departments and faculty) so that the change in curricular design can be done in a thoughtful, deliberative and effective manner that avoids straining already overburdened faculty even further, and avoids the potentially disastrous consequences that could result from a slapdash conversion to semesters.

Many of my colleagues have never worked in another system and are woefully hesitant or immobilized by change generally. So, it would have been instructive to ask about experience working in semester systems to better calibrate and interpret the answers to this poll.

The ‘invisible workload’ for faculty, and probably staff, is also MUCH higher in the quarter system, partly related to more frequent admin turnaround intervals (between quarters) and related load of course selection/administration, faculty/staff meetings, exam/grading and deferral loads, and the list goes on. This is confounded by new admin requirements downloaded to faculty for unionized TA and GSR staff (e.g., job descriptions, time sheet approvals, travel claim approvals, syllabi, etc.). I simply cannot fathom how a quarter system could be in any way more efficient, cost effective, or beneficial for students, faculty, and staff.

Many faculty seem to appreciate the shorter 10-week contact time, yet the admin duties and meetings trickle on through a much longer academic year. In addition, there is concern on how teaching loads, which are already inequitably distributed across any given campus, could be increased under a semester system. For instance, IF the same number of courses were required over a longer semester system, there could be more expected contact time. (e.g., 3 course load x 10-week quarters x 3 hr/week = 90 contact hours for quarter system vs. 3 courses x 13 weeks x 3 hr/week = 117 hrs, not including office hours, TA facilitation, etc.). This is not trivial, but would not be a dramatic shift for those of us familiar with semester system loads. I suspect loads would need to be recalibrated accordingly.

There are also important implications for student mental health and success. I have taught large lower division through specialized upper div/grad courses at 3 institutions and I can confirm that the anxiety level amongst students and the number of mental health accommodations I have experienced per capita is MUCH higher in this quarter system at both undergrad and grad levels. Student feedback indicates that this stems from the combination of fast-paced/short-term courses, more frequent course registration/changes, longer academic year, and challenges in meeting degree requirements based on variable offerings. Many students also complain that the longer AY impacts their abilities to compete for and secure summer jobs and related income to support their studies. We also lose many students who eventually transfer to non-quarter systems.

Despite the inertia and costs, which will not be trivial, and limited faculty consultation (it seems), I suspect that a shift to semester system will eventually result in improved access and effectiveness of education for our students, more efficient (effective?) administration workloads for faculty and staff, and better availability and use of time for research and graduate student mentoring.

(1) The quarter system is a better fit for current curriculum demands. In political science, for example, our students are increasingly expected to be familiar with statistics, data science, sampling, online experiments, and other methodological tools, alongside more traditional topics like systems of government. Providing this breadth of coursework is essential in making our graduates competitive in the contemporary job market. And the quarter system, with its increased flexibility and large number of course options, is crucial in ensuring that breadth. The ability to provide a diversity of courses has helped make our students competitive for jobs at social media companies, tech firms, and other desirable businesses.

(2) Along the same lines, other elite institutions in California — notably Stanford and CalTech — are also on the quarter system. Businesses and government agencies have aligned their hiring calendars with these university calendars, and shifting calendars now would disrupt the job market at a time when recently graduated students desperately need stability.

(3) The switching costs will be substantial. I’ll let others speak to those costs at the university level. But at the department level, every aspect of the department’s workload will require reconfiguration, including the recruitment calendar, study-abroad programs (which have been optimized to work with the quarter system), internship programs, and course offerings. Faculty members have designed their courses around the 10-week calendar. Converting a class to the a 15-week calendar involves not just writing a new syllabus, but also locating appropriate course materials, arranging for visiting speakers, developing new slides and in-class content, revising existing assessments and developing new assessments, and so on. All of this means that faculty research productivity will decline, and students will endure at least a few years of reduced course quality as instructors refine new course offerings.

(4) The UCs will become less competitive in attracting new faculty members. The quarter calendar is attractive for prospective faculty members because it allows flexibility for research-focused quarters. We have successfully recruited new faculty members who received offers from other, highly prestigious universities because they realized the long-term career benefits of research quarters.

(5) Overall faculty research productivity will decline, not just during the adjustment period, but long term. Virtually all UC departments “punch above their weight,” compared to similarly ranked institutions. Faculty members are highly productive in research. They publish more peer-reviewed articles. They acquire more grants. They receive more awards. The increased research time afforded by the quarter system is an integral part of this productivity. I have no doubt that if we switch to a semester system, we will see a significant decline in research output.

First, the quarter system provides too brief an examination of a subject. It is rushed and hasty, and does not compare with the depth of a semester’s experience.

Second, it is places undue stress on students, since so-called mid term exams can, and do occur anywhere from the 3rd to the 7th week of the quarter. With students taking multiple courses, they are constantly under the gun with exams.

Third, the quarter system negatively and strongly impacts summer pursuits such as employment, internships, arts & music festivals, etc. As spring quarter overlaps with these important activities, students are at a significant disadvantage applying for and participating in these important experiences and events.

Fourth, students transferring to and into semester based schools have difficulty matching courses from one institution to another. Course content is often not a good match.

Altogether, with the great majority of American schools having a semester system, we place ourselves at significant disadvantages by having quarter systems. To preserve our scholarly and educational prerogatives, the UC system should uniformly switch to semesters.

Expanding teaching time and expanding the duration of dozens of prepared classes crafted specifically for the quarter system by 50% will grossly negatively impact my conceptual, research, creative, and writing productivity in the short and long term.

2. I think our students would benefit from more time to think about a set of ideas and materials over a slightly longer term. If a semester system were to be adopted, I would suggest following Stanford and Princeton’s models of 12-week semesters, a full reading week for study, then exam week. Having taught on them, I do not find that 14 and 15-week term lengths benefits students or faculty at all.

I do NOT want to be wasting so much of my time and energy porting all my courses from quarter format to semester format right now. Maybe this question can be revisited in another decade.

There will be overhead in converting degree programs and courses to the semester system, but other universities have endured this challenge when making the switch and I don’t believe that alone is a reason not to do so. Overall, it is a benefit to students.

Rather than engage in this act of self-immolation, my counter-proposal is that there be a much clearer mapping of course credits within both the semester and quarter system so that transfer students, and the institutions they are transferring between, can properly assess the students progress within their major.

The UC currently has a budget deficit, and this plan will be extremely expensive and does not have any plan for how it will be funded. If the UC proceeds with this plan it will fall right into Trump’s hands and will be significantly less capable of repelling his administration’s attacks. The more desperately the UC needs the funding, the more demands Trump’s administration will be able to impose. Given that UCLA and UC Berkeley already draw the ire of many republicans, it is unlikely that Trump will go easy on the UC. I fear that drastic changes to the UC that will stifle free speech, academic freedom, equity, and inclusion will be the outcome. Perhaps even entire departments will get cut.

The mission of the UC is to serve its students, its community, and society. The precarious funding situation together with the anticipated attacks from Trump will cause our students significantly more harm than any benefits that may be obtained from switching to a semester system. I think it is in the UC’s best interest to prioritize conserving its funds in order to better protect itself from the coming funding cuts and autocratic demands of the Trump administration. The UC can reassess this plan to switch to semesters in a few years, after relations with Trump’s administration have stabilized. Waiting a few years seems to have little downside, but the eventual cost of pursuing this now could be great.

2. The quarter system provides more opportunity for exploring upper division curricula in one’s major because required service classes offered by other majors are only 10 weeks in duration instead of 15 weeks. Two examples at UC Riverside follow.

Chem 109 (Survey of Physical Chemistry) is an upper-division, one-quarter course required for Biochemistry majors. If the Chemistry Department expands CHEM 109 from one-quarter to one-semester, the upper-division curriculum for Biochemistry majors will need to be decreased by 15 lectures to compensate for the 15 additional chemistry lectures added to CHEM 109 (chemists can’t be expected to add 15 biochemistry lectures to CHEM 109).

BCH 100 (Introductory Biochemistry) is an upper-division, one quarter course required for most non-biochemistry life science majors. If BCH 100 is expanded from one quarter to one semester, the upper-division curricula for non-biochemistry life science majors will need to be decreased by 15 lectures to compensate for 15 additional biochemistry lectures added to BCH 100 (biochemists can’t be expected to add 15 non-biochemistry lectures to BCH 100).

The transition costs would be tremendous: All but two of the UC campuses (Berkeley and Merced) are on a quarter system. Given that Cal Tech and Stanford are also on quarters, I assume that state businesses have already accommodated it within their recruitment, internship, etc., programs, necessitating that they make changes as well. Faculty would need to reconfigure, and in many cases dramatically expand the length, of long-existing course offerings. They’d also have to dramatically reconfigure curricular requirements. And I’ve only touched on some of the transition costs: the list is long, and the costs are weighty, whether in time, money, or confusion (among students, faculty, and staff). (I went through such a transition as an undergraduate at UT-Knoxville, and it was a nightmare.)

Quarter systems allow a greater variety of classes: Many classes that could not be justified on a semester-long (15 week) basis can be justified on a quarter-long (10 week) basis. Consequently, moving to a semester system would homogenize course offerings, reducing diversity and experimentation.

The quarter system, because it makes yearly research quarters possible, is a powerful faculty recruitment tool: Being able to tell potential hires that they will only be in front of a classroom 20 weeks per calendar year (as opposed to 30 in a semester system) is a big selling point for us—and by “us,” I mean all campuses but Berkeley and Merced. Liberating 10 weeks a year for research is a huge bonus, especially for junior faculty rushing to meet research expectations for tenure. Trying to arrange yearly research semesters on a semester system, on the other hand, would be logistically daunting (unless overall teaching loads were commensurately reduced, of course—but then could curricular needs be met?). Throwing away one of our best recruiting tools would be imprudent, to put it mildly. I personally find it to be one of the most attractive features of our system.

Imposing this decision on all campuses, regardless of their traditions, needs, and preferences, would be inconsistent with subsidiarity: In general, I think that decisions should be made at the most local level possible, in this case at the campus level—and, within campuses, at the level of the college, department, etc. I struggle to see what the problem is with continuing a system (viz. of mixed calendars across campuses) that has worked perfectly well until now. Berkeley switched to semesters in 1983, and other campuses are free to make that decision if they wish, on the basis of their own traditions, needs, and preferences. The benefits of uniformity would have to be quite large to justify the imposition, and I don’t see how the benefits could conceivably be that big.

Under the quarter system, I typically teach two courses in the fall and one in the winter, leaving the spring quarter without formal teaching obligations. This schedule provides me with greater flexibility to travel for fieldwork and dedicate uninterrupted time to research. However, under the semester system, a more extended teaching period will reduce the window available for field studies and limit my ability to focus on research-intensive projects. Given the importance of research in my work, this transition poses a considerable challenge to maintaining the same level of productivity and scholarly contributions.