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Total scheduled contact hours per week - US universities/colleges


Laura Corin
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32 members have voted

  1. 1. How much faculty contact time per week?

    • Zero to five hours?
      1
    • Six to ten hours?
      0
    • Eleven to fifteen hours?
      13
    • Sixteen to twenty hours?
      19
    • Twenty-one to twenty-five hours?
      1
    • Twenty-six to thirty hours?
      2
    • More than thirty hours?
      1
    • Other
      0


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Husband thinks that UK universities have very low total contact hours (between an undergraduate student and any member of staff, not including time with a TA).  How much total time do your university students spend per week in the same room as faculty?  Please include lectures, taught lab hours, seminars.....  Do not include any extra contact time that the student seeks out - just the basic hours.  The poll is multi-choice, to cover multiple children and your own recent memories of college.

 

The UK universities seem to count in percentages rather than hours - the average seems to be 20%, so that's eight hours in a forty hour work week, or twelve hours in a sixty hour work week.  That sounds similar to what I experienced at university - we probably had about two or three hours of classes per day, but spent a lot of time on personal research.

 

Thank you

 

Laura

 

Edited for clarity.

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Per professor or one student to any professor total? I am thinking total? This is going to vary hugely by school and student. Some students seek their professors' help, others try to avoid them. Some schools have much closer student/teacher ties. Dd21 is attending a large state school; she probably has about 19 hours a week with a professor. Usually about 15 of those are classroom hours. She is a seeker. She goes to every available study session/extra event that is offered and visits teachers in their offices when she has questions or concerns. Dd19a is attending community college; she probably has about 12 hours a week with her teachers which is mostly in class time. She does have extra time for tests, so when she has a test, that will increase because she has to go to the teacher's office to take the test. One of her teachers seems to have a lot of days where she cannot make it to class, those hours out balance out the extra. She is not an office visitor. Dd19b is attending a small LAC; she spends a whole lot of time with her professors, probably at least 30 hours a week. They do not have graduate students who manage classes. She also has a lot of lab time. Three of her classes in the fall will have lab hours. The contact between the students and faculty is amazing. They also have non-credit, required seminar/lecture hours outside of their classes about various  (usually) non-academic topics. (They can pick and choose which ones to attend.)

 

So, going with the 40 hr week: dd21-48%

dd19a: 30%

dd19b: 75% or more

me back in the dark ages: (large state school/non-teacher seeking student)-35%

 

 

Okay, not seeking out extra:

 

dd21-40%

dd19a-30% (has to keep hours at a minimum because of ld's)

dd19b-75%

me-35%

 

Girls schools all are 12-18 hours considered full time student. 15 hours being average for a student. Dd19b is science heavy. A 1 hour credit science lab takes 4 hours of in class lab a week. 

Edited by Lolly
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The number of credits basically was equal to the number of hours in the classroom. So a three-credit class met for three hours a week. 12-18 credits counted as full time, with 15 being about normal. So, taking 5 classes would be 15 credits, or 15 hours. Things like science labs or language practice with a grad tutor took more time, and meeting with someone for questions during office hours isn't included at all. So I think my experience tends to agree with your husband, in that what you're describing sounds low. Nonetheless, I am not sure what that actually means in terms of education.

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Per professor or one student to any professor total? I am thinking total? This is going to vary hugely by school and student. Some students seek their professors' help, others try to avoid them. Some schools have much closer student/teacher ties. Dd21 is attending a large state school; she probably has about 19 hours a week with a professor. Usually about 15 of those are classroom hours. She is a seeker. She goes to every available study session/extra event that is offered and visits teachers in their offices when she has questions or concerns. Dd19a is attending community college; she probably has about 12 hours a week with her teachers which is mostly in class time. She does have extra time for tests, so when she has a test, that will increase because she has to go to the teacher's office to take the test. One of her teachers seems to have a lot of days where she cannot make it to class, those hours out balance out the extra. She is not an office visitor. Dd19b is attending a small LAC; she spends a whole lot of time with her professors, probably at least 30 hours a week. They do not have graduate students who manage classes. She also has a lot of lab time. Three of her classes in the fall will have lab hours. The contact between the students and faculty is amazing. They also have non-credit, required seminar/lecture hours outside of their classes about various  (usually) non-academic topics. (They can pick and choose which ones to attend.)

 

Yes - total.  And scheduled hours (rather than any extra contact that the student seeks out).  Thanks - I'll clarify in my OP.

 

L

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here it depends on what degree you are doing. My son is doing Aerospace, it has 27 contact hours a week. The only field that has more contact hours  than Aerospace are Medical degrees. My cousin is doing a humanities teaching degree at the same university and has 7 contact hours a week.

 

My son tells me that the rule of thumb is that for every contact hour you should spend a minimum of 1 1/2 hours in study.

 

 

 

Edited to add; I am doing a bachelor of primary school teaching.  as it is off campus it is difficult to judge what the contact hours are. but the uni recommends spending at least 21 hours a week that includes listening to/reading lectures, communicating with the tutor via a discussion board and studying. in addition to doing all the weekly readings etc.

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Here's an interesting article about the problem with the credit-hour system and how it is misunderstood -- a thoroughly depressing article about lack of college preparation.

http://higheredwatch.newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/Cracking_the_Credit_Hour_Sept5_0.pdf

At the bottom of p 4 (running to p 5):

 

Carnegie’s pension system also spurred higher education
to convert its own course offerings into time-based units,
which were used to determine faculty-workload thresholds
to qualify for the new pension program. Using the
Carnegie Unit as a model, it was determined that faculty
members who taught 12 credit units, with each unit equal
to one hour of faculty-student contact time per week over a
15-week semester, would qualify for full-time pension benefits.
Soon, what became known as the “credit hour†would
become the fundamental building block of college courses
and degree programs.

 

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Yes, full-time is 15-18 contact hours per week with labs being longer, usually 1 credit earned but several hours (or more) in the lab.

 

My undergraduate school had some classes with additional "practicum" time where the professor worked more problems.  They gave you different times you could come, and there may be other students there who weren't in your section.  It was more like structured office hours I guess?

 

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My older two, who attended the same college, found that the hours of class time varied HUGELY depending on the major! They could take the same # of credits, but my science major would be in class for several hours more per week.

 

Dd always had a science lab or two, which increased her # of class hours dramatically compared with her brother, who tended to overload but who majored in the humanities.  So similar highly academic kids at the same school with different majors had the # of contact hours differ by typically 3-5 hours per semester!

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Here's an interesting article about the problem with the credit-hour system and how it is misunderstood -- a thoroughly depressing article about lack of college preparation.

 

 

Very interesting article.  I think the lack of a 'credit hours' system in the UK is probably due to the rarity of transferring from one university to another mid-stream.

 

ETA: or transfers could be rare because of the lack of a 'credit hours' system.

 

L

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At our university, the lower cutoff for a full time student is 12 credit hours. Typically, regular students take 15-18 credit hours.

Credit hours do correspond to class hours, unless it is a lab class; some labs take significantly more hours than they give credit hours.

 

ETA: We also have scheduled but not mandatory hours of faculty staffed learning centers. Students who take advantage of these may spend another 4-5 hours per week in the learning center for heir physics course (and possibly similar in math and chemistry)

 

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Husband thinks that UK universities have very low total contact hours (between an undergraduate student and any member of staff, not including time with a graduate student tutor).  

 

I'm curious what a "graduate student tutor" is in the UK system?  In the US, big state schools often have classes taught by TAs (Teaching Assistants), graduate students who are paid to teach classes, either as the primary contact, or in smaller recitation sessions when a professor teaches a large lecture.  Sometimes TAs will also be hired to conduct drop-in extra help in certain subjects. One-on-one tutoring of undergraduate by graduates students is, I think, rare here, and perhaps usually done in an ad-hoc way.

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I'm curious what a "graduate student tutor" is in the UK system?  In the US, big state schools often have classes taught by TAs (Teaching Assistants), graduate students who are paid to teach classes, either as the primary contact, or in smaller recitation sessions when a professor teaches a large lecture.  Sometimes TAs will also be hired to conduct drop-in extra help in certain subjects. One-on-one tutoring of undergraduate by graduates students is, I think, rare here, and perhaps usually done in an ad-hoc way.

 

There actually aren't TAs in the UK system - all contact is with full faculty.  I had forgotten that 'TA' was the word for the US system.  I'll go back and edit.

 

L

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Average at most schools is 14-16, with a range of 12-21 for full-time students in the schools I am aware of. At my college, 18 credit hours was the upper limit you could take without petitioning for special permission, but in some departments such as music the time in class was significantly higher than the credit hours; some classes met for two hours a week but awarded only 0.5 credits. Foreign language and math classes also typically met for five hours a week but awarded only 4 credit hours. I think I was usually in class with a faculty member at least 20 hours per week.

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I lost my post when I went to vote.  lol   Suffice it to say that as others have said, the types of classes each semester make a huge difference.  A science lab with 1 credit usually takes 3-4 hours and studio art classes with 3 credits often take 5-6+ hours in class.  Most lectures and seminars meet for approximately the same number of hours as credits given.  This is for community college, but the same courses taken at a state university meet for the same number of hours.  It is possible that TAs are used there, but I don't know.  I checked off two areas to cover the range of hours per week depending on the semester schedule.

 

Edited:  I counted the actual hours, which is usually less than the credit hours, in the class.

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Even here in the UK, the amount of contact varies so much per subject too even when looking at the same university.

 

http://www.cherwell.org/news/2010/11/26/the-great-subject-divide

 

I have looked at Chemistry and the amount of contact hours and labs are scary across many universities. The Imperial College one is known to be punishing and gets very low firsts. I met a Chemistry student at Oxford who says he does 80 hours weeks, on top he also dedicates hours to his flute. Not surprisingly Chemistry also gets the highest number of dropouts at Oxford http://www.cherwell.org/news/2011/03/03/chemistry-top-for-dropouts

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Even here in the UK, the amount of contact varies so much per subject too even when looking at the same university.

 

http://www.cherwell.org/news/2010/11/26/the-great-subject-divide

 

I have looked at Chemistry and the amount of contact hours and labs are scary across many universities. The Imperial College one is known to be punishing and gets very low firsts. I met a Chemistry student at Oxford who says he does 80 hours weeks, on top he also dedicates hours to his flute. Not surprisingly Chemistry also gets the highest number of dropouts at Oxford http://www.cherwell.org/news/2011/03/03/chemistry-top-for-dropouts

Yes indeed - I am thinking in terms of Calvin's university choices - English and Classics - where the contact time is very low.

 

L

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Yes indeed - I am thinking in terms of Calvin's university choices - English and Classics - where the contact time is very low.

 

L

I am thinking there may be less class/lecture time but more small group or one on one tutorial time? I also suspect the students are expected to do more learning via reading and writing, rather than listening to a lecture.

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I am thinking there may be less class/lecture time but more small group or one on one tutorial time? I also suspect the students are expected to do more learning via reading and writing, rather than listening to a lecture.

 

I'm talking about total hours of contact, including lectures, small group seminars, one on one...  everything together is put at around 20% for his subjects.  

 

I do think that one-on-one tutorials are intensive and efficient - both his universities offer this.

 

L

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There actually aren't TAs in the UK system - all contact is with full faculty.  I had forgotten that 'TA' was the word for the US system.  I'll go back and edit.

 

L

 

I find it interesting how different universities (especially in different countries) operate.  One small nit-pick is that, at least at my alma mater, an "hour" was 50 minutes.  I'm curious how many minutes there are in an "hour" at other institutions.  There were about 16 weeks in each semester, so one-credit hour represented about 13 total hours over the length of the course.  (In retrospect, this seems like a tiny amount of total time).  As seems universal, a "full load" was from 12 to 18 credit hours, and (excluding labs), and one credit hour always corresponded to fifty minutes worth of lecture or recitation session.  So, between 10 to 15 clock-hours of contact a week, not counting optional office hours, and other drop in help.

 

Now, what varies a lot is how much of the teaching is done by TAs.  Again, for my big-state university, a freshman might take a five credit calculus course, where 3 hours are lectures by a professor, and 2 hours are discussion led by a TA; a four credit introductory foreign language class, entirely taught by TA,  a four credit introductory literature class with 3 hours of professor lecturing, and 1 hour of TA, for 13 total credits, of which 6 credits worth (or five hours) are taught by professors.  Liberal arts colleges will probably have few or no TAs, as will community colleges.

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I was always under the impression that the expectation was one hour of class to three hours of study.

 

I was under that impression, too. (And so is my college kid, who is studying mechanical engineering.)

 

The comment about 1.5 hrs of study per 1 hr of contact time was posted by Melissa in Australia, who said her son's Aerospace program involves 27 hrs/wk of contact time, so 27 hrs contact + 40 hrs/wk studying. That's comparable to a US student taking 18 credit hours and spending 50 or so hrs/wk studying (~67-68 hrs total for both).

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But is there a qualitative difference between contact time when a prof lectures in a hall with 250 students, a class of 15, or one on one for a student doing an independent study?

 

Very good point.  I studied French and Drama.  We had a couple of lectures a week (one for each subject) but much more time was spent in small groups.

 

If Calvin gets into Oxford, he will be producing two essays a week which he will then read aloud one-on-one to his tutors (ETA: a tutor is a full member of the faculty) and defend/discuss.  I think of that time as worth many hours of lectures.

 

L

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Very good point.  I studied French and Drama.  We had a couple of lectures a week (one for each subject) but much more time was spent in small groups.

 

If Calvin gets into Oxford, he will be producing two essays a week which he will then read aloud one-on-one to his tutors and defend/discuss.  I think of that time as worth many hours of lectures.

 

L

 

To be clear for those not familiar with Oxford, "tutors" there are faculty, i.e. professors.

 

My son's girlfriend is British. Although she is not attending Oxford or Cambridge, her university's structure is different than the typical American uni, namely in that there seems to be more independent or small group work.

 

My son's LAC requires independent study that allows for each student to spend time one-on-one with faculty weekly. Students must not only be prepared to discuss their research, they must defend their theses as they write them.  (This helps prepare them for their formal oral defense with other faculty. By the way, my son passed! :hurray: )  The process brought home the point that it is not quantity but quality in terms of contact time with professors. 

 

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If Calvin gets into Oxford, he will be producing two essays a week which he will then read aloud one-on-one to his tutors (ETA: a tutor is a full member of the faculty) and defend/discuss.  I think of that time as worth many hours of lectures.

 

 

 

This is, I think, a much bigger difference in the approach most American Universities take compared to yours.  I think you'd be hard-pressed to find many first year classes here that require frequent essays.  How long are these essays, and how many per class?

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This is, I think, a much bigger difference in the approach most American Universities take compared to yours.  I think you'd be hard-pressed to find many first year classes here that require frequent essays.  How long are these essays, and how many per class?

 

Essays are the basis of the UK education system.  Multi-choice tests are very rare - I didn't take one in my entire education career ('kindergarten' to Masters).  It's also specialised: in England an undergraduate degree is three years, and you don't study anything except your 'majors', so Calvin will be studying only English and Classics for three years.

 

As far as I understand, if he goes to Oxford he will be writing around 36 essays over the course of the year: mostly around 3,000 words, but with a few 6,000-8,000 word extended pieces.  This describes the tutorial process.  

 

L

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My son's LAC requires independent study that allows for each student to spend time one-on-one with faculty weekly. Students must not only be prepared to discuss their research, they must defend their theses as they write them.  (This helps prepare them for their formal oral defense with other faculty. By the way, my son passed! :hurray: )  The process brought home the point that it is not quantity but quality in terms of contact time with professors. 

 

Congratulations!  The road to graduation is nearing it's end...

 

And I agree that quality time sure trumps quantity time.

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This is, I think, a much bigger difference in the approach most American Universities take compared to yours.  I think you'd be hard-pressed to find many first year classes here that require frequent essays.  How long are these essays, and how many per class?

 

This is why I loved my LAC — not only were the class sizes small, there was a TON of writing. In my Philosophy of Science class, we had an essay due for every single class (so 2 per wk), and that was in addition to writing assignments in other classes. I was also able to do several independent study courses which included many hours of one-on-one Socratic discussion. I had no idea how different things were at a large university until I was in grad school; being a TA for several Anthro 101 classes really opened my eyes to how different those students' undergrad experience was from my own.

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This is, I think, a much bigger difference in the approach most American Universities take compared to yours.  I think you'd be hard-pressed to find many first year classes here that require frequent essays.  How long are these essays, and how many per class?

My son attends a writing intensive LAC.  First year students do not take a basic comp course; rather they take a writing intensive course offered across the curriculum.  My guy took his in the music department, but it could have been Geology, Mathematics, Econ, etc. Essays were due weekly (and I don't mean a five paragraph one!)  Learning how to write and cite are priorities at his school.

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My son attends a writing intensive LAC.  First year students do not take a basic comp course; rather they take a writing intensive course offered across the curriculum.  My guy took his in the music department, but it could have been Geology, Mathematics, Econ, etc. Essays were due weekly (and I don't mean a five paragraph one!)  Learning how to write and cite are priorities at his school.

 

 

I think this shows how varied the American educational landscape is, but I wonder if these essays are comparable to the Oxford ones, which, according to Stripe's newspaper story above, take an average of 18 hours to write, with some English majors taking up to 30 hours per essay.

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I think this shows how varied the American educational landscape is, but I wonder if these essays are comparable to the Oxford ones, which, according to Stripe's newspaper story above, take an average of 18 hours to write, with some English majors taking up to 30 hours per essay.

 

With very few lectures through the week, the writing of an essay in the UK system involves an awful lot of reading.  Even at my not-very-exalted university, an essay topic would usually not have been touched on in a lecture, or only glancingly, so much of the work was done independently in the library.  

 

The only example I remember: we had lectures on Ibsen and Strindberg, but imagery was not mentioned.  The subsequent essay question was to compare the use of imagery in the two playwrights.  So that is hours of research in the library to discover writings on the topic and produce citable opinions.  

 

I don't know how this compares to the various US models.

 

L

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With very few lectures through the week, the writing of an essay in the UK system involves an awful lot of reading.  Even at my not-very-exalted university, an essay topic would usually not have been touched on in a lecture, or only glancingly, so much of the work was done independently in the library.  

 

The only example I remember: we had lectures on Ibsen and Strindberg, but imagery was not mentioned.  The subsequent essay question was to compare the use of imagery in the two playwrights.  So that is hours of research in the library to discover writings on the topic and produce citable opinions.  

 

I don't know how this compares to the various US models.

 

L

 

What has changed in this equation is that journals are now online and thus available to students at their desks.

 

Maybe it is my son's course of study (Archaeology major, Classics minor) that has required significant reading and writing assignments.  He has never had much in the way of busy work.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So that is hours of research in the library to discover writings on the topic and produce citable opinions.  

 

 

I attended Oxford for a summer taking all history classes, and I remember the hours spent in the library doing research. I loved that. I remember talking about what I found with my professor. I don't remember writing long essays, but I always did a lot of writing in college, so I could have easily forgotten that part. One of your earlier posts about your son's visit to Oxford made me realize that I cannot recall the name of the college at Oxford where I studied. I tried to find it based on pictures of some of the colleges that sounded familiar, but no luck. 

 

It was a great experience, academically and as a chance to force myself out of my comfort zone. I knew no one there when I went, and I traveled across the England with others and by myself to see places that caught my fancy. I hope my kids will study abroad one day. 

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