Big City State Schools - 2014
Having finished a flagship school in each state, I turned my attention
to
state/city schools in big cities, since it is in Los Angeles and
New
York City and Boston where I found the least use of Friday when looking
at Ivy League and liberal arts schools. I started in LA and New York,
and found very little use of Friday at most of these schools.
Boston
was not so bad, but I only looked at UMass Boston and MIT, since
smaller Massachusetts state schools are not in Boston. I decided
to next look at Chicago and found a
mixed picture there. There are a number of smaller state schools
in that area and they use Friday more than the worst in LA and NYC but
have slid a long way down the path to a 4 day week. Of interest,
the premiere state school in Chicago, U Illinios Chicago, stands out as
a defender of the five day week. Better than any flagship school.
I will try to find out how and why they are this way. The rest of
the big city schools may claim that they avoid Friday to reduce
commuting time, but if this is the
motivation, not a 3 day weekend, then there is a better way to do
it. Instead of MW and TTh classes, they should have MTh and TF
classes, leaving W as the off day. This could be used as the 3
hour
class day as F is somewhat now and in any case it would be well
positioned before the end of week classes, rather than as part of a
three day weekend.
Packing the class week in from
M to Th, trains students to have Friday off and probably leads to lower
achievement. These are not properties that employers are looking
for. It's not surprising that employers favor hiring from
flagship schools. Not only are these schools more selective, they
build better work habits with their five day week.