Having
completed the flagship schools, I turn my attention to the localities where I
have found the least use of Friday. The
worst is Los Angeles, where we have already seen the Claremont Schools and two
less selective state schools, Long Beach
and Dominguez Hills and UCLA. To these I now add the other 4 year state
schools, Biola, Cal
Poly Pomona, Cal State LA and Cal State Northridge. At Biola Univ. 13 percent (S14) of the courses meet
on Friday on the La Mirada campus. Cal
Polytech at Pomona has a much more respectable percentage of its classes on
Friday, 31 percent (W14) . But for an
engineering school, this is very low.
Inspection of such schools that I did in 2011 shows that they typically
have not slid toward the 4 day week and at least half of their courses still
meet on Friday. Cal State LA is just as
bad as Long Beach (7%) and Dominguez Hills (3%), only 6 percent (W14) of its courses
meet on Friday. Cal State Northridge does better with 23 percent (S14) of its courses
meeting on Friday, but that’s still less than even UCLA (32%, 012) which has near
the lowest of any flagship school.
These
schools may say that they have four day weeks so commuting time is
reduced. Maybe so, but why then don’t
they all have percentages below ten percent?
Are courses at Cal Poly, Northridge and UCLA more demanding and have to
use Friday? Aren’t the students stronger
at the more selective schools? Whatever
the explanation, the quality of education looks
lower at schools that pack their classes into a four day week and when
possible it seems wise for a student to choose and employers to hire from a
school that looks like it cares more about quality.
Here’s
a suggestion for big city schools: keep
your four day week for commuting purposes, but spread it out. Have MTh and TF classes. Let Wednesday be the open day, where perhaps
some one day classes meet and when the students will more inclined to study.