When is your Fall academic calendar finalized?

[downer]

At most schools, the academic calendar, including dates like last day to withdraw and midterm grades due, is available about a year or more ahead of time.

I'm teaching at one school where they seem to operate about 6 weeks ahead of time. I've asked for the Fall info and I didn't get any reply from the Registrar at all. Another administrator told they are working on it.

Isn't it a bit odd to leave things so late?

[polly_mer]

One red flag for an institution circling the drain for me is the just-in-time nature for things that a well-oiled machine would have in place a couple years in advance with perhaps a minor tweak before being able to register for classes the previous term.

Yes, I find it somewhat disconcerting that the academic calendar for the fall isn't available when students should already have been able to preregister in late March/early April.  The 1 May acceptance date for entering freshman also means people might be registering now as well as signing up for moving into dorms.

[aside]

A six-week lead time on calendaring would be untenable and would result in absolute chaos at the large institutions at which I've worked.  Our academic calendars are set more than a year ahead of time.  However, the actual catalog for next year at my current institution is not yet available even though advising of incoming students starts next week.

[onthefringe]

I'm on a committee that just approved our academic calendar through 2023. I can't imagine not having a calendar for the upcoming year yet!

[Juvenal]

Well, all I can say--by looking at my CC's on-line "Academic Calendar," is that they have it all set out through the summer sessions of 2021--and, no, that's not a typo.  I guess the Academic Calendar Committee decided to rest on their oars for a while sometime this past spring.  "There! That's done."  Other forafolk--is scheduling this far ahead "typical" with you?

[ciao_yall]

Ours is done once a year in consultation with the unions and the local school district. Many our students and employees have kids in school and it works well to have vacations in sync. 

[marshwiggle]

I'm on a committee that just approved our academic calendar through 2023. I can't imagine not having a calendar for the upcoming year yet!

Does that include class schedules, or basically a list of what courses will be offered with details to be finalized later? The former seems pretty mind-boggling. Here, the tentative schedule for the coming year comes out in March or April, but details (such as for courses taught by part-time faculty) are often filled in in June or July. Also, lab sections can still get added or closed, and so on. Rooms can occasionally change as well if the are big enrollment changes.

[polly_mer]

I'm on a committee that just approved our academic calendar through 2023. I can't imagine not having a calendar for the upcoming year yet!

Does that include class schedules, or basically a list of what courses will be offered with details to be finalized later? The former seems pretty mind-boggling. Here, the tentative schedule for the coming year comes out in March or April, but details (such as for courses taught by part-time faculty) are often filled in in June or July. Also, lab sections can still get added or closed, and so on. Rooms can occasionally change as well if the are big enrollment changes.

At one point, my previous employer was trying to get a 5-year schedule of classes along with a 4-year plan for the ideal student.  The idea was we could start working the logistics of major courses only being 1 section and electives pulling from many upper-division majors also only being 1 section (tiny college and letting everyone schedule independently immediately runs into these problems).

The faculty did argue strongly that they didn't even want to be thinking about a random Tuesday so long from now.  The registrar's office pushed back with this is so hard to schedule when everything is a one-off and we're so tiny that if we limit ourselves to thinking about only next term for class times, then we will continue to have students angry enough that they transfer because they can't complete a degree here with classes they want.

[ciao_yall]

I'm on a committee that just approved our academic calendar through 2023. I can't imagine not having a calendar for the upcoming year yet!

Does that include class schedules, or basically a list of what courses will be offered with details to be finalized later? The former seems pretty mind-boggling. Here, the tentative schedule for the coming year comes out in March or April, but details (such as for courses taught by part-time faculty) are often filled in in June or July. Also, lab sections can still get added or closed, and so on. Rooms can occasionally change as well if the are big enrollment changes.

Still, does it really need to change that much? I'd feel pretty sorry for a student who was about to graduate and the one class they needed wasn't on the schedule that year, or conflicted with another necessary class.

At our college we did some degree planning in our own majors - how long would it take a student to graduate, given a regular repeat of our current Fall/Spring cycles? Guess what - they simply could not.

[marshwiggle]

I'm on a committee that just approved our academic calendar through 2023. I can't imagine not having a calendar for the upcoming year yet!

Does that include class schedules, or basically a list of what courses will be offered with details to be finalized later? The former seems pretty mind-boggling. Here, the tentative schedule for the coming year comes out in March or April, but details (such as for courses taught by part-time faculty) are often filled in in June or July. Also, lab sections can still get added or closed, and so on. Rooms can occasionally change as well if the are big enrollment changes.

Still, does it really need to change that much? I'd feel pretty sorry for a student who was about to graduate and the one class they needed wasn't on the schedule that year, or conflicted with another necessary class.

Things like sabbaticals, retirements, promotions, new hires, etc. mean that you can't be sure that the person who has always taught "Philosophical Foundations of Basketweaving" will be available to teach it in a couple of years. (I'm guessing most places don't require more than a few months' notice for retirement, etc.) Sabbaticals and other things often result in shifts of who teaches what, which results in changes to class schedules.

(But aside from all that, departments have to ensure that students are able to take the courses they're required to take, so that's not an issue students have to worry about. If the class happens to be offered at an inconvenient time, they'll just have to adapt.)

[mythbuster]

Just a point of clarification. Are we discussing the calendar- when the semester starts, the timing of Spring break etc? Or the course schedule- Bio 101 is MWF from 9-10 am? Because at my uni those are two different things determined by two very different entities. The calendar is set by a University wide committee at least a year in advance, they just send us a survey about what we when we anted to start in January 2021 because of the day of the week of Jan 1.  The course schedule is set by department chairs and up until recently was only done a semester in advance.  There is now a push to set the course schedule farther in advance.

[downer]

The semester's start and finish is set, and classes are scheduled. What is not scheduled is midterms, holidays, exam period, last day to withdraw -- dates are relevant to planning a syllabus.

Thanks for confirming my sense that it is very unusual not to have the major dates for a semester planned out at least a year ahead. I've still had no reply from the Registrar.

I'm not sure whether the lack of planning is a sign that the school is actually in trouble, or whether it is just run by incompetents who don't have a clear understanding of academic standards, which may or may not lead to trouble. The school seems to have been attracting students and wants to expand.

The attitude of the school will certainly affect my readiness to meet their deadlines or reply to their emails in the future.

[marshwiggle]

Just a point of clarification. Are we discussing the calendar- when the semester starts, the timing of Spring break etc? Or the course schedule- Bio 101 is MWF from 9-10 am? Because at my uni those are two different things determined by two very different entities. The calendar is set by a University wide committee at least a year in advance, they just send us a survey about what we when we anted to start in January 2021 because of the day of the week of Jan 1.  The course schedule is set by department chairs and up until recently was only done a semester in advance.  There is now a push to set the course schedule farther in advance.

That's similar to here; the dates of beginning and end of term, exams, etc. are all specified at least a year in advance.

The semester's start and finish is set, and classes are scheduled. What is not scheduled is midterms, holidays, exam period, last day to withdraw -- dates are relevant to planning a syllabus.

That seems totally bizarre. Holidays, exam period and when to withdraw are all interrelated; you can't set some without the others.

[spork]

[. . .]

Isn't it a bit odd to leave things so late?

I've been in my current job for over a decade, and only last year did my employer shift to scheduling courses a full year into the future. Previously it was a mad scramble on a particular Friday afternoon each semester involving numerous emails and phone calls among department chairs. Now that happens just once a year.

Our catalog still lacks course information of the type "offered spring semesters, even-numbered years."  And our registrar's office in now killing access to the list of courses taught in the fall semester at about week four into the spring semester. Department chairs need to maintain their own histories on course enrollments, because few think that the registrar's reports are accurate -- given that none of us can get a good headcount on the number of majors or minors in a program.

[Juvenal]

I mentioned above that my CC's Academic Calendar was set until summer school sessions of 2021.  Apparently some see "academic calendar" as including courses, the semester offered, and days and time when.  My CC's AC just is "start days, holidays, day-shifts if needed, mid-semester, last day, make up day(s).  Course scheduling is done on a semester by semester basis: the fall set up in the preceding spring; the spring in the preceding fall.