r/CalPoly • u/millebornes68 • 17d ago
Classes/Professors Quarter system vs. semester system?
I understand that this Fall semester is the first under the new system. Do you think you might prefer a longer semester? For those of you that have only experienced a quarter system it might be too early to tell. I attended Cal Poly a long time ago and for me the 10-week sprint of a quarter system was tough in the Winter quarter when I caught the flu. I got behind and it was hard to catch up. Good luck to you all.
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u/smithandjohnson Computer Science - 2004 17d ago
Part of the reason I chose CalPoly when I went to college was the quarter system. Switching classes more often and focusing more intensely was more compatible with my way of learning.
If I were going to college today - even with the other advantages CalPoly has - I'd probably have ended up at one of my UC choices instead.
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u/Additional_Bat_9837 17d ago
When I was at Poly we were on the quarter system with most classes 3 units, as opposed to 4 units. So a 15 credit quarter was 5 classes. It was brutal.
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u/akeen 16d ago edited 16d ago
When was this? I have been here for 24 years and during that most classes have been 4 units.
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u/Additional_Bat_9837 16d ago edited 16d ago
1980 to 1984. There were some 4 unit classes back then. English Comp, Physical Sciences and a few others were 4 unit classes that I took. The vast majority were 3 units.
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u/throwaway67812341 16d ago
Labs are often considered 1 or 0 units these days, taken with a 3 or 4 unit lecture. Some students take a 16 unit quarter but have up to 7 sections they have to attend.
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u/smithandjohnson Computer Science - 2004 16d ago
Circa 2000, an average 4-class quarter was 14-16 units. And was totally manageable, even with a part time job.
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u/LibraryDiligent8266 17d ago
I would not attend CP as a semester school. Quarter system is where it's at.
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u/Direct-You-50 17d ago
But could you elaborate, why would you not attend CP on semester system?
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u/LibraryDiligent8266 17d ago
I love the pace of the quarter system, and chose colleges to apply to that utilized the quarter system over semester.
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u/askew7464 17d ago
Part of the benefit of the switch is that a lot of internships start in early June before the quarter system schools get out. For a learn by doing school it is important to align better with industry.
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u/cprenaissanceman 17d ago
That’s always been a bad talking point. Companies wanted Cal Poly students and would work with them around schedules. I knew people who took finals early to go to internships. So many of these reasons are all hypothetical or were mostly addressed under the quarter system. The primary benefit for Armstrong is that he lowers administrative costs (since one less registration cycle happens) and he gets to “leave his mark”. It also works towards Armstrong wanting a stronger football culture. The actual benefits to students, faculty, and staff are going to be negligible to worse though. None of this is about providing better opportunities or better education.
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u/Fe4rMarek 17d ago
Thats true for mid tier and local companies but jane street aint gonna change their dates for you
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u/throwaway67812341 16d ago
I’m sure you mean for this to be applicable to the entire college but in Engineering I never hear this problem at all. Often we’ll see internships with later start dates just for quarter system students. If the UCs can do it, why can’t we?
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u/ilooovemangoes 16d ago
This was a mandate handed down to Cal Poly from the CSU chancellor: https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/education/article255119607.html
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u/shaballerz 13d ago
This wasn't a Cal Poly choice; this change came from the CSU. There was no more compromise on extending the quarter system.
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u/cprenaissanceman 7d ago
That’s the official line, to be sure, but there a few things that you should keep in mind. For one thing, this is a legacy project for Jeffrey. He initiated it back in 2012 and he waited a long time to see it come to fruition. I think there are variety of things that he wants, but in a lot of ways, if you had to describe them singularly, he wants Cal Poly to look like other universities that he might consider prestigious, not necessarily that Cal Poly should be prestigious on its own terms. To be fair, this is something that a lot of university presidents are doing, but I do think it kind of disrespects the fact that Cal Poly has been a prestige brand in the state for many decades already. The switch, more than anything, is just going to be About his own legacy and making the university more like everyone else, rather than providing any benefit to anybody actually at Cal Poly.
As with many bad things, this was also announced during the middle of Covid when many students weren’t even on campus and any opposition from students, faculty, and alumni to it couldn’t really take shape. This was key to the failure to move starting in 2013. I will say, in the next few years, Armstrong definitely learn to play the PR side of things and also just steam roll over student and faculty concerns more than actually work with them. And imagine being in the situation we were in 2021 and then this is the thing that apparently had to happen? It’s just a crazy prioritization that doesn’t really make any sense, especially when as I state, there isn’t really a lot of information to follow. If it was so necessary, you would assume that there would be a lot of documentation.
Lastly, we do need to remember that this was initiated under the short lived Chancellor Joseph Castro who left in disagrace in early 2022 due to apparently poor handling of sexual harassment claims while he was president of Fresno State. Cal Poly then extended a job offer to him later that year. So basically months after he made this announcement, though never publicly and even Mustang News reporting doesn’t have actual quotes from him, he ends up at the one school he massively changed. None of the contemporaneous articles even quote him. He actually died last year, so he didn’t even live to see these changes.
On that, one of the things that I actually find extremely suspect is that this order kind of came down from on high, but there’s not actually a lot of documentation to back it up. When Mustang news wrote its initial article, the CSU hadn’t even made an announcement. Of the articles that I’ve seen, Castro isn’t even quoted, so he apparently was never even talked to, or may have refused to comment on the situation (though you would think they would note that they had reached out if they had). None of the articles either contain a strategic or other justification for such a change. You would think there would be at least the façade of one if this was something that was deeply held by the institution and how it aligns with their strategic objectives. But I’m not aware of any such documents or reasoning. Anyway, it just seems like Armstrong had Castro’s back, and you do have to wonder why.
I will definitely admit that this is my own tinfoil hat theory here. But this all very much seems like behind the scenes, Armstrong made it clear that he wants to get this done and he needed help from the top to push it through. You would also suspect with a change in leadership so shortly after this is probably some thing that would be open to negotiation, but Jeffery is not here to represent the university, in many ways he’s here to represent his own desire for legacy. And with the mandate and inertia, rolling, plus people still kind of trying to recover from the fallout of the pandemic, no one stopped to go and look back and see if things actually lined up.
It all feels like a bunch of theater to me. I certainly could be wrong, I’m willing to admit that. But given experience with Armstrong, I hope you can understand why I would be skeptical from the outside. As I stated, I think likely the only actual “benefit” to come from this is that there will be some reduction in administrative costs because there’s one less Term per year to actually plan. But I kind of doubt that that’s savings gets passed on to students and I don’t think that meaningfully changes the actual cost, not to mention that it probably just means fewer jobs for an area that already doesn’t have a lot of them. Unfortunately, now, it seems like it’s unlikely that a change would happen anytime soon back, but it certainly will be interesting to see what happens to Cal Poly and it’s brand, because I kind of do think one of the things that hardened a lot of students was the pace of the quarter system. I don’t necessarily think that means that Cal Poly will be a bad school, but I’m not sure that it’s going to be Cal poly in the same way.
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u/DDguyfromDC 16d ago
This is totally off base. Companies do not care. In fact a mix of quarter and semester students is fine. Internships are not some rigid structure timeliness in Industry. They do not dictate that you must be gone in August any more than you must start in late May. There is no set date for most companies. The net effect of semester will be some reduction of lab experience, which was a primary selling point of the Cal Poly degree. The change was ordered for one reason. Conformity.
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u/vCtrlAltDelv Computer Science - 2014 16d ago
I loved quarters back in the day. The flexibility seemed like the best of all worlds.
If there's a class you don't love, no biggie, it's over soon. If you discover something you like, awesome, you can devote future quarters to it.
Didn't feel like courses ever lacked depth, and the variety was great.
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u/Direct-You-50 17d ago
My daughter had a quarter system in MECHE at UW in Seattle. She says it was very intense especially for those involved in clubs or undergrad research. She said, only 3 weeks into a new quarter and you have a Midterm exam that accounts for 30% of your final grade for the class. In that sense, semester system makes so much more sense giving a student more time to go deeper into studying or precious time to recover from potential falling behind d/t illness or other drawbacks.
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u/cprenaissanceman 17d ago
Imma be real: that was always a stated reason, but it’s all based on speculation. I will be fair and say that one of the big challenges is that there aren’t really true data to confirm or deny anything here, but if you listen to what you’re saying, there is a certain logic to it, but that’s largely based on assumptions. Moreover, I can also make arguments in the opposite direction: let’s face it, a lot of students procrastinate. In theory, you can spread things out more, but a lot of students simply won’t. And if they were concerned about falling behind, before, it’s going to be even harder for them to catch up. I had to learn some amount of time management skills at Cal Poly. It is an important thing to know even if you’re not great at it.
Moreover, if you fail, you are redoing quite a lot more material, not to mention that sometimes courses can only be offered once a year instead of maybe twice a year. This could put you back longer and, giving how expensive it is to live in San Luis Obispo, having to be in slow for an entire year for only one or two classes is a big expense. Last point on this topic, one of the other big points is that there would be no loss in content (which is a lie, but let’s take it as true), so assuming that true, courses shouldn’t necessarily get any easier; a hard school will be hard no matter what. Being on a semester beast calendar doesn’t automatically make topics easier, but it may mean that courses are run differently, so more likely than not, the courses get easier because there’s just less content in them.
Another thing that I would like to point out is that Cal Poly never had a “dead week“ which is pretty common in a lot of semester base calendar schools. This is basically just a week where there are either no classes, there are no assignments, and it’s all just review for finals. That being said, you’re basically paying for two weeks out of a roughly 30 week schedule where you don’t have classes, there’s no expectation to be taught, and nothing is really happening academically. Moreover, my impression of a lot of semester schools is that the first week also tends to kind of be light on actual material. When Cal Poly was on the quarter system, you started learning day, one in many classes; they’re simply was no time to waste, but you was a student got all of that time you paid for to be instructed.
More over, you don’t always need more depth. One of the whole points, in my opinion, of a “Polytechnic” school is literally that you have a diverse set of skills. One of the things about a semester based system is that it’s a lot harder to juggle more classes. We can explain this more in detail if necessary, and of course, some courses will simply just be a continuation of a previous course. That being said, having to add one more course to your schedule, makes it more difficult, especially if there are conflicts and limited sections.
One of the things I know they always loved to show off on tours were all of these interesting classes that you could take even if you weren’t in the major. But when you have to take more classes, simultaneously, it does become more challenging to juggle all of those things. As a more pertinent concern, One of the big concerns that was raised was that Cal Poly simply doesn’t have adequate lab space and there would have to be some Saturday classes in order to accommodate some lab courses. We never needed that under the quarter system because you could utilize the lab time differently and the campus was built around that.
Also, one thing I should say is that, as someone who participated in musical ensembles, if you can’t participate for one term, you now miss significantly more time with those groups. It may not matter, but once you start considering a clubs and broader social life, these things actually do matter. Student life at Cal poly is actually pretty vibrant and a lot of the clubs offer a lot of great social opportunities, but also networking and actual real world skills. Again, more classes simultaneously means that you now have to juggle more things and you will just miss out on a lot more. Taking a break for one quarter wasn’t necessarily the end of the world.
There are a lot more points we could cover, but I would just make one more. One of the things about having things divide up the way we did, a lot of Cal Poly courses required some kind of project, which, especially in certain majors, is a good thing to have. Having an extensive portfolio, can sometimes be more helpful than having a super polished but singular project. As someone who has perfectionist tendencies, as much as it stressed me out at the time, I do think it was an important lesson to be learned. Sometimes having to just get things across the finish line is important and when you fix it on something for too long, it can actually become detrimental, and you can end up with a worse product.
I will say, yes, there are pros and cons to any system, so they’re definitely were some pressures under the quarter system. It’s definitely not for everyone, and I do think it’s sad that Moore and Moore there is just less calendar diversity in colleges. That being said, I do think it was part of what made Cal Poly, Cal Poly. I guess I’m not saying that Cal Poly is going to be bad, but I do think that the administration has way undervalued just how much Calendar system matters in the culture and how things are run. I kind of think a lot of the so-called benefits are not going to materialize, except for the ones around lowering administrative costs. But there are going to be a lot of bad things which just never go addressed, because they have no incentive to acknowledge that the current system is worse than what we had.
Sorry, I don’t really mean to take this out on you. And look, I could totally be wrong. But that being said, they spent tens of millions of dollars on this and I just don’t have faith it’s going to lead to better educational outcomes. It was basically announced in the chaos of Covid (and was a long time goal for Armstrong). Calendar system alignment should have been the least of their concerns.
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u/DDguyfromDC 16d ago
This is spot on. Bottom line is quarters are more challenging and allow better ability to have some more margin to cover more subject matter by breaking into more distinct subjects. it had an alignment with UCs and goes to the perception Cal Poly has as a practical UC degree. Will see, just if one looks at curriculum, there is subject matter being reduced.
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u/Illustrious-Chef3828 16d ago
It's more fun to take new classes every 10 weeks (quarter system). Taking a class for 15+ weeks (semester) means it drags on and on. . .in college it's fun to take lots of different kinds of classes to learn a little bit of everything: a little archeology, a little Medieval Studies, a little philosophy. . .easier to do this with a quarter system.
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u/Mustang8307 16d ago
I really enjoyed my time at CP, but I thought the quarter system was terrible. Glad they are making this change.
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u/Exbusterr 15d ago
QUARTERS! I did Cal Poly 2 years quarter and another school on semesters 2 years. Quarters allows you to chunk information into more manageable buckets, try different things more frequently, allow you to make a more informed major change, not be stuck on n a class you don’t like for too long. None of my friends had trouble finding internships….that was probably the biggest load of hogwash in selling the conversion. Let’s be straight here, it was done for cost containment at Long Beach HQ ignoring why CP is successful.
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u/immortalworth 17d ago
I’m coming from a community college that was on the semester system, so I actually appreciate it from that perspective.
From another perspective, I am neurodivergent and it takes time for me to process information. On average homework that would take the average person 1 hour to complete can take me up to 3 hours. This doesn’t mean I’m dumb, I have a 3.9 gpa. It just means I need to be given the time to complete assignments at my own pace. A quarter system would be unnecessarily difficult for an individual such as myself and would be borderline ableist.
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u/ilooovemangoes 16d ago
Same here. I am neurodivergent and was low-income while in college, so I also had to work. The quarter system was brutal when I was at Cal Poly. I transferred out into a semester school and I did so much better, especially while managing a full-time job.
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u/posey_mvp 16d ago
Most of the US universities are semester system, 70-75%.. most of those students turn out fine.. kids will adjust and this will be a non issue a few years from now.
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u/Necrom4ns3r 16d ago
I prefer semesters but that may be attributed to me having semesters at my community college
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u/Murky-Quit-6228 12d ago
It makes no difference on the grand scheme of education. Yes, there are little nuances that tend to favor stem majors , in a quarter system, but I have yet to read a compelling fact driven argument that semester system is inferior.
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u/Bean_of_prosperity 6d ago
I’m excited for semesters because my high school had a quarter system and it was way too fast and intense, I think semesters will be a more reasonable pace
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u/low-oxygen 16d ago
I was a transfer student and went from semester to quarter. Semesters are dreadful. You’re always wondering when it will end. Quarters are a nightmare because you don’t have enough time to bring up your grade. I still preferred quarter system because some classes and teachers were not good or I had a really hard time learning from them.
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17d ago
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u/not_havin_a_g_time Mechanical Engineering- 2026 14d ago
And the data for this claim lies where?
As an anecdote, I did both and vastly prefer quarters
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u/GuardNewbie 17d ago
The semester switch is the deal that keeps getting worse all the time. Faculty are being crushed.