Out in 4 years: Budgeting Credit Hours



Simple calculations lead to a credit-hour budget.              Photo by Judi Cox


An extra semester or year of college is an expensive proposition. One of the biggest reasons students fail to graduate in four years is that they take too few credit hours each semester.

What is a credit hour?
In a semester system, a credit hour is usually a measure of time is spent in class each week. A three-credit hour class indicates approximately three hours of class time per week during the course of a semester. Most classes are three-credit hours.

What is an appropriate semester load?
A full-time load for a semester is 12-18 credit hours, which usually translates to four to six classes. Eighteen credit hours are too much for most students. Twelve hours are usually too few. The sweet spot is 15.

Twelve credit hours (again, usually four classes) might be considered full-time and it might leave time for work and extra-curricular activities, but it won't get you to graduation in four years.   

How do I graduate on time?
Complete your credit hours and the course requirements of your program. Use your campus resources to find out what these are.

The math to figure a credit-hour budget is simple. If your program requires 122 credit hours and you take 12 credit hours each of eight semesters, you have only 96 at the end of four years.    

In reality, a 122-credit program requires you to take an average of 15.25 credits each semester (think 15 sometimes, 16 sometimes) to graduate on time with no summer work.

Examples

Prudent Scholar Joan
High school senior Joan reads her college bulletin and talks to her college advisor during orientation. She  needs 124 credits to graduate in her program in 4 years (8 semesters).

124  divided by 8 semesters =  15.5 a semester

Joan's plan: Take 15 hours half the time, 16 hours the other half to reach 124. Talk with your advisor about how best to do this.

Late Start Sally
Sally took light loads her first two years in school so that she could take on more work hours.  She, too wants to graduate in four years (8 semesters). She has four semesters to go and needs 74 more credits.

74 divided by 4 semesters = 18.5 credits a semester

Sally's plan:  18 or 19 hours is a jump, but possible. Sally can't afford to cut her work hours and decides to take summer courses.

Summer courses can be a good way to catch up, but might be a financial trap for students who don't need the extra classes. We'll discuss summer courses (pros/cons, questions to ask yourself) in another blog post.

A Thief Stole My Homework



Beware the break-in.  Photo by Tim Samoff

One of the most valuable things a student can own is a laptop. But, even more valuable to you and your future is what's inside. You can insure a laptop, but can money replace the information that lies within?

When I was an undergraduate, data was fragile.  We used floppy disks. They weren't floppy; they weren't disk-shaped. What they were was unreliable. We'd keep backups of our backups.

Data is less fragile now, but it is vulnerable.  Laptops are still breakable and their best quality, their portability, makes them an easy target for theft.   If that's where you keep your papers, your thesis, your photos, your life, think about how to safeguard it so that if your laptop's lost to theft or natural disaster, at least you still have the data.  Think about the worse case scenario and think beyond that.

Jessica Osuna, a doctoral student lost six years of work when someone smashed in the door of her home to steal her laptop.  The Chronicle of Higher Education reports:

"Ms. Osuna was not naive about safeguarding her work. She ran automatic backups of her 15-inch MacBook Pro onto a small external drive. Then every other day or so, she copied her work onto a one-terabyte hard drive that she kept locked in a safe, in case of fire. But whoever burglarized her home busted open the safe and took that drive, too."

A very solid back-up plan might include an external drive, but Ms. Osuna's situation points to the need for an off-site backup plan.

A low-cost option is to post regular copies to CD or USB drive that live off premises. If you're a grad student with an office and multi-year dissertation, you might do that, but for most students, that degree of care is just not practical. It's time to look at other options.

Off-site back up options:

1. Email.  The simplest and cheapest backup is to use email. Every time you complete a draft of an important document email a copy to yourself.

• Pro:  It's available everywhere email is.
• Con: Files can get lost in mountains of email. The longer time has passed, the less easy it is to access your information. 

Takeaway: This is a good method for backing up valuable current projects, but it might not be a long-term storage solution.

2. Campus vaults. Many universities make data storage available to students. This is the best option if you can get it.

• Pros: Convenient for on-campus computing, your campus data storage is probably included in the cost of your tuition and technology fees.
• Cons: May or may not be easily accessible off campus. Beware of upgrades and make sure you copy the goods before you move on. My grad school papers were stored in a vault that was phased out.  Data never really dies, but resurrection can be a major hassle.

Takeaway: Find out what your campus offers and use it to its full potential. Just make sure to take your data with you when you leave.

3. Clouds.

• Pros: Available anywhere you can access to an internet connection. Large amounts of space available. Easy to organize and access.
• Cons: You're looking at $50-$150 a year in fees.

Takeaway:   Costly, but worth it for extremely valuable data years in the making. Probably not necessary for budget-conscious undergraduates who are careful to use other back-up options regularly.

7 Ways to Find Free Food on Campus



Pizza: A commonly free food on campus. Photo: MMChicago.

If you live on a big campus, somewhere there is an learning opportunity accompanied by free food. Katherine, a student I knew a few years ago, never missed an opportunity to learn something new -- and eat something free in the process.  The two go hand-in-hand on a college campus.

Many groups provide free food as either an extra enticement for attendance or to add a social dimension to an academic event.  Some organizations make the food THE event. Check out international organizations, which use food to teach about other cultures.  

How do you find out about these events?  

7.  Read your campus newspaper or arts magazine. Many of these will feature upcoming events.

6.  Try Free Food on Campus.  This website seems to be just getting off the ground. Join and you can help spread the word about events.

5.  Seek a local group of grazers. Some college's have local Facebook groups for students looking for a free lunch.

4.  Like art?  Go to art exhibition openings. These are almost always accompanied by snacks. See if your town has a regulary "Gallery Walk." Think pub crawl, but with cheese cubes and art.

3.  Join the listservs of departments or organizations that interest you and ask to be put on their mailing list or listserv or look for their page on Facebook.

2.  Keep tabs on online campus and community calendars.

1.   Read notices and posters. Old-fashioned paper flyers posted around campus are still a good way to find out about events and receptions.