Fall schedule offers fewer night classes

The Chronicle’s Wednesday, April 6, editorial speculated that an increase in the number of evening classes has negatively impacted student life at Duke. While I cannot comment on the conclusions, I am writing to correct a basic misperception on which that editorial is based—that the new course scheduling policy has led to an increase in the number of classes offered in the evening.

In fact, there are actually fewer classes offered in the evening now than were offered prior to the adoption of the new policy. The number of class meetings below the 300 level, including discussion sections, starting after 5 p.m. dropped 26 percent from Fall 2003 to Fall 2004, with the current Fall 2005 schedule reflecting a similar decrease, and 14 percent from Spring 2004 to Spring 2005. In addition, in the old system one day per week seminars were limited to the late afternoon and evening hours, while the new policy allows a limited number of these courses throughout the day.

With a significant glut of classes during “prime time” hours (10 a.m. to 2 p.m.), one of the primary goals of the new course scheduling policy was to try to spread classes more evenly across the day and across the week, and that effort has been largely successful, even though the number of evening classes has dropped. There is now a more balanced distribution of classes across all periods of the day, and across all days of the week.

Bruce Cunningham

University Registrar