Duke summer courses see decade-long decline in enrollment

For decades, Duke students have taken classes over the summer to get ahead on degree requirements and explore new subjects. In recent years, however, summer enrollment has declined.

Summer Session classes are offered in two six-week terms. All Duke and Duke Kunshan University undergraduates are eligible to enroll, in addition to visiting undergraduate students from other accredited universities. Term 2 courses are also open to qualified rising high school juniors and seniors.

Duke’s Summer Session is advertised as “ideal for focusing on challenging courses or taking courses that fill quickly during fall and spring semesters.” Despite these benefits, data since 2013 reveals a downward trend in Summer Session enrollment, with 2023 reporting the fewest participants in the past decade.

Term 1, which closely follows the end of the spring semester, consistently sees higher enrollment than Term 2, which begins mid-summer. The terms also differ in their course offerings.

Term 1 of 2024 showed the lowest first-term enrollment of the period, with 1,006 students compared to 1,508 students in Term 1 of 2013. Similarly, Term 2 of 2023 had 851 students, down from 1,111 in Term 2 of 2013.

Notably, Summer Session enrollment skyrocketed to 2,053 students in Term 1 of 2020, likely due to asynchronous classes held during the COVID-19 pandemic. By 2021, though, enrollment decreased again to 1,154.

One potential reason for the decline in enrollment is the increasing number of research and service programs offered by the University.

“Because I want to graduate a semester early, I may have needed to take this class over the summer [anyway],” Wang said, explaining that the course is a prerequisite for others she plans to take in the upcoming fall and spring semesters.

During each Summer Session term, students are capped at a maximum enrollment of 2.5 credits, which can include no more than one laboratory science course. These limitations arise because classes are condensed into only six weeks of material, with most courses holding lectures five days a week. 

“It is nice that you only have to concentrate on one subject, but at the same time, there’s less time for you to digest the same amount of information that normal [students] are getting over the course of 15 weeks,” Wang said.

She noted that while some students prefer to take more difficult courses over the summer to “get [them] out of the way” while they have fewer extracurricular commitments than during the academic year, the short time frame to absorb material can be challenging.

Natural and quantitative sciences and social sciences have remained the most popular subjects for Summer Session courses over the past decade, a trend which is consistent with the overall gap between humanities and STEM enrollment at Duke.

Most subject areas show an overall decline in summer enrollment, with the exception of the sciences and engineering, which have remained stable.

Wang noted that she places greater importance on summer programs — in which learning is more “hands-on” — than classes. She pointed to similar feelings among her peers, many of whom are participating in Data+ projects.

“I feel like you get more out of doing real-life experience things than just being in a classroom and learning because it's passive learning — you're not actively thinking and doing things,” Wang said.

Still, Wang sees benefits to Summer Session. She pointed to small class sizes and increased time with professors as advantages of taking classes over the summer.