A s I’ve progressed toward completing my degree, I have noticed that my semester schedules rely on making sure I get into one specific class at one specific time. Every aspect of my schedule has to fit around that one class because it is often a prerequisite for higher-level courses related to my major. This limited scheduling affects the other classes I’m able to take in a semester if their time slots overlap, or it may leave me with few options for arranging my other classes in my course plan.
It seems to be a common college-student experience to be left with a handful of classes in undesirable time slots. Whether you are an early bird or a night owl, everyone seems to be inconvenienced at some point during their college years by that one particular class: the class that forces them out of bed for a 8:30 a.m. start, earlier than when most people begin their workday, simply because it was the only available time slot for their major. Alternatively, students may be stuck with a class that keeps them on campus until 9 p.m., potentially affecting their ability to get enough rest before an early-morning class the next day or a job they need to be well-rested for to pay their bills.
This raises the question: Are class sections too limited? I believe so, as classes offered in only one section frequently force the rest of my schedule to revolve around that time frame. With more than 300 full-time instructors at Monmouth University, one would assume there would be enough instructors to offer at least two time slots for each class.
However, assigning more instructors to additional classes or asking specialized instructors to teach the same class multiple times a week may add unnecessary stress. Their workloads would increase if they had to teach more sections or subjects each week, potentially causing some instructors to decide the added workload is too much. This creates a dilemma in which we have to ask ourselves whether the convenience of more flexible scheduling is worth the potential risk of overworking our instructors.
When asked for their opinions on class scheduling, some Monmouth University students agreed that limited class time slots affect them and their peers.
“As you progress through your curriculum and reach higher level courses, where it is clear only your major would take these classes, they tend to only have one section available,” Rebecca Paar, a business administration student with a concentration in accounting, said. “They do not take into account that many people come in with credits and more than 35 accounting students may need a specific class. Given there is only one section, you receive no choice on what time the class is.”
Paar continued, “As a SAM [student advising mentor] in first-year advising, many of the students I help have issues with the class times rather than the classes themselves. If they play sports? Your major better have a lot of sections, because the window of classes you can take is very limited; one freshman couldn’t get past 12 credits because of the time constraints, in his second semester! If [freshmen] come in with a lot of credits and are ready for 200-level classes, they are almost always full and have a waitlist.”
“I feel that the scheduling here at Monmouth, especially for the higher level classes, is so limited,” Jerry Rivera, a business administration student with a concentration in operations, supply chain and data management, said. “As you go further in your concentration, the smaller the amount of flexibility you have. As for some of my classes for this year and next year, some only have one or two sections available and only one professor teaching it during a specific semester [fall or spring].”
When many classes are offered only early in the morning or late at night, scheduling becomes more than just an inconvenience for students. It may also negatively affect their health and academic performance. A 2023 study titled “Early morning university classes are associated with impaired sleep and academic performance,” conducted by Sing Chen Yeo and other researchers and published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, stated, “Our findings suggest that there might be cumulative negative effects of morning classes on absenteeism and presenteeism that lead to poorer academic achievement.”
Yeo and the other researchers reached this conclusion by analyzing students’ sleep schedules and attendance in early classes. Students who participated in the study were asked to self-report their attendance. The researchers found, “Confirmed attendance rates were about ten percentage points lower in students taking classes at 08:00 [a.m.] compared with later class start times. Even though students frequently slept past the start of classes at 08:00 [a.m.], they still lost about 1 hour of sleep on average compared with days with only afternoon classes or no classes.”
The report concluded, “Many students may be forced to make one of two undesirable choices when faced with early class start times: sleep longer instead of attending class, or wake up earlier to attend class.”
