Ah, summer vacation. Like most well balanced Americans, I have fond memories of my summers as a child. Days full of hitting trees with sticks, lobbing pine cone hand grenades into the neighbor’s yards, slaying D&D kobolds with funny shaped dice and jumping my solid rubber tire bike over dead pigeons. Let’s face it, it wasn’t what law makers were envisioning when they changed the law to shorten school years.
What do summer vacations really achieve? Massive multi-million dollar public structures sit nearly vacant for two or three month every year. Idle children forget what they spent all year learning and learn things you hope they soon forget. Each spring parents scramble to enroll their kids in summer programs, camps, daycare and plan out complex commutes so they can try to continue a resemblance of a standard work week, all while employers are shorted on millions of hours of labor and lost productivity. The worst part is, those who struggle the most during this outdated holiday season are struggling families, single parents and low income households.
The concept of children needing a break from learning to keep their mental sanity has long been disproven. Is there even such a thing as “taking a break from learning” and would we ever want to see a person who has successfully stopped?
Dispelling a myth about summer break, current schedules have never had anything to do with farming. Farming has changed so drastically over the last century that children are almost prohibited on most industrialized farms. Even if child labor were still needed, summer is the exact wrong time for a vacation. Historical records show that farming families typically sent their children to school during summer and winter since fall and spring are the typical planting and harvesting seasons.
While it is a monumental, almost impossible task to change the education system for grade schools, it is something that can be achieved by an organization with more autonomy and maneuverability. The University of Minnesota is a perfect place to start. While the issues at hand for grade school students are drastically different for college students, there are a lot of similarities.
University campuses still face the same underutilization during summer months as other schools. We’re talking about billion dollar campuses that house technologies and equipment that should be used to its fullest. A huge portion of research and innovation in science, medicine and technology occur on college campuses, and having forced vacations for students hinders the progress in all those fields.
Students living on campus should be able to “live on campus” all year. The idea of sending students out of state or even out of the country for a seasonal break makes very little sense and puts students in a situation where on campus living is not a viable option. What good is an empty dormitory?
Even during summer months, a college campus is expensive to maintain. The best way to cover that cost is to have students on campus learning and paying tuition. What successful business, besides sports, do you know that takes months off from generating revenue by choice? Of course college is not expensive just for the state or institution, it’s expensive for students and parents as well.
Forcing students to take a four or five year course load is not practical anymore. With the rising cost of education, student debt is skyrocketing. Full year education can cut many programs to as little as 3 years. A great option for students, since finding summer employment gets more and more difficult, especially when their homes may be far from urban settings. The best way to combat student loan debt is still post education employment and getting that employment one or two years sooner is substantial. It is also possible the change could have a positive effect on student dropout rates due to the compacted schedule and the constant education focused environment.
Both faculty and students are both excited for this option. Less than one fifth of students surveyed said they would not be interested in year-round classes, while most favor the idea. Many students feel the break affects their education and often requires subjects to be relearned. The University of Minnesota said the new year-round programs will still qualify for financial assistance and students seeking aid should see no changes regarding funding.