Universities: Trimester's Tribulations

Dividing the college year into three parts is beginning to look better on paper than in practice. Four years ago Florida, in hopes of handling more students without a big expansion, became the first and only state to adopt the trimester statewide. Last week, bowing to professorial discontent and the wishes of Governor Haydon Burns, Florida decided to drop it.

The major complaint of faculty members at the five Florida campuses was that they could not cram their previous 16-week semester courses into the 14-week trimesters without shortchanging students. "Education is not a 60-yard dash—it should be approached and savored," said one Florida State professor, who contended that under the trimester his students were "confused and stunned by the lightning speed of things." Some students agreed. "It's like trying to drink water from a high-pressure fire hose," said one.

Less altruistically, professors contend that although they got an 11% pay increase to shift from a nine-month year to ten months, they find that they are carrying loads 25% heavier. They object to being "out of step with the rest of the academic world," find it tough to mesh their summer study plans with the requirement that each must work half of each summer trimester.

A different obstacle turned up in another big trimester experiment. A Ford Foundation study of the financial jam at the University of Pittsburgh recently blamed Pitt's trimester system as mainly responsible for doubling operational costs per student. While Pitt retained 70% of its faculty to handle the summer trimester, only one-fourth of its undergraduate enrollment showed up. A study at the Binghamton campus of the State University of New York showed that year-round operation, designed to handle about 50% more students, attracted almost no increase.

The trimester is not yet dead. About 55 colleges now use it, and some, including the University of Michigan, find that it is working well. Most colleges —about 1,780—remain on the semester system, while more than 300 operate on the year-round quarterly system that Florida will go to in 1967.