“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” because spring break courses are a great alternative for time consuming summer classes. While UCCS offers great courses during the regular fall and spring semesters, a hidden gem lurks in the shadows: spring break courses.
Spring break courses allow students to earn the same credits towards their degree as a semester long course in a fraction of time, and UCCS should offer more of them. Especially for students who live on campus, spring break courses can be extremely beneficial and provide a useful alternative to summer courses.
This spring break I took a course on political ideas in film that allowed me to earn three credits in a matter of five days. Although I spent nine hours in the classroom, it was worth sacrificing my spring break to have those three credits.
For students who want to return home for the summer, whether they live in a far-reaching city or state, taking a course during this time is often difficult. Online summer classes are a rare commodity, especially for lower-division classes.
If students took a spring break course, they wouldn’t have to sacrifice large chunks of their summer break.
Unfortunately, spring break courses are just as rare as those online summer classes. Often, professors will have to get special recommendations for spring break courses, and very few seats are available for those who are interested. Additionally, spring break courses are mostly special interest courses that could only satisfy an extracurricular credit under our degree audits. As a political science major, I was extremely lucky to find a course that related to my degree, but that’s not the case for every student.
UCCS should start offering more spring break courses and expand spring break course offerings to satisfy more areas of our degree audits than just under the extracurricular category.
The university could even make spring break optional and hold classes for students and professors who want to continue pursuing their educational goals while they remain on campus.
As a university student, I interpret spring break in an entirely different way than I did in high school. While it may be a much-needed halfway break for students struggling to keep up during the spring semester, spring break is an unnecessary interruption in university courses. Allowing students to continue their educational goals during this arbitrary break is vital.
While spring break is one of those classic college activities, spring break courses should be more widely offered for those interested in staying on campus. Seriously, taking a course that’s a week long and getting upwards of three credits is essentially highway robbery when you compare it to summer courses.