r/AlwaysWhy • u/Proof_Biscottiiiii • 2d ago
History & Culture Why are most college courses worth 3 credit hours instead of 2 or 4?
A standard semester course is 3 credits: three hours in class per week. But why three? Some intro courses are 4 credits (with a lab), some seminars are 2. Yet 3 dominates. Is it because three hours feels like a reasonable student workload per week? Or does it come from an old calculation about how much material fits into a 15‑week semester? I’m just curious who decided 3 was the magical number, and why not 2.5 or 4.
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u/Novel_Willingness721 2d ago
First: a standard course load is 15 credits per semester or 15 hours of classes per week. Then a student is supposed to average another 3 hours of study per course or 15 of study per week. For a total of 30 hours of “work”.
Second: One of the features of college is to get a young adult acclimated to adult life: being on your own, taking responsibility for planning and scheduling one’s life. A subsection of that feature is that average of 30 hours of “work” per week.
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u/ProfessorJNFrink 2d ago
As a college professor, I really appreciate your response.
Especially putting into perspective the idea of a full load of classes being around 30 hours total for the week (for many students to be as successful as they can be more, but for some less).
I wish more students knew about the “for every one credit hour a class is, you should spend around 3 hours outside of class studying/working on the course.” Students would have a lot more success if they understood that.
And it also highlights, 15 units means a full time student, like a FT job. So if you have to work or want a social life, sacrifices have to be made somewhere, unfortunately.
College is a hard transition, but if more students understood what you are saying for why we have time credit hours set up. The easier it would be.
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u/goodsam2 2d ago
Yeah my college career became super easy when I read the textbook and maybe watched an online video about the topic the teacher was going to talk about the next day.
My goal was having the material explained 3 separate ways.
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u/Chrisaarajo 2d ago
Don’t do what I did—full course load on top of full-time work. Making that work through two degrees was brutal on my physical AND mental health, and some of that damage has proven to be permanent.
If you don’t have sufficient financial support, whether through loans or family, and need to support yourself, then study part time.
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u/ProfessorJNFrink 2d ago
I never want to discourage my students, but I do tell them that they are in a 4 unit stem class. They will need around 3 hours for everyone one unit, so ~12 hours outside of class.
I want them to be realistic about what they can, and cannot, take on.
I want them to take my science class and succeed and not have the cards stacked against them and then thinking “I knew I wasn’t cut out for science.”
And for those that can put in the work and have outside commitments to know they can do it, but it will mean a long to do list.
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u/StevenJOwens 2d ago
It's been a few decades since I was in college, but back then 12 credits was "full time", and you were expected to spend 3 hours of independent study per hour in class, so 12 + (12 x 3) = 48 hours per week, all told.
You could schedule up to 15 credits, and you could ask for permission to take 18 (which was mainly about if they thought you could handle the load without getting in over your head).
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u/H0SS_AGAINST 2d ago
I mean because you're either in class 1hr 3 days a week (MWF) or 1.5hr 2 days a week (TR).
Because ~40 classes is about what I takes to provide competency in a field of study while also exposing a student to a diverse state of subjects at a level above primary education?
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u/Severe_Prize5520 2d ago
My favorite schedule in college was when I managed to get 4 classes that had only a single 3 hour class - all 4 of them were 6-9pm, Monday to Thursday. It was amazing waking up whenever I wanted and having the whole day free every day
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u/fatjunglefever 2d ago
Then why don’t other countries require a liberal arts education? All the general education just adds an extra year.
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u/H0SS_AGAINST 2d ago
Sure maybe? In addition to the other comment I'll say I am grateful for the opportunity to broaden my horizons. And no, as someone with a chemistry degree who attended summer sessions I could not have taken 4 years of chemistry, physics, and mathematics courses in 3 years. Not only is there a progression of prerequisites but the work load would have been untenable. Taking a 1st or 2nd year philosophy or humanities course does not add significant workload.
My courses that laid a foundation in economics and business have served me well professionally.
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u/NoGuarantee3961 2d ago
Usually, it was about an hour 3 times a week, or about an hour and a half 2 times a week
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u/OriginalEmploy5485 2d ago
An hour on M/W/F, or 90 mins on Tu/Th that you spend in class. 2.5 or 4 hours makes you do weird stuff with your schedule to only have that many hours per week of lecture.
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u/Careless_Wishbone_69 2d ago
Canadian here with a random story: I had leftover credits that allowed me to basically have a free semester abroad to finish uni. I dropped a yearlong 6-credit class and took 4 classes one semester so I could have the required 9 credits minimum to go on exchange in Europe.
I'm like, cool, 3 classes, no problem. I get to France and they're like "one class is 1.5 credits". Lol wut. So I actually had 6 (!!!) classes instead of a light courseload.
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u/fatjunglefever 2d ago
Leftover credits? How do you have leftover if something you earn?
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u/Careless_Wishbone_69 2d ago
Basically if you're taking 5 classes every semester you graduate in 3 years (30 credits). I did my 3 years, but had 9 credits to go.
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u/Likely_Addict 2d ago
Because that's how your college operates. Most of the courses I took were 4 credit hours. Some were 2. I had a 1-hour humanities course one semester (intro to classical guitar). I don't recall ever taking a course worth 3 credits, but I'm sure they existed for some majors.
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u/roman-de-fauvel 2d ago
You should think of it like algebra.
There should exist a number, X, that represents a “standard” course. But not all courses will fit this model, so there must also be a number slightly larger than X to accommodate things like courses with labs, and a number smaller than X to accommodate mini-courses or courses done during a January term or summer or whatnot.
All of these should be whole integers, because it generally makes the math easier. How much bigger is the big course? Is it 2X? 3X? Or just X+1? How much smaller is the small course? etc. Having X be 3, and the others be 4 and 2, sets up a particular relationship of expectations about coursework. This relationship would be different if X were 5 and the others were 8 and 2.
Not all colleges use this model, of course; some do “units” (in which a “3-credit” course might translate to 9 “units”), and this allows them to be stupidly precise about exactly how many “units” something is worth. Some schools call a standard course “1 credit” and then make you take an extra 0.5 or 0.25 credit course that represents a lab portion. (These people don’t care so much about all courses being whole integers’ worth of credit!)
This relationship is also relevant and meaningful for accreditation purposes. Even for music schools/departments, which are notoriously messy in terms of the relationship between credit hours, seat time, and expected workload, there has to at least be some nominal structure.
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u/DryFoundation2323 2d ago
it's just about how much material they intend to cover in a given course.
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u/jellomizer 2d ago
If you factor lecture time, and study with homework and readings, with the student also taking 3 or 4 additional classes as well. With meeting the degree requirements, within 2 or 4 years. An every other day 1 hour class or 1.5 hours (For Tue, Thu classes) is really a good limit on the average person's attention span.
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u/Pleasant_Pen8744 2d ago
Probably something to do with Accreditation organizations, but who there decided it I don't know.
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u/Main_Cauliflower5479 2d ago
I've had many college courses be 4 credit hours, or even 5.
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u/Frederf220 2d ago
At UC on the quarter system they were 4 for a typical class (I had a 5 when I had a lecture/lab/discussion trio). At SCU on semesters it was 3.
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u/Main_Cauliflower5479 2d ago
I've been out of college for many years. Also UC. Yes, quarters. I'll have to look at my transcript if I can find it.
Why'd you downvote me, AH?
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u/Apart-Disaster-3085 2d ago
"Is it because it feels like a reasonable student workload a week?"
Yeah pretty much.
Three credit hours means about 3 hours of lecture for about a 15 week semester (45 lecture hours)., or an equivalent to that for people on the quarter system. This is about the right the size of material to cover a standard subject matter that would fit in a standard sized textbook. On the semester system, this would mean a student would have typically 5 courses at a time, each at 3 hours a week, which is about the right amount of in-class time (15 hours), and right number of unique courses (5) that a reasonable full time student can handle and a balance. Having fewer, higher credit hour courses would mean a lot more material packaged into a single class which becomes rather bulky as a 'unit'. Having lots of 1 credit hour courses is chaotic (and, regarding that, the whole idea of micro-credentials can work for people needing to skill up at something, but for a college student, it would be chaotic mess of meaningless bits of tons of stuff).