Stressing to cram for a unit test after a week of school, teaching yourself lessons you were supposed to be able to learn in class, feeling like you aren’t good enough because you are struggling in a course?
These are all results and experiences that are often associated with shortened 8-week courses that Long Beach City College offers, not only during summer and winter sessions but also during the main fall and spring semesters as well.
Despite these negative experiences people have had and continue to have, LBCC seems intent on pushing these courses through emails to students and even on the big LED sign on their Liberal Arts Campus.
The California Education Department is of course trying to push shortened courses because it is the state’s goal to get community college students in and out in two to three years if possible.
These eight-week courses are infamous as when students who have experienced them hear someone is going to take one for the first time their response is often questioning why a newer student would do that to themself.
The main issue lies in the fact that courses were not made to be completed in such a short time and often cram difficult units that would usually take two weeks to teach into one week to learn the material and then take a test that is a massive part of your grade.
While doing these more difficult courses can work for some people if they have time over summer or winter sessions, the bigger issue is taking these classes while you have regular length courses to deal with in the spring or fall.
Dropping and replacing courses in the middle of a semester is common in community colleges, but if a student takes on an eight-week course on top of full 16-week courses they are already taking, the student might be overwhelmed with the added workload.
While the academic consequence of failing a class may only be academic probation, pushing these shortened classes runs the risk of students losing confidence in their own ability to learn and dropping out entirely.
The main issue California community colleges are trying to address here is that they are not getting students out and transferred as fast as they would like, however they are going about it entirely wrong.
Students who have attended LBCC and had experiences with the counseling will agree it is one of the biggest issues at the school and often results in messed up schedules and not getting the credits they need because counselors gave them a wrong class.
If there is one efficient way the college could improve graduation times it would undoubtedly be by improving counseling, whether that means paying counselors enough to have it be their only job, or by looking for a new way to reshape their counseling such as a website that will tell you what credits you have left and what classes are recommended.
The answer to a more efficient educational timeline for students is not to give them rushed and more difficult classes, but to improve educational counseling and provide more accurate and easily accessible course information.