Community college students find themselves running into the same obstacles time and again on their way to credential completion: costs, blocked academic pathways and competing life priorities. Data from the Community College Research Center tells us that students can fight paltry completion rates by ramping up their course load per term, and recent insight tells us that students completing 18 to 23 credit hours per year are seven times more likely to graduate than students completing 11 credits or fewer per year.
But how can two-year institutions increase students’ academic rigor without adding more chaos to their busy lives?
“Our folks understand that time is the enemy of our students,” says Russell Frohardt, dean of academic success at Northwest Vista College.
Frohardt, alongside the four other two-year institutions in the Alamo Colleges District, is attempting to ramp up full-time enrollment by implementing an eight-week academic term. Ditching the traditional 16-week semester, students who subscribe to an eight-week schedule can split a full-time class schedule into two halves and reduce the number of courses they have to focus on at one time. While shortening a class schedule increases its intensity, Frohardt believes juggling multiple classes at once for 16 weeks proves more overwhelming for students balancing external obligations.
Consequently, Frohardt adds, students and faculty who buy into the eight-week term will have more bandwidth to take on a full-time schedule if split into smaller chunks. “We all think that we can do multiple things at once, but what we’re really doing is shuttling between tasks,” says Frohardt, who holds a PhD in psychology and neuroscience. “If you have four classes that you’re shuttling, it’s way harder to do and maintain than two.”
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Alamo Colleges took inspiration from other institutions involved with Talent Strong Texas Pathways, a statewide strategy to redesign students’ academic pathways for stronger outcomes. In 2022, five years after Odessa College introduced shortened terms at scale, the number of full-time enrolled students increased by 31%, and the number of credentials awarded increased by 65%, according to the Texas Pathways Institute. Grayson College also hit a 19-year high student success rate (81%) two years after revamping its eight-week course schedule offerings.
Alamo Colleges is taking a gradual, phased approach in implementing the eight-week term. Frohardt’s team is still determining which kinds of courses students can appropriately take in a condensed format and how to create a cohesive scheduling environment alongside traditional 16-week offerings. They’ve contracted Ad Astra to build a more dynamic planning rubric.
“We can build a perfect schedule, but if advisors and enrollment coaches don’t understand what we’ve done when they have students sitting with them, it won’t matter,” says Frohardt.
Frohardt is also working on ensuring Vista College students are fully aware of shortened terms when picking classes and their potential benefits. “It takes a culture change. When we’re making the switch, we have to be very clear about how it happens and how it could benefit them.”
If you’re interested in implementing an eight-week course schedule at your institution, check out these 10 tips.
