Take Up to 19 Credits Without Additional Charge
Joanna Robles
Issue date: 11/20/08 Section: News
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Originally, students were charged an excess fee of about $600 when going over 16 credit hours. In the past, in order to complete a degree of 120 hours students could only take up to 16 credit hours within the price of tuition. Students trying to complete a degree of 128 hours, usually science majors were allowed to take 17 credit hours a semester.
Steve Pattarini, the dean for Student Success, suggested the idea about two years ago. This school year, the idea has been recently put into the budget. Pattarini believed penalizing students for taking more credit hours didn't feel right, something a lot of people agreed with. "From a philosophical point of view, it seemed to me that we were always limiting the number of hours, instead of encouraging students to take more hours," Pattarini said.
"From an educational point of view, we should be encouraging our best students to learn more, do more as opposed to saying 'no, you can't, unless if you do we are going to charge you an extra excess credit hour.' People were getting penalized-mind you-for wanting to succeed more, wanting to learn more."
Pattarini said that students who wanted to attend grad school or med school ran into problems. He said students from all majors who wanted to go to med school got into trouble because they needed prerequisite science courses. But, these students were only allowed to take a certain number of credit hours. He believed it seemed crazy to not allow students to take these credit hours to complete their requirements. Therefore, this change was enacted to help students.
A year ago, if a student wanted to take an extra course and was in a 120 hour program, the additional costs would add up to about $2400. A student in a 128 hour program that wanted to add 2 credit hours, would be charged $1636.
Despite this new change, the one rule has not changed. Students must first make sure to get written permission from their academic dean in order to register for more credit hours. A student's academic dean will then examine their GPA and make the determination whether or not the student should be taking extra courses.
Once the student's advisor and academic dean grant permission, the student must
bring the permission to the registrar's office and there the courses be added by entering into the student's banner registration area.
Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 2
Kate
posted 12/15/08 @ 3:56 AM EST
I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. (Continued…)
Rockville Movers
posted 4/28/09 @ 1:51 PM EST
It's good that the credit hour limit has been extended to 19. This lets students learn more while also shortening the amount of time they have to be in college, which reduces their expenses. (Continued…)
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