When students enroll in a class that meets for a total of four hours every week, it’s usually safe for them to assume they’ll be compensated with three credit hours. But when it comes to labs at UNC, this assumption proves untrue.
UNC’s science departments offer many laboratory courses that meet once a week and can last up to three hours and 50 minutes. But most of these labs are only worth one credit hour — even though the lab alone requires as much effort as many three-credit courses offered at this university.
In these labs, students are required to write reports, perform experiments, take exams and maintain near-perfect attendance. So why don’t the credits students receive reflect this effort?
We understand that this is likely an attempt by the University to save money, since professors are paid in proportion to the number of hours they teach.
But most labs are taught by graduate students as part of the work they do to receive a set stipend. In other words, their compensation doesn’t depend on how many hours they teach. It seems that increasing the number of credit hours awarded for a lab would do nothing to add to the University’s financial woes.
The other obstacle could be that many science majors would approach their credit hour limit if all their labs had to count for three hours.
An easy solution would be to offer students the option of taking labs for more credits if they want to, but fewer credits if they would otherwise be over the maximum hour limit imposed by the University.
Of course, this option could create another set of complexities as students consider the lab’s impact on their GPA, since grades are weighted by credit hours.
Whatever the solution, something needs to change. Students shouldn’t be shorted credits they’ve worked hard for. If students are putting in the work and class time of a three-hour course, it is only fair that they receive the proper compensation.
