The University’s calendar deviates most from typical university schedules in that its fall-term exams come after winter break. With Harvard set to move its exams before break this year, Princeton is the only major university to retain that system.
“The fact that 64% of the student body is dissatisfied with the calendar is important, but it is only actionable if there is a mandate for a specific calendar change with specific tradeoffs,” USG academics chair Ben Lund ’10 said in an e-mail, adding that the survey was only a preliminary step toward pursuing calendar reform.
Only 25 percent of the 1,504 respondents to the survey said they would like the calendar to remain unchanged.
Seventy-one percent of the respondents to the survey said they would support having fall-term exams moved to before winter break.
The survey offered students three possible changes to the calendar, all of which would be needed to move exams before break. Though 92 percent of respondents said they found it “acceptable” to start school a week earlier, the wording of the survey did not make it clear that all three changes would be necessary if calendar reform was to be implemented.
Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel said that ambiguity made the results of the survey unreliable.
She added that, though students say they want change, “there is nothing they are really willing to give up in order to accomplish change,” she said. Because of the ambiguity in the survey, “we don’t really know what they think,” she added.
This push to reform the calendar is hardly without precedent. In 2005, Malkiel led the Committee on the Course of Study to investigate possible changes to the calendar. After two years of research, the committee proposed several candidate calendars to students, who were never able to get behind one particular proposal, Hendrik Hartog, a history professor on the committee, said in an interview on Wednesday.
“It’s always been clear that a majority of students were for calendar reform,” he said. “But if you ask students closely … you get almost no consensus.”
Student opinion is not the only factor, however, as the final decision to change the academic calendar is made by a faculty vote. The faculty did not pass any of the committee’s previous altered calendars, Hartog said.
Hartog noted that many professors who teach in the social sciences or humanities liked the break between the end of classes and exams.
“I like the fact that students write papers in a period that’s separated from the intense classes,” he said. “It leads, I often think, to higher quality work.”
Still, Hartog said that Princeton’s 12-week semester could be a problem for introductory science courses, in which students and professors are forced to race through a great deal of material in a short period of time.
Despite the new survey, Hartog said he doubted that another serious calendar reform push would occur in the near future.
“It took an immense amount of effort from the administration … to mobilize a change two or three years ago,” he said. “And I don’t think the energy is there for another push.”
Malkiel added that there is “no new news in this survey.”
Still, Harvard’s recent calendar change may put more pressure on Princeton to change, and Lund said that he plans to pursue the issue.
“Our next step is to discuss the results … with the administration,” he said, adding that the USG would work with administrators to “ascertain whether there is a solution … that offers a compelling direction for change [to the calendar].”
The USG’s new Analysis of Princetonian Attitude Committee (APAC) will also examine the survey results to determine whether the ambiguity in the existing survey warrants another questionnaire, Lund said.
He added that he would try to avoid the problems the previous calendar change committee encountered by using the survey results to arrive at some sort of “compromise calendar” that the bulk of the student body would support instead of suggesting a variety of different calendars.
Lund noted that the survey results showed students were generally not in favor of a 13-week semester.
“I think that Princeton University offers a great educational experience and that not much would change [with] a thirteenth week,” he said.
Keeping the semester at 12 weeks could be a crucial step in winning the support of the faculty, Hartog said.
“A lot of faculty feel that Princeton asks a great deal of them in terms of teaching,” he explained. “Part of the quid pro quo for that commitment … is the short semesters.”
Lund said he was optimistic that the USG would be able to make progress on this issue by working with the faculty.
“Although there are distinct differences between student and faculty priorities in some circumstances, I believe that mostly they are aligned,” he said.
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