MIT wasn’t like that in the 60s 70s. Classes were an hour (actually 50 minutes long) regardless of the day. Some courses had three lectures per week MWF (with a recitation section some other time). Smaller classes (without a main lecture) usually met TT for an hour each. Lab classes met twice a week for 3 hours each.
UCLA had the quarter system with the OPs class layout.
At UF (as I remember it), the blocks were all the same length every day. A typical three-credit class had three blocks per week, whether it met one, two, or three days. So a Tuesday/Thursday class would meet for one block on Tuesday and two blocks on Thursday.
I don’t recall how many minutes each block was. Just about an hour, I think.
I can’t remember *ever *having a class that was less than an hour. Many of my classes were fours hours each (a lecture then watching a film) and the elective classes were I think 90 minutes? Maybe 75. This was at NYU.
Pretty much. Though, I think there were a very few odd classes, the sort of things that weren’t major requirements for anybody, that were only 50 minutes and yet on Tuesday or Thursday. But these exceptions were rare.
I studied physics and astronomy, and the Tuesday and Thursday classes were labs. I am intrigued to hear that the nontechnical majors also had long classes.
This has been mostly true at all of the campuses I’ve studied and / or taught at, although the once-a-week, three-hour format is also not unusual, and at my current campus there are no Friday afternoon classes; anything meeting after 11:00 runs for 75 minutes on Mondays and Wednesdays only.
^^^^ same for me.
Former college prof here.
Yeah, the OP’s statement was generally true of standard lecture classes at all the places I was a student and where I taught. But not completely.
Some exceptions:
In later years, students didn’t want to take classes in middle-late Friday afternoons, so those went to 1.5 hours MW. (Part of the downward spiral of student interest in doing their part that caused me to leave teaching.) Even 1 and 2pm classes on Friday started to see major drop-offs in enrollment.
Summer is generally very different. E.g., I took classes that met for 2 hours MTWTh. Some starting as early as 6am. You could cram two quarters of classes into that schedule. Three if there was also an afternoon session. Nice.
Evening classes are also different. E.g., I taught a class that met for 3 hours on Tuesday nights. (Then got up to teach my 8am MWF class. That’s what they did to TAs.)
Labs, seminars, recitations, etc. all had their own separate schedule.
But these were all 3 lecture hours per week for a “normal” course places. (Despite variations of quarters or semesters and 3 or 4 credits per course.) But some places have 4 lectures hours per week as the norm.
That’s mostly how it was back at my university in the 1980’s, although I did have a couple of courses that were required, but worth fewer credits, on Tuesdays and Thursdays for fifty minutes each.
Also I had a couple of courses that had a three-hour lab once a week, and a couple of seminars that were one three hour session per week.
And student teaching lasted the entire day at the elementary school.
I went to Union College, which was on a trimester system. You took had three courses a term, with four hours of class time* a week. Trimesters were 10 weeks instead of 15. A MWF class would be 65 minutes; T/Th were two hours (including one break).
The college is still on a trimester 40 years later. Whenever they try to change things, the faculty says a semester system is unworkable, unable to find any college in America that manages with one. :rolleyes:
*including breaks between classes.
No,
For the most part, all classroom classes (lectures, tutorials, and seminars) were an hour (or 50 minutes because of travel time) no matter what day. Labs tended to be 90 minutes or longer.
Nope. Went to college in the early 2000s (and graduate school in the late 2000s) and class lengths had no relation to the day they were scheduled on.
The OP describes how it was at all of the colleges I’ve attended in California.
In Oregon and Washington, most schools are on the quarter system, and classes are 4 or 5 units instead of 3. The same idea applies, though: roughly 50 minutes per week per unit.
I teach at two community colleges, one in Oregon and one in Washington. At the Oregon school, most 5 unit classes meet twice a week for 2:20 per day. The school in Washington works the same for afternoon & evening classes, but in the morning classes meet daily for 50 minutes a pop.
This coming Fall quarter (starts Monday) one of my classes is only 4 units, it meets twice a week for 1:50.
Back in the 50s, Penn had divided the week into: Monday and Friday afternoons reserved for labs and the three hours every morning and four of TuWTh afternoons into three hour slots. A typical one might have been MTh at 9 and Tu at 1 or TuF at 10, Th at 3 and so on. So there were 9 such slots and all three credit courses were assigned to one of them. However, since then, they have adopted exactly the system described in the OP. Go back further and they would have also had TuThSa classes, at least in the morning. I worked in a lab and their work week included Sa 9-1.
Something similar was typical at my college in the early '80s, but there were a lot of exceptions. For example, there were “club hours”* from 12-2 on Mondays and Wednesdays and it wasn’t uncommon for a class to be scheduled for 50 minutes starting at noon on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.
- No classes were scheduled during these hours, only club meetings and other extracurricular activities. This may have been because it was a commuter college.
At two major schools in Virginia, this was pretty close for 3-credit classes. Iirc, T/Th classes were 80 minutes, not 75, but that is sort of splitting hairs. The reason for not making it a round hour and a half was to allow students to register for back-to-back classes and have enough time to travel to the next one. I believe there were also Monday/Wednesday classes that were 80 minutes each day, with no lecture on Friday.
Most classes were 3 credits - there were also 4 and 5 credit classes - typically they would divide the class hours by the number of lectures during the week and then subtract 10 minutes for each lecture to allow students some buffer time to move on.
Yep, I went '90-'92. 
Undergrad, quarter system (e.g. Fall, Winter, Spring, and optional Summer quarters, equal length):
4 credits is the normal size
MWF: 70 minutes
TTh: 110 minutes
University I went to for grad school, undergrad classes, semesters:
3 credits is the normal size
MW: 75 minutes
MWF: 50 minutes I think? Usually this is a 4 credit class with labs, regular MWF are rare.
TTh: 75 minutes
Summer: MTWTh, 110 minutes
Weekend/once a week class: 225 minutes
Grad seminar length is almost not worth mentioning but usually 165 minutes, once a week
Hinds Junior College and Mississippi College in the mid-late 80s were 60 min classes on M/W/F and 90 min classes on T/T with labs for sciences that ran 3 hours.
University of New England (Armidale, NSW, AU) where I go to law school is by podcast and block classes I attend 2 weeks at a time 12 hours a day, twice a year and more often this year because I’m mooting, but that’s on top of the podcasts (which include what the lecturer is showing on the board, very nice.) If you’re on campus, I cannot see any rhyme or reason at all to it. I’ve had two hour and one hour classes in one subject, two x two hour lectures (on different, random days) in one subject, 3 hour single lectures per week in one subject.
The LPAB DipLaw program (NSW, AU) I transferred from had a single lecture 3 hours per week. At night. Friday classes were the worst.
I don’t remember, hence, my stellar resume.
All I do recall was obnoxious 8 am “labs” on Friday mornings. (Thursday was the party night)
(Well, so was Friday, Saturday and Sunday)