I apologise for the slight hijack. I’m British so I don’t know what this phrase means. To the superficial or ignorant reader ( = me ) it could sound like she only has to complete 18 hours of either work or attendance. Can someone please explain it? I’m genuinely interested.
In American schools, credit hours are the “units” of classes. When I was an undergrad, for example, I needed to complete 130 credit hours of coursework for a bachelor’s degree in engineering*. Most semester-long classes (which last about four months) were three credit hours, but some classes that required additional work (chemistry or physics with labs, say) and a lot of core curriculum classes were four.
The credit hours generally reflect the amount of time spent in class each week. A 4 credit math class, for example, might have three hour-long lectures plus an hour-long recitation section (an additional session, usually taught by a grad student TA, to review the material, provide additional examples, answer questions, etc.). A 4 credit chemistry class might have two hour long lectures and a two-three hour lab. Three credit classes would typically be lecture only or seminar-style instruction.
If gravitydaughter is taking 18 credit hours, she’ll be in class around 18 hours a week. Somebody earlier mentioned the rule of thumb that each hour of class time requires two additional hours of studying outside of class, so 18 credit hours would be the equivalent of 56 hours/week of academic work. I don’t remember it coming out to quite that much, but it’s certainly a full load of classwork.
*I don’t just remember this stuff - I’m applying to PhD programs, and I’ve got a bunch of transcripts and curriculum listings sitting on my desk.
Is the “student allowance” some sort of government funding thing? I know in many countries, residents go to school free or nearly so. It exists in the US, sort of, but in most instances you don’t get an allowance. You get loans. At a low interest rate compared to private loans, to be sure, but you still have to pay them back. It’s possible to get free money, but it’s either in the form of a scholarship, which is awarded at the discretion of the institution that has the money (private fund or the university itself), or what’s called a Pell Grant, which is awarded on the basis of both you and your parents being dirt-poor, and being able to prove it to the federal government, usually through the financial aide department of the school.
(The government’s definition of poverty varies according to its whims, and is different from the one they use to determine income tax. Furthermore, if your parents are divorced and the one you live with is struggling while the one you don’t live with is filthy rich, even if the wealthy parent has no custody whatsoever, pays no child support or alimony, and refuses to contribute to your schooling, you’re boned. No free money for you. If your parents are dead or otherwise incommunicado, you have to jump through about ten thousand hoops to prove it, too.)
Some schools also give out full or partial tuition waivers, typically in lieu of a scholarship, or to people who are doing substantial work for the university itself. My alma mator, for example, gives a half-waiver for people who are working extensively for the student TV or radio stations. This is a less thrilling deal than you might think. Such jobs tend to unexpectedly take over 30 hours a week, in addition to your studies, and a half-waiver seldom equals what you might make if you were working a paying job for that many hours instead.
My alma mator currently charges about USD5,500 in tuition for a full-time student who is a resident of the state, and about USD11,000 for a full-time student who isn’t. I did not mistype the zeroes. This does not include textbooks, school supplies, transportation, housing, food, or other expected expenses. It’s a fairly small state school (which means it gets federal funding – there are also private universities who, on the whole, do not) and is widely known for being one of the cheapest in the country. I mentioned this to some Canadians once, and they were shocked and appalled.
It wasn’t always quite this bad; university costs began to skyrocket during the Vietnam War, when being a student automatically gave you a draft deferral and kept you from being conscripted and tossed into combat. The draft lottery took 20-year-olds first, then 21-year olds, 22, 23, 24, 25, then 19- and 18-year-olds, so if you could stay in school long enough you had a pretty good chance of escaping. Parents and prospective draftees were willing to pay pretty much anything to keep the exemption. I suspect it’s also partially responsible for the “educational inflation” which makes it difficult to get a job with a BA/BS which used to be obtainable with a high school diploma; a lot of guys who would otherwise have not bothered with college ended up going in order to stay alive.
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That’s exactly what it means - 18 hours of class a week, plus however long it takes you to complete the stuff assigned outside class. If it doesn’t sound very intensive, that’s because it generally isn’t, which is why it takes us four years to finish a BA when you do it in three.
I completed a degree in foreign policy at a halfway decent university (with the the equivalent of, I’d guess, an upper third) and I only spent about five hours a week in class.
Of course, that isn’t exactly a good idea, but I was young, stupid, and had fuckin’ to do.
It’s a benefit payment- about $200 a week- made by the Government to full-time University students who don’t have super-rich parents/partners and aren’t earning more than some low sum of money each fortnight. It’s not a loan, but it’s not enough to live on unless you live at home with Mum & Dad, or flat with several other people, or just lie about what you earn (not recommended, as they will find out and then you’ll be in trouble).
The actual cost of your university is covered by a thing called HECS- Higher Education Contribution Scheme. They’ve got some new system called FEE-HELP that amounts to the same thing.
Basically, the Government lends you the money with no interest and you pay them back when you get around to it (ie, earn more than a certain amount of money). If that’s never, they’re OK with that, but as soon as you make more than about $40k a year you won’t be getting tax refunds for a while.
And yet in spite of this I still don’t have a degree… 