I hope the subject title makes sense, and I *do *think this question has a real answer but it might also be mundane and pointless.
Obviously, I understand that saying that something is Blah 101 means it is Blah for beginners, and the very basic course of subject Blah, but **why **is it 101?
I mean, “001” might make sense, or perhaps just a nice simple “1”, but why “101”? It would actually make it sound pretty scary, (assuming a familiarity with George Orwell’s “1984”).
Shit, I am now drowning in numbers here. Now there’s another reasonable thing: why not just have courses named “Basics of Blah”, Intermediate Blah", “Slightly More Advanced Blah” and so on?
And what comes after “101”? “102”? or an equally strange “201”?
Short answer: 101 is the first course taken in the first year of study. 210 is the first course taken in the second year of study.
In reality, XYZ 101 can be taken at any time in one’s college career, but one must usually take XYZ 101 in order to take XYZ 102 (slightly more advanced, slightly different concentration) or XYZ 201.
By graduate school, there’s 5xx. I remember taking design 532, which was theatrical set design, fifth year.
Well, at my college, 102 follows 101. Classes with those designations tend to be freshman classes.
It could also be that 101 and 102 have to be taken together. For instance, I had CHEM 101 and CHEM 102 (introduction to chemistry lecture and chemistry lab) in the same semester.
Whereas 201 classes tend to be for sophomores, etc. Basically, the higher the number, the harder the class tends to be.
Although as far as I know, it varies from school to school.
As for the history of 101 being basic, I do not know.
Colleges use numbers for the same reason everyone else does - because they’re easy to index and sort.
Names are more difficult and tend to change more often.
AFAIK, most colleges/universities align the class numbering system with the expected year of study.
Our local uni uses 1xxx for first-year classes, 2xxx for sophomore, and so on.
So you’d take your basic ENGLISH 1112 the first semester and another basic ENGLISH 12xx the second semester (they have a few variations on the second semester class depending on what you want to emphasize).
Or HISTORY 1450 (US History up to 1865) the first semester and HISTORY 1460 (1866 and on) the second.
That way the degree requirements can say things like “3 hours of any 2000-level history class plus 2 hours of any 3000-level english class”.
Ah, thank you both. Hey, the numbers must be quite fun by the time one is a massively educated Steven Hawking type.
I now wonder whether the “101” for beginners’ classes was intended to allow for subject sub-divisions. But very basic courses might tend not to have sub-divisions. Hmmm. The mystery deepens. Still, thank you for helping me procrastinate by wondering about fun factoids that I don’t really need to know, but wonder about anyway.
Come to think of it, I suppose my universities had sort of alphanumeric codes for courses too, but they never mattered except for filling in a form, so I cannot remember how they worked at all.
First courses have numbers because that is a simple short way to distinguish them rather than a long title. Second they tend to have 3 or more digits because that way there are enough distinct numbers to cover all the courses. Why 101 rather than 001? I’d guess it’s because there is some reluctance to use leading zeros. Now with computers, you see it quite a bit as you can never be sure how a program will sort 001 and 1. I don’t think Paintcharge is correct that 101 means first course in the first year. Much too often students don’t start taking some sequences until later. In fact many colleges have a pretty set core of courses you take in your first year, and you don’t start on your major until year 2.
Generally higher lead numbers do indicate more advanced courses, but this doesn’t have to be 5 or higher. For example at MIT (at least in Physics) graduate classes have a lead number of 3 or higher. (Actually at MIT a Physics course is designated 8.xxx with the 8 denoting Physics. It’s the first x that is 3 or higher. And they are pefectly happy to have a lead digit of 0 after the decimal point.) At Yale graduate classes have a lead number 4 or higher. (At least they do if there’s any fixed rule about which I’m not positive.) For example at there school of Management, 4xx courses are core (1st year courses while higher numbers are electives. The second digit indicates the subfield. 4 is finance, 5 is marketing, etc.
I suspect there are lots of other individualities amongst various colleges.
Additional note (at least around here): Community college classes are numbered with single and double digits, 4 years schools use triple digits. Makes it real easy to see from a transcript where you took a class.
I would probably want to argue that alphabets are sortable too, but that’s just my silly prefudice, and I do quite see your point.
So, it looks as though lots of places uses this “101” for “XYZ for Beginners”, and then have different ways of doing it after that.
Haha, I guarantee you that sort of thing would have had me counting on my fingers to check whether I had done all the things that ought to have been done.
There is no true standard among American schools but there is still a clear trend.
The course is identified in three parts:
The department or departments if the course is cross-listed among multiple departments (e.g., Spanish, Psychology, Economics)
The first number of the course is the year sequence (e.g., 1,2,3, etc). Courses in the 100 level range are generally the overview courses of the subject and usually a prerequisite for higher level courses.
The last two digits designate the specific course.
XXXXX 101 is a common course number because it designates the first course in a given subject in the first semester in that subject (e.g., Sociology 101). It is almost always an overview course that often covers some history of the subject to provide a foundation for further study.
However, there may be other 100 level classes for different purposes. For example, my university had both Spanish 100 and Spanish 101 for first year Spanish students. Spanish 101 was for students who had Spanish in high school and just needed to continue study at the college level. Spanish 100 was for students that didn’t have much experience with Spanish at all and it was much more intensive, met more hours a week, and was a lot more work. Passing either Spanish 100 or Spanish 101 allowed you to continue on to Spanish 102 (the second semester course). You will find variations like that in many schools/departments but XXXX 101 signifies the typical path.
There may be lots of other 100 level courses as well that are more specialized but still basic. That is where the last two available digits of the course come in. You may see XXXX 111 for example.
Second year courses start with a ‘2’ and so on. Some course are available to both undergraduate and graduate students and often high a high number or two different numbers, one for undergraduates and another for graduate students (e.g., 413 and 613 may be the same course).
But he also took Government 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, and 10. I assume 10 is higher than 2 but those numbers don’t tell you much of anything else. Do you have to take them in a certain order? Kennedy didn’t. Are some prerequisites to others? Do you have to be in a certain class to take them?
As schools grew in size from the hundreds to the thousands and then tens of thousands, they needed to systematize their course numbering to make requirements more easily understandable. Making all courses 1xx, 2xx, 3xx, 4xx, 5xx was the first and easiest change. Departments could set up a progression. Government 101, followed by 102, 155 or 172 for specialized courses that would only be taught if a professor was interested, 201, 222, 314, 319, 334, 347, 421, 463. You picked and chose from the full set of courses offered to get the specialization you wanted. Take the sufficient set and that would be a full major. You never have a course like Intermediate Government. You have courses that are specific: International Conflict and Cooperation; The Military Instrument of Foreign Policy; Foundations of Comparative Politics; Media, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy.
Some schools keep to a strict numbering policy and others have let theirs drift from whatever sense they might originally have made. Harvard, where I stole those course names from, has its own odd set of rules.
You get used to whatever the numbering system is. Intermediate Blah is a non-starter, though.
if they started at 001 then they would have to use negative numbers.
101 might the the first course in that subject area for someone that did OK in that subject area in high (secondary) school.
100 might the the first course in that subject area for someone that did less than OK in that subject area in high (secondary) school.
099 might the the first course in that subject area for someone that failed in that subject area in high (secondary) school or did not have that subject at all (essentially the subject as it would be taught in high school).
Yes, but do you name your classes ‘Basic Beginning English’ and ‘Basic Beginning History’ so that you can sort them together for first-year students, or ‘English, Basic Beginning’ and ‘English, Basic Composition’ so that the English classes are grouped? And then what do you do when the English department decides that they need to rename all of their classes to some completely different style like ‘English: Level I Section A’?
Oh, they give you a little piece of paper with spaces to fill in so you don’t have to count on your fingers. (Generally 2 or 3 hours is going to be a single class. IIRC, the final digit of the class number is the number of hours for that class. But I could be wrong, it’s been a long time since I was in college.)
At my school they also used 0XX numbers for remedial courses. For example, Math 101 was College Algebra, but if you didn’t pass the math placement test (or have the appropriate AP credits from high school) then you had to take Math 098 or Math 099, which were intensive remedial classes that didn’t even count towards your credits.
At my school they would also group course by the last number. So ART 109 and 110 would be Beginning Painting 1 and Beginning Painting 2. ART 209 and 210 would be Advanced Painting 1 and 2. And so on up to 409 and 410.
At the University of Texas, the first digit is the number of semester hours of the course. So the beginning chemistry class is CH301. The second digit usually increments according to the year level. So CH442 is a senior level course worth 4 semester hours. At least that is the way it was back in the last century.
As others have mentioned, “101” schemes are used but they’re far from universal. Each university will have its own numbering scheme with certain information packed into the course number (typical year of study, undergraduate or graduate course, field of study, academic semester, course hours, location in a course sequence…). But note that any scheme that packs information into a three digit number will likely have a course called 101 and that that course will more likely than not be early in the pedagogical sequence, so the meme that “Whatever 101” means “First course in whatever” has some reach even if “101” might mean different things at different places.
Caltech still uses single and two-digit codes for their courses in many cases. For example, Physics 1 is freshman physics, Physics 2 is sophomore physics.
UC Berkeley has 1-99 as lower division courses. 101-199 as upper division courses. 201-299 as graduate courses.
University of New Mexico had more introductory courses as 101-199 with more advanced courses 201-299 up to 600s. The current catalog does not make it clear which are graduate level courses. A quick perusal of the UNM math department and CS departments it did not look like they used 101 as a course number.
All courses are listed with a number and a name math 1A introduction to calculus or omething like that. It is good to have a number because names can sound sort of similar and people tend to shorten them when talking about the courses. So it is good to have a specific non ambiguous number along with the short descriptive name.
In general there is not beginning math intermediate math and advanced math. There are a variety of courses most courses have some common prerequisites but after the first one or two the order you take the courses in can vary from student to student.
Now there’s another reasonable thing: why not just have courses named “Basics of Blah”, Intermediate Blah", “Slightly More Advanced Blah” and so on?