Talk:Carnegie Unit and Student Hour

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[edit] Credit Hour

This page redirects from credit hour. In reference to American universities, I'm not sure that this page is entirely accurate. For example, the units are not entirely time based. Credit hours refer both to the quantity of classtime and also the quantity of completed (and passed) classes.

Credit hours toward graduating are acquired only by achieving passing grades in classes, and a student's "class load" is measured in credit hours: number of classes taken in a marking period. Also, a college can set the number of credit hours for a class. It is not always equivalent to the amount of time spent in the classroom. At The Ohio State University, for example, freshman engineering classes are 4 credit hours for 8 hours of class per week. Also, science classes with labs also do not follow the simply time-based rules. ~Kruck 14:29, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Hello Kruck, your observations, of course, are valid and true. It is important to remember that the Carnegie Unit standard is not an absolute standard, more of an ad-hoc, de facto standard, now widely recognized and accepted. Here are some reasons for each of the issues that you raise:

• re "credit": I agree that when a course is passed, the student receives "credit." Still the course is based on 3 Carnegie Units. I would be opposed to trying to create a Wikipedia page just for "credit hour."
• re "labs and other": There is much less agreement about how to treat "lab-type" course (which is where the freshman engineering class falls) as compared to traditional courses. Some school state that 3 hours of lab contact time equals 1 hour of "lecture" contact time, others use 2 hours of lab contact time. The reasons for this are quite vague and obscure, having to do with "application" time (in lab) versus "concept" time (in lecture), or some such thing. Another reason could be that administrators (and students) want more time with the instructor to cover difficult concepts but do not waht to pay any more money for the time needed with the instructor to learn them. In any case, someone with better outside references should try to explain these differences in the article.

Maybe that helps. SteveMc 18:14, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Wait, 1 CH = 50 minutes? Confusion? -Guest

Well, Guest, all that I can say is the standard is 50 minutes of class time = 1 credit hour. SteveMc 18:14, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Is there any way to convert back and forth between the "Credit Hour" and the ECTS credit system ? Or do the systems have completely different roles ? Kristian Joensen 20:37, 29 September 2007 (UTC)