Here's the article that prompted this thread:

Summers off makes no sense: Former US Education Secretary Arne Duncan calls for year-round schooling

I think this idea comes up every so often. Based on my experience working in public schools (albeit in Japan, not in the US) I think I agree with the idea of shorter summer vacations for K-12. Japan has shorter summer vacations (5ish weeks) than the US (10-12 weeks) and even there, this idea comes up a fair amount. (BTW I say I think agree because I haven't thought about it all that seriously, and I imagine there are aspects that I'm not considering.)

For college-level, I'm not so sure if I agree or not, because there are various programs/activities that students do in the summer, and I think if year-round classes were the rule, those would be harder to accommodate. Although we are getting the message from above that more students want more course offerings in the summer, though I don't know how much that's truly student demand vs. a money making opportunity for the university...

Anyway, what do y'all think about year-round schooling, for k-12 and for post-secondary?

I have pushed my institution to embrace a three-semester year and I think I'm making progress on that front. Universities generally have a lot of "plant and equipment" that is mostly idle in the summer, and that's a cost without bringing in much revenue.

If we use our facilities more intensely over the summer we could increase our net revenue (revenue above the added costs needed to run an effective summer semester) by almost 1/8 of our total university budget. This could be transformative.

I'm not talking about making students stay for three terms a year and finish early, though some might choose to do that. For most students, that would be a punishing schedule that would drive them nuts (literally), and take away many other opportunities like summer internships and study abroad experiences. I'm encouraging us to think about encouraging our students to take one of the traditional fall/spring semesters "off" in order to do something else (like a full three month internship) and replace the lost credit time with a summer term at some point in their time in college.

Adding a summer semester would then allow the university to grow (hopefully with higher paying out-of-state students) without needing to build new buildings.

Ahh, that's super interesting.

Re use of campus facilities in the summer, my alma mater (a huge state school in the midwest, as it were...) started gradually increasing the summer activities the entire time I was in grad school, such that from year one to the year I finished (7 years total), the use of campus in summer completely changed, but mostly for JHS and HS aged students. They now have soccer camps, music camps, science camps, "academic success" programs for underprivileged students... Most (all?) of the HS-aged programs involve staying in the campus dorms as well. Any individual program is short (two weeks maybe) but there was a rotating selection of programs all summer long. And then a spattering of on-campus intensive courses for college students as well.

I suspect that not every uni can do this, but for my alma mater, it meant the campus got a lot of use during the summer, and generated money, although I don't know how much.

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I suspect that not every uni can do this, but for my alma mater, it meant the campus got a lot of use during the summer, and generated money, although I don't know how much.

Most universities have done this. I know my school's budget and these paying activities generate only a tiny fraction of what adding a full summer term worth of paying students would bring in. And educating college students is our mission, not running cheer-leading camps.

Many of those camps could actually stay. There is enough space on campus to do both over the summer. Air-conditioned dorm rooms are the limiting factor. We'll fix that over time as upgrading of facilities continues.

Staffing a summer is an issue, of course. But it's more of an opportunity than a problem. Many of our NTE (non-tenure-eligible) faculty are essentially put out to pasture over the summer. They would love to teach another two classes for another 20-30% of their base salary. And their bennies are already paid (health), so that's not an extra cost for the institution.

For regular faculty, we teach four courses per year. This could allow faculty to teach 2-0-2, 2-2-0, 0-2-2, or all sorts of other permutations. This adds complexity to putting together an annual course schedule, but that's what registrars are for.

I'm not sure what's happening elsewhere on campus, but my college (journalism) doesn't offer a lot of summer courses. My program offers none. Absolutely none. (Or has traditionally offered none, but I'm getting that.) This is based on the excellent argument that summers are when we write our books.

We are housed in one of the nicest academic buildings on campus, with all kinds of media production studios and computer labs, so it seems like underuse of a great resource to me. I believe the thinking is that our undergraduates go home in the summer to jobs, internships, farms, and such, and there's not enough demand for summer classes, but I'm just guessing.

Having said all that...I'm teaching a summer course this year. My ordinary teaching load is three courses per semester, which is standard for people on the tenure track for creative work rather than traditional research. Our department's core courses are four-hour courses, so I routinely teach ten hours a semester, and occasionally eleven. It's a lot when you're also writing a book or two a year.

Well, one of my courses didn't make last semester, so I need to make it up. The college's first suggestion was that I just teach an extra course this spring which would put me at...gulp...fourteen hours. And I have a book due in June.

I made several suggestions for making up the class that didn't require me to teach until I dropped during a pandemic. They were not accepted, but a counter-suggestion was that I teach an elective online next summer. The obvious choice is for me to teach mystery writing, which I don't teach often because there's simply not room in my schedule.

So we're about to find out if there's a market. (If there's not, I've still gotta make up that frickin' class....) It'll be cross-listed, so people can take it for undergraduate or graduate credit. It'll be online, so if I have readers who have been dying to study mystery writing under me, here's their chance, and it will cost the university nothing in terms of facilities.

If I do get a lot interest from my readers and if they pay out-of-state graduate tuition, the university should make buckets of money. (Small buckets of money. Writing classes have low caps, because it's not like I can grade three hundred short stories a week.)

If I learn anything useful about online university courses, I shall report.

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I know my school's budget and these paying activities generate only a tiny fraction of what adding a full summer term worth of paying students would bring in.

This I know nothing about.

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And educating college students is our mission, not running cheer-leading camps.

Although I mentioned the soccer and band camps, I think the bigger portion of summer programs for HS students (at my alma mater) are actually academic. Just fwiw.

MA, I'm sorry you have the problem of making up the class.

Re this:

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If I do get a lot interest from my readers and if they pay out-of-state graduate tuition, the university should make buckets of money. (Small buckets of money. Writing classes have low caps, because it's not like I can grade three hundred short stories a week.)

Do you have a good mechanism for advertising the course beyond your institution?

At my current uni, summer classes "make" depending on a complicated calculus of the base salary of the teacher, the number of students and how many of those are out-of-state (if any).

Re MA's comment here:

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This is based on the excellent argument that summers are when we write our books.

Yes indeed, I expect this holds for all tenure-stream faculty. I also need big chunks of time for field work, and having the option to do that sometime other than the summer (ala P*D's 2-0-2 schedule etc.) would be great.

So, so far we're not talking about any of the things I had hoped we would be talking about

What about the benefits or drawbacks for students?

P*D you mentioned (almost in passing) something about how year-round would be stressful for college students.

So, (not considering internships etc.) how much of a break do you think college students need?

What about K-12, what are the drawbacks to year-round for those levels? (I ask about drawbacks because I know more about the arguments describing the imagined benefits)

I attended school every summer from the time I graduated middle school through college. At the suggestion of a counselor I took a typing class over the summer prior to entering high school, some of the best advice I ever took. I was the only male in a class of young high school girls - and amazingly, I learned to type.

I could have finished high school in 3 years but elected to take AP classes in high school with my friends rather than graduate early, probably still a good idea. I worked throughout high school and college - but don't feel I missed out anything by that.

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I was the only male in a class of young high school girls - and amazingly, I learned to type.

K-12, a resounding yes. My kids were on a modified year-round, with about 6 weeks off in the summer and 2 week breaks for fall, winter, and spring. It was great. The two week breaks means that you could actually go DO something as a family and still have some time to relax at home... and in many cases you could go to a destination during the time that other schools weren't also on break. Six weeks is plenty of time for summer break, IMO. It also means far less time reteaching what the kids learned the year before, but forgot over the summer. Caveat: If your school is year-round but the others in your district/area aren't, then kids are really at a disadvantage to get summer jobs. TBH, I'm not sure how many kids get summer jobs any more...

For college, there's always summer school, but for so many majors summer is a time for internships. I don't see it as that big a deal for higher ed.

Cursory observations:

1. I don't know but not during the pandemic. Schools at all levels are struggling to open and stay open. This is hardly the time for year round schooling, IMO.

The rest of this seems Chicago-centric and kind of vaque, IMO. Police brutality isn't mentioned or I missed it.