provocative opinion Equal Credit for Equal Hours James P. Deavor College of Charleston, Charleston, SC 29424
Why do lab courses receive less credit than lecture courses? Is chemistry not a laboratory science? Do we not repeatedly hear about the importance of the laboratory experience? Is self-learning worth less than auditory learning? Why are lab courses treated as second class citizens? These are questions I have often asked myself. The origin of the awarding of but one-hour credit for three hours of lab could not be found. A conjecture is that it was dreamed up by a malevolent college administrator who wished to extract an extra pound of flesh out of both faculty and students. By basing faculty workloads upon credit hours as opposed to contact hours, science faculty would be forced to teachmore classes. Science students, by having to take more credit hours, would pay more tuition money. I t seems that lab courses, along with physical education courses and art classes, are seen as "activity" classes, seeond class courses compared to lecture courses. Self-learning is seen as less valuable than learning from a lecturing professor. However, in a lecture situation the student can be most passive, even physically asleep, but in an activity course the student must provide most of the effort. The proposition put forth here is that lab courses deserve credit equal to that given for lecture courses. If a lab meets for two or three hours it should receive two or three credit hours, respectively. Lab courses are just as demanding if not more so than lecture courses for both student and instructor. There can be prelab quizzes, report sheets or notebooks, tests, and final exams, andlor practicals. For both student and instruetor this amount of time studying or grading, respectively, adds up. The conscientious student can spend equivalent amounts of time on both lecture and lab. For the instructor who has to prepare chemicals or instrumentation for the lab there is a goodly amount of preparation time. This can especially be true for upper level courses where stockroom help cannot be obtained. Science majors who might be taking three lab courses might be in class~labfor 24 contact hours per week (15 lecture plus 9 lab) and yet receive only 18 hours of credit. Instructors who do not have lab courses count equal to lec-
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Journal of Chemical Education
ture courses might have a 25-50% higher contact hour load (or even more) than their peers in nouscience disciplines. Is this fair? The major objection to this proposal from a philosophical point of view would be that science majors would not have to take as many liberal arts courses. This would not be good, because it would defeat the point of a liberal arts education. One way would be to increase the n u d e r of total credit hours needed for a science degree. For nonscience degrees the minimum number of hours also would have to be increased. For instance, if the number ofhours required for a degree were 122, which had to include six hours of science lecture and two hours of lab. the new minimum total would be 126 hours due to the idditional four hours of lab credit. For a chemistrv maior Droeram that rewired eight lab courses, the new total &oAd 6e 138 hours. i n actuality the students would be spending no additional time in class, they would just be 'rewarded for what they are now spending. Ifthis approach were taken the only argument in regard to ucadrmic standards left to address would be the oossiblc dilution of the grade point average as lab courses i n d lecture courses would have equivalent weights. Once again the argument can be invoked that science learning cannot be divorced from the laboratory. Should not a performance worth an "A" in lab be equivalent to an an "A"in lecture, and likewise the same for an "F". For state-supported institutions where legislatures h d based on formulas that rely upon full-time equivalent (FTE) student numbers, the change of credit would increase this number and hence increase funding. This would also increase the FTElfaculty ratio, a number that administrators find all too low for the sciences, especially chemistry. The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution revoked the clause ofArticle I, Section 2 where slaves were to be counted as only a fraction (315 th) of a person and not as a whole person when determining the number of representatives each state would have. It probably would require an effort equivalent to amending the constitution to implement this proposal.
