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On Campus

Lazy Fridays a luxury at crowded colleges?

The state wants more Friday classes with some possible even on Saturdays.

By RON MATUS
Published July 6, 2004

	[Times photo: John Pendygraft]
	Above: Philip Ho, 27, left, a business major at USF, and Lilliam Chaiz, 21, surf the Internet in a nearly empty student union, the Phyllis P. Marshall Center, on Friday. At the school, Friday classroom use peaks at 30 percent, at 11 a.m., according to legislative data.

TAMPA - Classes on Friday?

No way, flashed the look on Elise Morgan's face.

"Yeah. I mind them," the University of South Florida junior said on her way across the Tampa campus recently. "It's nice having a day off."

Morgan could be speaking for Florida college students everywhere, and for their professors.

Most Florida universities are ghost towns on Friday afternoons, thanks to students who prefer long weekends to sleep in, visit family and maybe even study, and professors who use Fridays for reading, writing and research.

But it's a luxury a growing chorus of education officials says the state can't afford.

With swelling numbers of students and shrinking construction dollars, officials say it's inevitable that more students will be pushed into classrooms now empty in evenings and on Fridays.

Even Saturday is fair game.

"We need a culture change," said Kofi Glover, who oversees classroom space at USF as the interim vice president for academic affairs. "It has to happen."

At USF, it will begin to happen in the spring, with a new scheduling format that will make more Friday classes inevitable, Glover said.

For now, the old culture is firmly entrenched.

On average, classroom use at Florida universities peaks near 50 percent Fridays - down from 70 percent Monday through Thursday - and slumps to 25 percent by 3 p.m., according to data compiled last year by the Council for Education Policy, Research and Improvement, an arm of the Legislature.

At USF, Friday classroom use peaks at 30 percent, at 11 a.m.

Then it drops like a rock.

In building after building, classroom after classroom is empty after noon, many with lights on and air conditioners humming.

"It's a disgrace," said Florida Board of Governors member Steve Uhlfelder, who was referring to empty classrooms in general and not at USF specifically. "The last time I checked, Friday was still in the work week."

Empty college classrooms aren't a new issue. The notion of doing something about them threatens to move off the back burner every few years, but this time, it may catch fire. The state Department of Education formed a task force to deal with the issue last summer. Lawmakers ordered a report in the spring.

In May, the issue flared at a meeting of the Board of Governors, the panel that oversees higher education in the state.

So far, potential remedies include carrots and sticks.

Maybe professors should be paid more to teach Saturdays, Uhlfelder said. Maybe tuition should be discounted for classes at offpeak hours.

"Sort of like going to the movie," he said. "You pay less for a matinee."

A twist on the idea - to charge more for the most desirable class times - gained traction with the DOE task force, which will issue recommendations in September.

Yet another possibility is more club than stick: If schools can't prove they're using classrooms efficiently, deny them new buildings, Uhlfelder said. Universities and community colleges spend several hundred million dollars a year on construction and renovation, about 10 percent specifically on new classrooms.

At a Board of Governors meeting in May, Uhlfelder threw out one possible definition of efficiency: At least 70 percent of classrooms should be used all day Monday through Friday, he said, and at least 15 percent of them should be used throughout Saturday.

If that standard were in place today, new construction would grind to a halt.

It's unclear how free Fridays happened.

Some blame students.

"Students don't want to take classes Friday afternoon," said Pat Hayward, associate vice president for academic affairs at Florida State University. "We're not adverse to offering them, but we don't have many takers."

Students agree.

"You always try to avoid Friday classes," said Chanedra Mells, a USF senior. Friday is "the day you sleep in."

But students aren't solely responsible.

Scheduling classes is substantially driven by faculty, and most faculty prefer not to teach in the evenings or on Fridays, said Roy Weatherford, a USF philosophy professor who heads the university's chapter of United Faculty of Florida.

That doesn't mean they're lounging poolside.

One survey shows the typical professor works 55 hours a week, with only a fraction of that time in the classroom, Weatherford said. Many departments schedule faculty meetings on Fridays. And there's always research.

"It's a mistake to think when an intellectual is reading a book, time is being wasted," Weatherford said.

Education officials say something has to give.

There are 1.1-million students enrolled in Florida universities and community colleges, and the number is growing every year. At the same time, state construction money for those institutions is drying up. It's expected to shrink from about $374-million this year to $251-million next year because of falling tax revenue and rising debt payments.

For the most part, administrators must make do with the classrooms they have, said Ron Fahs, director of facilities for community colleges in Florida.

"They'll be squeezing them based on necessity," he said.

The situation is different at every school, in part because of the nature of the students they serve.

At the University of Florida, classrooms cater to a residential campus.

Classroom use hovers around 70 percent much of the day Monday through Thursday but drops to less than 40 percent by 5 p.m., the CEPRI data show.

Meanwhile, at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, rates stretch beyond 80 percent Monday through Thursday, even at 8 p.m. UNF also offers a good number of Saturday classes, many of them in business and education.

"It's for our commuter students and our full-time students," said Hank Camp, UNF's associate vice president for academic affairs.

At USF, Monday through Thursday rates exceed 70 percent in the evenings, but it's not enough to handle a booming enrollment that now tops 41,000.

Last year, the university had 155 classrooms, the same number it had a decade earlier, said Glover, the assistant vice president. Yet the number of labs and lectures grew from 7,400 to more than 8,000 in the past five years.

With more courses being offered, it's inevitable that more of them will be scheduled on Fridays, Glover said. A memo he sent to department heads last month also encouraged them to schedule more classes in early mornings and late afternoons and to "experiment with Saturday classes."

Weatherford, the faculty union president, panned the notion of churning out degrees and maxing out classrooms, calling it a "Wal-Mart approach" that undermines the quality of higher education in Florida.

But "the efficiency experts are in control of the system," he said, shrugging.

Students cringed, too, but some said they would adjust. Mells, the USF senior, said if she must take Friday classes, she makes sure they are in the mornings.

When they're over, she can go back to sleep.

- Ron Matus can be reached at 727 893-8873 or at matus@sptimes.com

[Last modified July 5, 2004, 23:26:10]