Why are there no universities/colleges that start in the afternoons?

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

I’m an early riser, but not all people are. Some people are more awake in the afternoons, some people don’t really wake up until the evenings. So, how come all full-time education seems to start around 9am-10am?

I know that night school is a thing, but that’s really targeted at people who want to study over many years around their other commitments (e.g. a day job). I’m talking about full-time three- or four-year bachelor’s degrees and above (though exactly the same logic applies to all education really). Surely there’s enough demand for at least a couple of top-class full-time education establishments that don’t even open their doors until lunchtime?

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Berttheduck@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I suspect the main reason is the inertia of the 9-5 that most of the world revolves around. You’d struggle to recruit staff to teach, techs to maintain buildings and stock required if they had to work permanently on late shifts.

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- LongLive@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Public transportation is catered and optimized for those working regular hours.
  
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  - SARGE@startrek.website ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    regular hours.
    
    Apologies, but as someone who has never worked in an office, “regular hours” is a meaningless phrase.
    
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- Eq0@literature.cafe ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I agree: a university is a workplace for a lot of people, and work is expected to take place during working hours, by definition in our society that means 9-5. I never even heard this discussion being brought up, honestly
  
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  - Successful_Try543@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    However, there are universities (of applied sciences) offering programs for employed people, where the courses subsequently are in the evening.
    
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- SolarTapestryofNoise@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Pretty much this. Most universities have a second and third shift but it’s usually reserved for janitorial departments and a skeleton crew maintenance. I used to be a night shift plumber for a university and we only had 3 plumbers and 3 electricians on site for the entire D1 state school campus. Most places opt for on call late at night. Really the infrastructure isn’t there for full tilt 24 hr educational support, much less maintenance and support staff.
  
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  - grysbok@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I work in an academic library and we’re always worrying about evening and weekend coverage.
    
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- dragnucs@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  But the thing schools are trying to produce, educated young people, don’t fit in to the schedule. Most of them cannot wake up early.
  
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  - protist@mander.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Uhhh…the average new college student is fresh off of going to school before 9am for the previous 13 years
    
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  - Berttheduck@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Universities are a stepping stone to teach students how to be independent adults so getting them used to normal working hours gently is a good thing. Most courses aren’t a solid 9-5 so there’s plenty of opportunity for a lay in at least some days (depending on the course)
    
    Universities are also research institutions and that all runs on normal working hours, the lecturers are often researchers first and teaching staff second so fitting classes around the research makes sense.
    
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BillDaCatt@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The answer, at least in my experience, is that schools offer classes throughout the day and it is up to the student to select classes that fit onto their schedule. Unless a class is only offered in the morning, it is entirely possible to attend classes that do not start before noon and still get a degree.

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- BlackVenom@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Same. Hell most people I knew aimed for the later classes. Plus there were a swath of classes aimed specifically at those working jobs - e.g. classes starting after 5.
  
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- derfunkatron@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  This was my experience as well.
  
  I did, however, have the unfortunate experience of studying a degree that required four sequential semesters of courses that started at 8AM. Granted, I could have solved that problem by changing majors, but here I am. Once those classes were over, all of my classes were between 11AM and 3PM.
  
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- dragnucs@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  This probably not the case in many countries. All the schools and university you can subscr8be to in my area will impose on you their schedule. You only get to choose a studies path or branch then you will need to pursue with their schedule. You do not get to choose the classes.
  
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IWW4@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

So, how come all full-time education seems to start around 9am-10am?

Are you sure they don’t.

When I went to undergrad plenty of classes started at 11, 1, 4 and 7pm.

My kid went to undergrad about 15 years ago and the same was offered and he had a number of online options that he could do pretty much anytime.

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MerrySkeptic@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Your schedule start times depends on the courses you choose. For core classes, there are usually multiple offerings of the same course by different professors at different times of the day. So if you want to start at noon as a freshman, you probably could if you design your schedule for the semester that way.

For upper level major-specific courses, if it’s a small to medium sized program these may be offered once per semester or even once per year, so you’re much more at the mercy of the professor’s schedule.

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- Apytele@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Or if it’s a complete program for a profession like nursing or medicine, you wake up when the professors damn well say you do.
  
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Pika@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I didn’t have this experience, because I very regularly had college classes that didn’t start until 5, 6 in the afternoon, but I would expect that if your college doesn’t offer those type of classes, that they likely have some sort of college sport and that’s a pretty big income source for them, because that’s the main reason that most high schools still run Early in the morning to early in the afternoon, despite it’s been proven that’s during a period that is not good for actual information retention, with newer generations.

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- BussyCat@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  High schools run early because one of their primary functions is childcare while parents work and parents commonly leave for work between 7-8 so kids need to be on the bus before then. They then stagger primary, middle, and high school so they can use the same bus drivers for all of them and high schoolers leave first so that they can arrive home first without parents. This is being changed as high schoolers need more sleep but it’s not for sports.
  
  In college you need professors to teach classes and most of them want to work a more traditional schedule so want to be there from 7-3
  
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  - Pika@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    agree with this as well.
    
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Steve@startrek.website ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
They dont- you can sign up for all evening classes if you want

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- BussyCat@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  My engineering classes had one time option a year (not just per semester but only offered once a year) and none of them were offered later than 2pm
  
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darthelmet@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It just depends on what classes you need and when you get access to registration. I got lucky some semesters and managed to craft a schedule where nothing started before noon and some semesters where I was dying because I had a class at like 8am.

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njm1314@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
You never heard of night school before?

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- Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Tell me you didn’t read the post without telling me you didn’t read the post :)
  
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abbadon420@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I work at a university. I only teach between 1400 and 1700. We’re a very small university though, only one bachelor degree and a few standalone courses.

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ILikeTraaaains@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
My university had groups for the afternoon, so if someone is working on the morning can still go to class.

I joined the afternoon group and it was fantastic, the classes were less crowded, easier to find a parking spot and no traffic jam when returning home.

The downside was that activities (extracurricular courses, sports clubs, etc) were on the afternoon.

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Toes@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
10am sounds like a dream. My school was open at 7am and went to 7pm.

Sometimes I would only have 3 classes in a day. One at 7am to 9am, then 12pm to 1pm and a class right at 5pm.

There was just enough gap that it didn’t make sense to commute home. That’s when I discovered an Ethernet port with unlimited bandwidth.

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LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Idk about the US but there are definitely both online and evening lectures schedules available at university. At my CompSci BSc it was more common to just not go and watch the lectures later.

Bear in mind our higher ed doesn’t have any “general” education classes, only ones related to the degree, and we don’t really have the same system of a wider selection of courses and it’s the name of the institution that matters, like it seems to be the case in the US, in the UK, if you have a degree, you have the degree, there’s no explicit difference between one at QMUL and UoW.

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thesohoriots@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
MA/PhD full time is all afternoon/evening classes, usually one day a week per class. I don’t think we ever started before 1pm, though it was typically closer to a 3-6pm/6-9pm schedule. The idea was we’d do our assistantships and teach the undergrad courses in the mornings (8-10ams) and have the world’s most inconvenient office hours in the space after that (between 11-2ish).

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Papergeist@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I go to university of houston. This coming semester I have classes starting at noon, 2pm, and 4pm

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AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
My older son managed to set his schedule last semester so the earliest class started at 11am

He’s a bit insane though - the previous semester I think he had only one afternoon class, so was done at lunch

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davidagain@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
When you reach middle age, you lose the ability to regularly sleep beyond 8am. Schedules are not written by young people.

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- CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I’m middle-aged and still a night owl just like when I was younger. I think this depends on the person.
  
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  - davidagain@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    You’re right of course, but rather than admit that, I want to claim that eventually your prostate, if you have one, will say no to sleeping through the morning.
    
    More seriously, I think late teenagers have a well-documented hormonal predisposition to staying up late and getting up late. It’s hard for them them to have to live to the typical middle aged schedule.
    
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