Talk:Academic term

Political bias in combining China and Taiwan
There seems to be political bias in combining China and Taiwan's education system in such a sloppy way. Despite the reference and link, China's education system doesn't answer to Taiwan's Ministry of Education nor is Taiwan's education system answerable to China. The non-lunar holidays are also different; the Fall semesters in Taiwan actually often start at the end of August rather than in early September. Taiwan's Labor Day is not in April like in China, but on May 1st. No Chinese students take Double Ten day off. Taiwanese students certainly do not celebrate the National Day of China nor do they get that week off, they get the next week. There's more. Shouldn't this be fixed? --61.230.139.228 (talk) 22:58, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Illogical info
Inconsistency between the info at Rochester Institute of Technology where under 'Academics' quarter system is indicated. Following the link we get to United states where under 'Collegiate calendars' the following is stated: 'The trimester system evolved out of the semester system. It divides the academic year into three equal portions of 10–11 weeks each. Institutions that use the trimester system include the University of Michigan, Lawrence University, Carleton College and the Rochester Institute of Technology.' --William Denali (talk) 13:17, 9 September 2008 (UTC)William Denali

I am removing the "University of Michigan" from this list, since its calendar is not a trimester system. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.202.2.98 (talk) 13:37, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

"Thailand There are two semesters in Thai academic year with an optional summer semester. From kindergarten to high school the first semester opens from mid May and continues until the end of September. The second semester lasts from November until end of February (or early March). The university academic year is slightly different, lasting from June to October and mid November to mid March"

Doing my calculations there is no way such definitions of academical terms allow for any kind of optional seasonal semester, let alone an optional summer semester as those dates override both Thailand's winter and Thailand's Summer... And Spring and Autumn. Therefore this information must be inacurate somehow and a specific definition for the optional summer term must be given. (There is just a two-month space between 2nd and 1st semester, and a one-month space between 1st and 2nd semester)--GTB 15:56, 7th September 2005

Merger of Academic year with this article
I merged Academic term and Academic year, per the request for merge 'tag' on the article. It's a bit awkward where it is sitting at the moment. It might look better further down the page. I'm curious whether its good practice to use a redirect to point to a subsection. If that was the case the redirect from Academic year could point straight to the subsection Academic year. --Randolph 21:28, 2 May 2005 (UTC) - It has been suggested to merge Year-Round School with Academic year. This would be extremely inappropriate as year-round school is the rearranging of existing components of the academic year, not the definition of them. WesWalker 03:32, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Semesters and quarters
I'm not really clear on what is being discussed in this article. Are we talking about colleges and universities only (i.e. post-secondary institutions), or do elementary and secondary schools count? In my personal experience, most public elementray schools in the U.S. have two semesters, each divided into two quarters (which are quite different from the post-secondary quarters which are really a third of the regular school year). Is this some peculiarity of my state, or am I misunderstanding the article, or is it just incomplete? -Aranel (" Sarah ") 21:13, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm confused by the paragraph on conversion, which is presently as follows:

"Thus, academic credit earned in quarter hours converts to semester hours at 2/3 of its value, while credit earned in semester hours converts to quarter hours at 3/2 of its value. Or, to put it another way, 3 quarter hours = 2 semester hours, and 2 semester hours = 3 quarter hours."

The latter clause of the second sentence is repeating the former clause, only switched about, so to speak. Is it correct, or is it a typing error? I think it could do with rephrasing, so that it's clearer.SilverDratini (talk) 23:23, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

A Question
I am looking for information on a specific topic--if this is the right article for it to be in, I hope someone could edit it to include the information I'm looking for. If not, I hope they could direct me to the appropriate article. I would like to know if there is a general standard by which colleges and universities decide how far into a semester they will allow students to drop a class. My local college has a 15 week semester. During the first week, classes can be dropped without either academic or financial penalty. Thereafter, classes can be dropped for an additional nine weeks, but with both an academic penalty (i.e., one's records show that the student withdrew from the class) and a financial penalty (i.e. one must still pay for the credit hours even though those credit hours will not be received). After ten weeks, the student is bound to remain in the class, even if he is failing. Is this typical for most colleges or not? And on a similar note, I have heard that in Japan, if one does not show up for the final exam, he is considered to have dropped the class--thus, no one ever fails a university course in Japan. Is this true? --GnatsFriend


 * In the US, each college and university has almost complete freedom to do whatever it likes, resulting in a huge variety of practices. At some colleges, you can even choose which courses will appear on your transcript, as long as the ones that remain give you enough credits.  I don't know the situation in Japan, but in much of Europe, the notion is that the only purpose of coursework is to prepare you for the exam: the exam is the entire grade.  Practices vary by country.  I would guess there are countries where you can take the exam as many times as you want, and not even have to register in advance. But I'm afraid that won't convince anyone at your college to change its practices (unless of course there are legal or regulatory issues). --Macrakis 14:34, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Corrected etymology
I assume the words semester and trimester were mistaken for divisions of a year, but -mester refers to a length of time equal to a month, and tri- and se- are multipliers, not divisors (e.g. tricycle--three wheels).

Etymology etc
This is a tricky page to edit, due to sometimes arcane terminology, and widely differing practice, with most individuals being aware only of one system. I've tidied up the introduction which had some statements which while true in certain places, are not true generally; I've indicated the etymology of semester and trimester, which so often confuse; and I've added a history section, originally to clarify etymology, but in the end just for interest's sake! – CDV 12:42, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Updates
This page should not be merged with Year-round_school. Year-round education is more than just an academic-term - it is an entire schema set up to increase student-throughput and appropriate funding in areas of rapid growth. I will make some major contributions to this article, including grabbing a snapshot of the Warning - School Pedestrians - Year Round Operations from a local elementary school up the road. I will also put in some explanations of the 'big-picture' of year-round education, from a demographics and funding standpoint. In the mean-time, you can see Green Hope High School (Funding section) for some information on North Carolina's educational situation. 24.211.161.77 02:40, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Technical meaning
From the original Latin, I believe, the word "semester" actually means six months. Any info on that?

-Since six months is half a year, then half of a school year is a semester.

Germany
There are some wrong facts about holydays in Germany: In some states Christmas Break ends on 1st, 2nd or 3rd January. In states with snowy winters the Winter Break lasts 2 weeks. (e.g. Bavaria, Saxonia) The Whitsun Break is maximum 4 or 5 days in all states. And also Universities have holydays... --89.51.123.244 14:19, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Is that really on a provincial basis? In most places, individual universities basically decide the exact dates when their terms and breaks start and end. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 07:00, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Bangladesh
I have added Bangladeshi University in this article. There is a list that counts number of semester along with their names at each university. Please Wikipedians from respective universities update this list accordingly. Niaz bd 04:28, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

More geographic representation?
Of twenty countries on the list, there is not a single one in Africa, South/Central America or the Middle East, except for Israel. I'm going to post in a few of the respective Education in... talkpages to increase the representation. If anyone knows anything about those regions, please add! samwaltz 22:22, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

UK years poorly defined
We've currently got a mix of years being defined as "start of first term to end of last term" and "calendar period for determining year of entry". The latter is the full school year - the summer holidays are relevant as the exact date determines when a pupil with a birthday in those holidays enters a year. Is anyone able to put the precise changeover for Scotland & Northern Ireland in? Timrollpickering 22:15, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

A UK school year does not end on 31st of August and never has (for the last 27 years at least). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.42.113.82 (talk) 16:00, 1 September 2007 (UTC)


 * So when does it? Every school I attended had September 1st as the start of the full year, with entry determined by one's age on that date. Timrollpickering 17:40, 2 September 2007 (UTC)


 * The English and Welsh school year has officially ended on August 31st for the last sixty years to my personal knowledge, and I think, for some time before that. Scotland might have a slightly different end date.  Does anyone know?     D b f i r s   16:32, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Northwestern NOT on trimester system
Northwestern University's terms fall under the definition of the quarter system as defined in this article, NOT the trimester system. Northwestern University students call the terms "quarters" as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.74.80.209 (talk) 23:25, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Quarter and trimester are different names for the same system. --Spoon! (talk) 11:47, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It depends on whether what comes out of it are semester or quarter units. NU uses a very odd system. 45 units to graduate (each course is a one unit course). http://www.wcas.northwestern.edu/advising/degree/quarters/index.html The other way you tell is through looking at the calculus sequence. They use the traditional quarter breakdown in the calculus sequence (differential, integral, multivariable) vs. a semester breakdown in the sequence. Thus, NU is a quarter school. Calwatch (talk) 22:03, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I attended NU as a graduate student (in linguistics, incidentally!). It's definitely on a 'quarter' system. The word 'quarter' is even plastered all over the school's website, explaining this. If you entered into a legal dispute with the university, I guarantee that 'quarter' would be the term used in the proceedings and documentation. Just as importantly, as Calwatch explained, quarter units/'credits' appear on Northwestern students' transcripts, not trimester units. 2600:4040:4545:1500:1C67:7257:1897:324A (talk) 15:28, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * A trimester ('three months') and a quarter of a year are the same, as pointed out above. Robminchin (talk) 15:45, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Although it seems that the federal government defines trimesters as the same as semesters. Which makes no sense etymologically, but there we are. Robminchin (talk) 20:08, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Origin of the common western academic year
The text removed appears verbatim @. It's not the copyright issue though that prompted the removal but the plausibility. True some individuals attending university in the middle ages might have been called on by their families to participate in agricultural activities, howeve r this is likely to be by far the exception. It simply ignores the reality that university has only become accessible to people who could be farm labor (other than as estate owners or managers) in modern times. Also: autumn actually with harvest would be the time requiring more labor. It is almost certainly correct that the academic year merely reflects the common European social year as observed by the upper classes which began in the fall, ended in the spring and was/is punctuated by the summer season. 74.78.162.229 (talk) 05:26, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

United States turned into United States of America
I'm just letting everyone know that I changed the title of United States to United States of America.

Thanks

Crazyla112 (talk) 23:40, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
 * You should probably discuss that on the Talk Page for the Article on the United States of America, not here. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 06:57, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Please answer this question
Which country has the longest school year in the world? A) Japan, B) Russia, C) China, D) Germany —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.93.13.209 (talk) 04:37, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

please give me the information about the semester system i mp —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.196.209.42 (talk) 15:09, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Canada
In Nova Scotia, teachers are contracted for 195 days (vs. 190 days) of teaching (elementary, junior high and high school). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.222.159.11 (talk) 22:24, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Weeks of classes per term (before end-of-term exams) in at least some universities is less than the 14 weeks noted. I think many have 13. Queen's University in Kingston has only 12 (2016 Sept. 12-Dec. 2, 2017 Jan. 9-Feb. 17(then reading week then)Feb. 27-April 7). Detailaware (talk) 16:12, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Why do universities understand trimester as a third of the year?
I am aware that universities use the term trimester to describe a third of their academic year, i.e. four months. However, the word trimester derived from latin litarally means THREE months (tri-mestris). I have never really understood why they use it in a way which seems not to be in line with its latin meaning (supposing that an acadmic either knows latin language or would at least do some study before using such a term). If anyone has an explanation or has time and fun to do some research on it, it would be worth adding to this article. Anyway, it might be worth to add a note, to at least made people stop thinking that trimester genericly means 1/3 year. By the way, the same is true for semester: due to the similarity of the first syllables to latin "semi" (=half), it is understood as meaning half a year, although it litarally means six months (se-mestris). While in this latter case the effect is less important due to the time span being the same, it seems to be one of the reasons which leads people to the wrong conclusion trimester would mean 1/3 of a year. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.166.107.221 (talk) 16:11, 3 October 2010 (UTC)


 * It's possibly tied to summer vacations when they were three months long and thus constituted a fourth trimester that hardly anyone noticed. I guess the main reason is that these days knowledge of Latin has declined to a very small proportion of the university educated class. In general many words originally from other languages see their meaning alter, particularly if they're used by people who aren't familiar with the original language who don't feel the need to conform to the original usage. And then once they get into the every day usage they become too familiar to research first before using. Timrollpickering (talk) 21:18, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
 * No, month is mensis (pl. menses). Mestris is not a latin word. Metris are meters. There is also mensura, measure. Means "three measures/distributions" or "three months", you choose. Costin.b.1 (talk) 07:13, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Suggest revision to general length of terms
I have worked with or attended quite a number of colleges. I have had semesters as short as 14 weeks, and trimesters typically 10 weeks. The ranges given at the beginning do not make any sense to me from what I have seen. Paulukon (talk) 16:28, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, they are too specific. I'll make some alterations.    D b f i r s   17:04, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Continental Europe difference
In some part or whole europe, the meaning of the term is as in latin and according to mathematical means of the numbers:


 * semester = 6 months
 * quadmester = 4 months
 * trimester = 3 months
 * bimester = 2 months
 * and a quarter year is 1/4 of a year. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.5.115.141 (talk) 14:44, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

US - graduation

 * In the US section, there is the sentence " The school year ends 42 instructional weeks after it begins." This is less than fully useful.  There are vacation days between the beginning and the end of the school year, so I can't simply add 42 calendar weeks to a start date to get an approximate end-of-school-year date.  The end of the school year is as basic as the start.  Could someone in the know please put this info in.  I've been searching a while on Wik for this simple, basic information, and have yet to find it.  Wik should provide answers; not be a puzzle to solve.211.225.33.104 (talk) 02:47, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
 * From what I have seen of old school records here in England, I get the impression that originally schoolchildren were worked all throught the year except for a few religious holy days (from which the word "holiday"), but when towns were much smaller and much more people lived in the country, there was no hope of keeping the children in school through haymaking and harvest, and the schools gave up the fight and let them have the 6 weeks off. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 05:20, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Quadrimester
Would this this or this be sufficient sources for the existence and length of quadrimesters? If not, I don't think we're likely to come up with anything better. Quadrimester returns only 5490 Google hits, and most of them are in Dutch. Charlotte Aryanne (talk) 18:26, 7 February 2015 (UTC)


 * We can find a few more sources for quadrimester than for quadmester, but they are divided in meaning. Some use the word as a synonym for "quarter".  I suggest that we remove the common etymological error at the beginning of the article, or alter it to give both meanings.    D b f i r s   20:09, 7 February 2015 (UTC)


 * On second thoughts, since the word does not appear in any English dictionary, we should relegate it to no more than a very brief mention in the article. I'll try doing that and see if anyone wants to defend it.    D b f i r s   20:54, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

U.S.
"The traditional start date for the school year has been the first Tuesday in September (the day after Labor Day). " This is not accurate. In a year where September 1 fell on a Tuesday, school would start on the eight, which is the second Tuesday of the month, the day after Labor Day. Kdammers (talk) 06:14, 24 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Should it be "the Tuesday following the first Monday in September"? I'll make the alteration.    D b f i r s   16:36, 24 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, that's what it should be (though I don't have a citation for it).

Change to the article
I decided to change "lasts" to "last" in the section pertaining to South Africa because that section has the plural "holidays" instead of the singular "holiday" and, as you know, plural nouns take a singular verb (in this case "holidays last"), right? --Fandelasketchup (talk) 10:43, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Augustana College (US)
I removed two references to this college - it was listed as being both a 4-1-4 school and a trimester school, so if someone adds Augustana back, please choose which system it currently follows and add a citation. Thank you. 66.115.217.67 (talk) 15:09, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

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American lead
The lead to this article seems completely foreign here in the UK. Is it even true in the USA? Should the lead not summarise the whole article, rather than discuss American words in a very confusing way?  D b f i r s   08:25, 20 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I agree. Most of that content (and it's repetition under "terminology") should be merged into the US section. Robminchin (talk) 15:20, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

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Snow Days in the US
The text "but snow storms and other forms of severe weather normally do not extend the school year because they cannot be prevented" is incorrect. Many K-12 schools in the Northeast include approximately 5 extra "snow days" in the calendar due to the likelihood of cancelations. If school is cancelled due to snow on more than 5 days, school often continues past the planned final day. See the last paragraph in the North America section on Weather-related cancellation for citations. --174.63.82.246 (talk) 22:57, 4 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I've moved your comment to the end, where new comments normally go, and where other editors are more likely to see it. I agree that the text needs adjusting.  I've added a sentence, but it could probably be improved, and needs a reference.   Dbfirs  23:25, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps we should introduce term 'elementary school' in U.S. section?
This suggestion occurred to me after I read the following sentence: "Additionally, there may be days set aside for parent–teacher conferences on student progress, especially in primary school." I heard the sentence in my head in RP English, due to the jarring choice of 'primary school,' the British English term for 'elementary school.'

I realize that "primary school" isn't a completely unknown term in the United States, but it's not the technical one for the lower grades (or schools offering them) and would never be used in ordinary speech for either of these things. "Elementary school" or (in some regions, in ordinary speech) "grade school" (or "K-12" in certain contexts) would always be used instead. It would take a trivial amount of extra space to introduce the term "elementary school" in the U.S. section (just to avoid giving the false impression that 'primary school' *is* the one used, if for no other reason). (And the applicable terminology could and should be introduced in the other nations' sections, as well, if this were done.) You: . There! Took care of that for you. :) (Just kidding. I love you guys, even if the feeling's not reciprocated. :))


 * In general, Wikipedia policy is to stick to a single variety of English in an article, but it seems to me that it wouldn't hurt to point out what the term used in a particular variety is in the relevant sub-section. Robminchin (talk) 15:41, 23 August 2023 (UTC)