Students have raised concerns regarding the college regulation only permitting students to take four classes per semester, with only two overloads permitted in total.

Catherine Martin ’20 said “I feel like students should be able to take as many courses as we want. We pay a lot of money to be able to attend such an amazing colleges, but we are not able to have the fullest experiences because we are limited to only having two overloads.”

The college’s policy on the number of classes students may take is, according to Provost Neil Weissman, that students can enroll in four and a half courses per semester. He also noted that while students may overload twice during their Dickinson College career, taking five classes in a semester. Students wishing to overload more than twice are required to “petition the Academic Standards Committee for permission.”

Tara Fischer, the dean of academic advising, says that the number of students who overload on campus are not alarmingly high. “The way that Dickinson’s curriculum is set up, you can easily get to the 32 credits. Most of the students that try to overload are doing things that are creative and/or trying to fit in a lot of things.” 32 credits is the number required for graduation.

Weissman also mentions that Dickinson doesn’t use a large credit system like most universities. “Most big universities tend to do five (classes), and we won’t say that a course is worth three hours. We’ll say that it’s worth one course.”

“The answer is that we, and most liberal arts colleges, do four and we’re not unusual in that regard,” Weissman explained, “we think that students can get more out of the class when they’re doing four and faculty can give bigger assignments and more complex work when they know students have the time to do it.”

“From my work with Dickinson students and students that are coming in new, I think it’s a very reasonable course load,” explained Fischer, “there are some colleges and universities that have more, but from a rigor perspective it is absolutely on par in terms of rigor. So, our numbers may differ, but rigor has definitely in a good spot.” 

However, there has been discussion of a fifth course. “It used to be the case roughly twenty years ago that thirty-four courses were required for graduation,” Weissman says. “This meant for most students, twice you would be taking five (classes). It seemed illogical to many, including me. So, the faculty changed that.”

However, some students expressed support for the policy, while others were apathetic. Alice Reichfeld ’21 said “I think only being allowed to take four classes is helpful because it allows me to produce better quality work, instead of producing more work that I could not spend as much time on,” Jiberly Sandoval ’22 said “I’m not sure if I would rather have 5-6 classes though because I don’t think I personally would be able to fully engage in each class, like some classes would get more attention from me than others, as opposed to four classes that are easier to manage.”

Max Judd ’22 explained that  he has “a lot of interests that I could explore further, but I feel slightly pigenholed into certain classes to fit my major.”