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BY JACQUELINE SMALL

In print | Published September 9, 2010 — Updated September 10, 2010 07:03

Like many of Swarthmore’s unique features, the definition of a credit hour has always differed from that of other colleges. Yet that may be forced to change if the new 525-page document about new rules and regulations by the Department of Education is passed. The document, which is to be finalized at the end of this year, seeks to curb fraud and abuse of financial aid in colleges.

President Rebecca Chopp was one of several college presidents who spoke out against that particular measure in the document, which tried to define a credit hour. In the past, universities and colleges have used their own standards to determine what amounts to a credit. The document further proposes that federally sponsored financial aid should be linked to the number of hours a student takes.

Because the amount of work done in an average class varies so widely from institution to institution, Chopp is opposed to a federally standardized credit hour. “I really think faculty need to be able to define what counts as a credit hour because what [one] is here and what [one] is somewhere else can be completely different … Each and every school has to have the responsibility and the right … to look at transcripts and say what counts as a credit hour there,” Chopp said.

The document states, “A credit hour is a unit of measure that gives value to the level of instruction, academic rigor, and time requirements for a course taken at an educational institution. At its most basic, a credit hour is a proxy measure of a quantity of student learning.” It also explains that they exist in order to gauge the workloads of professors and the costs of the education, and to compare the rigor of different schools.

Essentially, the credit hour as defined by the document is a “Carnegie unit,” named after the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. One Carnegie unit corresponds to one hour of classroom instruction and two hours of student work outside of the classroom. In contrast, one credit hour at Swarthmore corresponds to four hours at other schools on the semester system.

Chopp believes that this attitude interferes with non-traditional methods of instruction because it can be difficult to quantify the number of hours spent, for example, on an internship or doing fieldwork. Though Swarthmore usually does not give credit for internships and outside research, the president thinks other colleges should be able to. “The boundaries of the traditional classroom are changing,” she said. Chopp added that this is a “peculiarly bad time” for these measures because of the current economy.

While Swarthmore students do not have to take out loans as part of their college financial aid packages, about 19% of families, both aided and unaided, choose to do so. The scholarships for the 50% of Swarthmore students who are on financial aid come from the college’s endowment.

Because of this, the president said, though it is important to ensure that students at other colleges who need loans are able to get them, these measures will most likely not affect many Swarthmore families.

Laura Talbot, the director of financial aid, was concerned about the role the government will play in the decision-making processes of individual colleges.

“The credit hour piece of the new law is not about an individual student’s access to federal student financial aid funds but instead is about an institution’s eligibility to participate in federal aid programs. At present, the College assesses the value of our students’ workload, but the new credit hour assessment might allow external agencies — the US Department of Education or similar state agency — to make those judgments,” she said in an e-mail.

She added that because the regulations are still being developed, it is unclear how much of a role the college would be able to play in those decisions.

Chopp emphasized that she is not opposed to the government’s efforts in general. “My letter was really both positive and critical, and I affirmed their attempt to deal with the very complicated issues surrounding loans. It’s an area where there truly has been a lot of fraud and misuse.

Benjamin Hattem ’12, the financial representative of Student Council, was also optimistic about the changes, and said that he read about the regulations on his own because of his interest in for-profit institutions.

“I think the proliferation of for-profit colleges, which have a history of engaging in fraudulent practices to get federal funding and often vastly overcharge students for degrees that won’t necessarily help them to make the money back, is another example of free-market principles running roughshod over people. .. . Rules targeted at controlling these schools are a good thing in my book,” he said in an e-mail.

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