Whoa! Did he just say what I thought he said?

As usual, we have preserved the recordings of the Regents meetings of Sept. 18-19, since the Regents have no fixed policy on duration of retention. But it takes yours truly some time to go through the recordings and summarize them.

But at the very first session of the full board, yours truly noted a verbal buried lede in the statement of Faculty Representative Steven Cheung which needs some airing.

Towards the end of his remarks, Cheung referenced a joint effort between the UC administration and the Academic Senate to convert the entire UC system back to semesters. That is a Big Deal!

Back in the 1960s, the campuses thought by converting from semesters to quarters, the incoming baby boomers could be accommodated through year-round operations with four equal quarters. Going from semesters to quarters, however, entailed revamping every course and every degree program. It was a massive effort. It was also an effort that failed, since it turned out that students really didn't want to go to school in the summer. So the campuses ended up with three quarters and a summer session. In some sense, efficiency degraded since instead of one intersession, there now two. 

Despite the Great Mistake, nobody was anxious to undergo the pain and suffering to reconvert back to semesters which - again - involves revamping every course and every degree program. Only Berkeley did it. And Merced, since it was started well after the Great Mistake, began on semesters.

So, are all the other campuses now going to be directed to make the conversion back to semesters?

That sure seems to be what the man said:

Or direct to https://ia600102.us.archive.org/27/items/9-18-2024-board-academic-and-student-affairs-committee/Reference%20to%20UC-wide%20semester%20system%209-18-2024.mp4.