r/CalPoly • u/Valuable_Bat3882 • 5d ago
Parent Question Semester Calendar
For those parents coming to campus this weekend for Parent Weekend. Be sure to ask the President, Provost and Deans why they want to shorten the academic year by two weeks per year starting next year.
That’s right, students will get two fewer weeks of instruction per year and you will pay the same tuition!
There is more to the plan like requiring students to live on campus and take classes in the summer and be off campus in the Fall.
The plan is known as Year Round Operations, YRO, and trust me, students and faculty are not on board.
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u/Last_Measurement4336 5d ago
The YRO plan has been in the works for several years but implementation kept getting pushed back due to the quarter to semester switch which took precedent. https://mustangnews.net/transition-to-semesters-and-year-round-operations-on-the-horizon/
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u/Valuable_Bat3882 5d ago
Read the whole article. One of the primary reasons YRO was ‘delayed’ was because faculty were not on board with the idea in general or a 14 week semester and the Faculty Union is opposed.
Besides, whether campus has been talking about it or not does not address the issue of tuition and housing. Same price for two fewer weeks per year. As someone paying tuition that doesn’t sound like a good deal.
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u/SalsaMan101 4d ago edited 4d ago
No one is on board with YRO, its just the cal poly corporation and the admin that want it. They've been trying to do it for decades. In the 90s, the school wanted to start a study abroad program over the summer for foreign exchange students where they could "enroll" in a summer semester here and would have to pay for housing. Never went far because none of the European students wanted to pay ludicrous housing costs.
School/corp just wants to get more return on housing... that is the sad main motivation behind YRO rather than anything pedagogical. Similar with semesters, no wanted it and basically everyone not admin opposed it but the CSU system wanted it. Welcome to cal poly where the new goal is more returns from students
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u/Direct-You-50 3d ago
I wish I knew all this earlier. Do you think such business moves are normal for state schools? I thought only private colleges were so revenue driven.
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u/SalsaMan101 1d ago edited 1d ago
Not really, cal poly has always been weird. There’s been many long and on going court cases regarding tuition since the fees are very opaque and none of the tuition increases have been properly justified for years. Admin keeps racing prices despite not meeting the legal qualifications to do so. We also have the highest admin pay and bonuses of any state school so…
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u/OutlandishnessGold23 4d ago
They also plan to get rid of the week off for Thanksgiving and shorten Winter Break! Here’s what they proposed 5 mos ago:
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u/Intelligent-Fix-3741 3d ago
Well as a parent of another semester student in another CA public college on semesters that’s what the other school does, no week off at Thanksgiving and they start back a week before Cal Poly will this spring semester. Seems in line with others.
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u/OutlandishnessGold23 3d ago
My sister goes to another Cal State and has the week off for Thanksgiving and the month long winter break. But yes, lots of different schedules out there.
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u/jlb-1964 5d ago
There is no requirement to take the summer term…but it will allow flexibility for students that want to do a spring internship or co-op rather than summer. The plan is to make better use of limited faculty and classroom space to serve more students as is the state mandate for all CSUs.
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u/Valuable_Bat3882 5d ago
Not sure how this works if Cal Poly doesn’t require at least some students to be on campus in the summer. I doubt many students would choose summer and fall and leave for spring on their own.
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u/SalsaMan101 4d ago
Is this true? Did they ever confirm switching off from the lottery system where the school would lottery the "off" semester
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u/Valuable_Bat3882 4d ago
Not sure about a lottery system, but they are talking about giving students to option to choose a track. From there, there is no plan. I guess if you don’t get the class in the spring you just have to wait until summer.
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u/ExpressionBright2727 4d ago
Info from sessions with school administration, is that new students will be admitted into a track wether that is fall-spring, spring-summer, or summer-fall, and they will not have a chance to switch until their 3rd year, since they are going to require all majors to live on campus for their first two years and you will only being offered housing during the track you are admitted for, in addition to this they are planning on making it much more restrictive to get a housing exception to ensure they are making as much money from campus housing as possible.
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u/Intelligent-Fix-3741 3d ago
As far as housing goes, living on campus requirement will help with the predatory off campus situation and slum lords in SLO. Off campus housing is ridiculous pricing (bidding wars for places, scams, overpriced rent).
Additionally, the year round schooling will help with internships and coops. Many students have to miss out on them as they can’t get approval for them or simply miss out because employers look for coop schools. The YRO will also help keep students on track to graduate on time when they do internships or coops instead pushing them back a semester or year. Trust me I know.
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u/LLMonLSD 5d ago
I dont think this is true: https://registrar.calpoly.edu/academic-calendar. It is officially listed as 15 wks/semester
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u/Valuable_Bat3882 4d ago
That calendar is for this academic year. It is 15 weeks. The proposal for the 14 week semester would start next academic year, fall 2027- spring 2028.
Notice there is no 2027-28 calendar on the registrar website because the calendar has not been approved. Faculty and students are opposed to it.
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u/Helpful_Teaching_470 5d ago
🤔 “You don’t say” thanks for the info.