Saturday, June 5, 2010

Colleges hope to lure owls, offer midnight classes

All-night cram sessions and “after-hours” parties are nothing out of the ordinary in the average college town. Some universities are starting notice the night-owl habits of students and are scheduling classes late. And we’re not talking about traditional night classes. These schools are holding class at midnight.

The extremely late classes are to reach out to shift workers and keep up with an increase in enrollment and demand.

An article in this month’s issue of The Scientist profiles the midnight program at the College of Southern Nevada. The school’s main campus is in Las Vegas, which has among the top shift workers per capita in the U.S.

Classes offered include biology, math and appropriately, astronomy.

Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and Clackamas Community College in Oregon also offer midnight classes. Clackamas holds welding classes until 2 a.m.

This is all par for the course for college students who would be up anyway. A recent study found a majority of college students are poor sleepers. Only 30 percent of students reported sleeping at least eight hours per night.

No comments:

Post a Comment