Almost no college students want to take summer classes. Many students dread the mere possibility of having to take them. More often than not, summer classes are not enrolled in purely out of interest. Students do not want to sacrifice their free time in pursuit of knowledge. Rather, summer classes are done to graduate on time or to make up for a failed course. That being said, it is obvious that not as many classes will be offered during this term as there would be during fall or spring — mainly because not as many students are taking classes. However, Berry should increase the number of classes it offers in the summer, especially considering that some students have to take summer courses to graduate on time.

Many Berry students are double majors, some even triple. Others have one major with multiple minors. Some combine multiple majors with multiple minors, and another group of students also add the Honors Program. All of these requirements leave very little room for error in order to graduate on time. Some of these combinations make it quite impossible to graduate in the standard four years without taking as many classes as possible during the fall and spring semesters and adding summer courses on top of it. 

Not having the necessary classes during the summer may result in some students becoming fifth year seniors, a prospect most students try to avoid at all costs. No student wants to have to figure out paying for a whole extra semester or year simply because they are trying to get the most out of college, and the college did not offer enough summer classes. This is especially true considering that most scholarships expire after four years, leaving the student to fend for themselves when it comes to paying the extraordinary costs that come with college.

This semester, Berry is offering a total of 939 courses, a fair amount, though certain departments could still stand to have some more. This summer, however, only 86 courses are being offered. Now, the summer will naturally have fewer courses, as previously noted. However, this difference is drastic, and this number is smaller than last summer. In summer of 2022, a total of 173 courses were offered, more than double the amount for this upcoming summer. 

Certain factors impact the amount of courses offered over the summer. For example, professors need to be willing to teach over the summer. Those that are willing to may only be okay with teaching one class rather than multiple. Understandably, not all professors will agree to teach at all, let alone to teach multiple classes. However, something needs to be done to make more summer courses available. Having an already small number of course offerings cut in half is not acceptable, especially for a school that pushes students to excel academically.

One of the main problems with the course offerings over summers, especially this summer, is the lack of major-specific courses. These courses are great for filling foundations depending on what foundations a student needs. However, once foundations are complete, the summer term really is not that helpful for most majors. While psychology, marketing and biology have courses that fulfill major requirements as opposed to only the low-level courses that non-major students use for foundations, most other majors do not. 

The English department, for example, only offers ENG 201 classes during the summer. This course is designed to be a foundations course. While English majors can take it, it only fills an elective for them, and the course is already offered frequently during a standard semester. This semester, for instance, it is being offered at seven different times, and this summer it is being offered in another four sections. A course that is already offered so much during fall and spring should not be the only course offered for English during the summer. If the school wishes to offer it during the summer, replace some of the seven sections during the fall semester with a couple more upper-level English courses so that majors are not struggling to get courses required for their major. Or offer even one upper-level course over the summer.

After foundation courses, summer terms do not provide much of an advantage to most majors. Berry should be increasing, not decreasing, the number of summer courses they offer.