Summer School provides expedited track for students
Liberty University will be offering an assortment of classes in a number of departments with its residential Summer School program, which is designed to help students save money and graduate on time or early by getting through their program quicker.
Director of the Liberty Summer School Programs Kenny Rowlette said that summer school is an important and valuable option to students for a number of reasons.
The reduced price of $310 per credit hour allows students to save on loans and decrease their overall education expenses, according to Rowlette.
“Liberty is offering a program in which students can speed up their education and enter the job market, while also keeping the overall cost down as much as possible,” Rowlette said.
The tuition rate for undergraduate Summer School classes is $310 per credit hour, in comparison to the tuition cost of $8,903 that residential students pay for a semester with 12 to 18 credit hours. Students who attend part-time during the fall or spring semester have to pay $594 per credit hour, according to the Liberty financial aid website.
Total student loan debt is approaching $1 trillion in the United States and is projected to surpass that amount by the end of 2011, according to ConsumerReports.org.
“Getting into the job market, even if is not the job you ultimately desire, is critical today,” Rowlette said. “So this idea of stretching out your college education into five or six years just doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
Students who stay in school for extra semesters generally lose not only the money for tuition, housing and other expenses at college, but they also “lose” money that could have been earned if they were in the job market and employed full-time, according to Rowlette.
“Many students take longer than two years to earn an associate degree or longer than four years to earn a bachelor’s degree,” a 2010 report by the College Board states. “More time out of the labor force increases the amount of time required to compensate for lost earnings.”
Another benefit of Summer School is that it allows students the opportunity to take a fast-track approach to graduation, according to Rowlette.
“In today’s paradigm, most college students take five years to finish college or university,” Rowlette said. “What Summer School allows people to do is to speed up that process.”
For student-athletes, or any student who is busy with extracurricular activities, Summer School allows them to adjust and fine-tune their schedules during the school year. People will sometimes find that taking a number of credit hours during the summer allows them to take a lighter course load in the spring or fall, Rowlette said.
There will be two four-week sessions of summer school that include May 14 through June 8 and June 11 through July 6 and one three-week session from July 9 through July 27. Rowlette said that the three- or four-week model is set up so that students meet Monday through Thursday and have Friday off for homework, research, their jobs or whatever they would like. The majority of the courses will be offered as these lengthier course modules, although one-week summer intensives are still offered, according to Rowlette.
Generally, the four-week classes are two and a half hours a day, allowing students to also work or to take more than one class. However, Rowlette said that students are not recommended to take more than two classes in a four week time period because of the intensified schedule.
The courses offered at this time are multiple programs ranging from accounting, to criminal justice, biblical studies, theology, and more.
“What we want students to do is to look at these offerings and do one of two things,” Rowlette said. “We want people to start planning right now, long before they get into the second semester. Also, if we see that a certain course is not being offered, but we have enough people who are interested in it, we can try to offer that course.”
Liberty will also be offering courses for incoming freshman through the Summer School program and Rowlette said that Liberty will be making high schools aware of these classes.
Students enrolled in the Summer School program will have the option of staying on campus in the residence halls if they so desire. Announcements about housing for Summer School will be made at the beginning of the second semester, according to Rowlette.
There are two forms of registration. Online registration will begin Monday, Jan. 30. Once the online registration closes, tentatively May 1, students will still be able to go register in-person at the Registrar’s Office. More announcements will be made as the details are finalized for the Summer School program.
For more information, contact Dr. Kenny Rowlette at kgrowlet@liberty.edu.