Colleges try 4-day week to help save gas
By Mary Beth Marklein Marklein
USA Today
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As gas prices continue to climb, a growing number of community colleges are giving commuter students a 20 percent break on their fuel tab: They're dropping one day of classes to save students a trip to campus.
The push to drop a day, usually Fridays, is rippling primarily through two-year colleges serving rural areas, where many students drive long distances and public transportation is harder to come by.
Services such as the library and tutoring usually continue on a normal schedule, but class periods are longer and held over fewer days.
Last week, the chancellor of Alabama's two-year college system urged its member institutions to adopt a four-day schedule because of high gas prices.
Among colleges that have dropped a day:
The four-day schedule is not new: Indian Hills Community College in Ottumwa, Iowa, has had one since the 1970s. But the idea is spreading.
"With gas prices pushing $4 a gallon, I look for urban community colleges to move toward a four-day work week as well," says Steve Katsinas, a University of Alabama professor who specializes in two-year colleges.
Meridian Community College President Scott Elliott says his students, who on average drive 30 miles round-trip to campus, could save $200 or more a semester based on recent pump prices. "When you're ... working a minimum-wage job and (taking) care of a child or two, that could be a lot of money," he says.
Only about a quarter of the nation's 1,200 community colleges offer on-campus housing to the 6.5 million undergraduates who attend two-year schools.
Terry Calhoun, spokesman for the nonprofit Society for College and University Planning, says he doubts the trend will expand to colleges where most students live on or near campus. Yet rising gas prices may affect behavior at such schools.
More University of California, Riverside students are using mass transit and vanpool programs "simply because gasoline has gotten so expensive," says Mike Delo, director of transportation and parking services.
This fall, 96 of the 300 incoming freshmen at Ripon College in Ripon, Wis., will get a new mountain bike from the school if they don't drive their cars. One goal is to reduce the campus' carbon footprint, says spokesman Cody Pinkston. "Now that gas prices are in the stratosphere, though, there is an even stronger case for leaving the car at home."
