The United States of Semesters: Reexamining the Quarter versus Semester Debate in Higher Education Systems

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Semester, quarter, session, term. While all these words are often used interchangeably to describe the academic calendar in the United States, they have, in fact, been at the center of the higher education battle in America. In 1891, the President of the University of Chicago, William Rainey Harper, in an effort to keep the university operating year-round, divided the long two-term semesters into four shorter terms— which he coined as “quarters.” This is generally believed to be the progenitor of the quarterly system, which spread rapidly throughout the country in the following decades, becoming widely imitated at institutions in every state. Little did President Harper know that the post-World War II “Baby Boom” would only increase the need for year-round postsecondary opportunities, and by 1966, the University of California and several other higher education systems would embrace the shift to quarters. However, by the 1980s, states saw a “semester tsunami” as a return to the traditional academic calendar became nearly universal.