🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1992Sep25.083235.9284@athena.mit.edu>
solman@athena.mit.edu (Jason W Solinsky) writes

>How will people in Year round schooling acquire research experience. If you
>can't take off the summer and go to another part of the country to do research,
>how can superior students learn anything if the schools don't give them anything
>back, but require year-round attendance. Is the year set up so that you can just
>take off during the summer without having any problems when you get back?

>Jason W. Solinsky

Well, if you are at a reasonably good school, you have faculty who conduct 
their own research, in whose laboratories you can work, so travelling to do 
research elsewise is pointless.  Indeed, if you have a senior thesis/project 
requirement, travelling elsewhere is probably a mistake, because it gives you 
two short projects, instead of one integrated large project.  Certainly, at my 
own institution (WPI) in my own department (Physics) a reasonable number of our 
own students (excellent, good, and not-so-good) are able to do this.  A 
substantial number of schools do have NSF REU support, which provides stipends 
so that students from other institutions can visit for the summer, do research, 
and receive a stipend.  

If an academic institution went to a full-year schedule, it would presumably be
possible to for students to take off semesters, just as students at many 
liberal arts schools take semester vacations (ummh, semester study programs) in 
Europe.  In the real world, all year engineering/science study at the college 
level is impossible, at least for students from the social class backgrounds 
that figure so heavily in engineering school enrollments, because no summer off 
=> no summer job => no ability to pay tuition in the fall.

A more serious question is whether it is better to do research as an 
undergraduate, or whether it is better to pack in a few more courses, to give a 
more solid footing when research is begun.  

Note that much of the discussion on year around schooling is pointing towards 
high school and down.  Also, note that there are two distinct sorts of year 
around schooling in question:  Many short vacations, but as much schooling as 
before (e.g. 30 days of school, 10 days of vacation), and school that runs all
year, on the Korean/Japanese model of 240-250 classroom days in the year, and
2-4 weeks of total vacation time.  (In understanding the Japanese model, 
remember that the Japanese apparently have six days of school per week, but 
apparently have far more general holidays than the US does.  For example, in 
Japan Autumn Equinox Day is a general holiday, even the stock market being 
closed.)

George Phillies
phillies@wpi.wpi.edu