Talk:Academic term

There seems to be political bias in combining China and Taiwan's education system in such a sloppy way. Despite the reference and link, China's education system doesn't answer to Taiwan's Ministry of Education nor is Taiwan's education system answerable to China. The non-lunar holidays are also different; the Fall semesters in Taiwan actually often start at the end of August rather than in early September. Taiwan's Labor Day is not in April like in China, but on May 1st. No Chinese students take Double Ten day off. Taiwanese students certainly do not celebrate the National Day of China nor do they get that week off, they get the next week. There's more. Shouldn't this be fixed? --61.230.139.228 (talk) 22:58, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Inconsistency between the info at Rochester Institute of Technology where under 'Academics' quarter system is indicated. Following the link we get to United states where under 'Collegiate calendars' the following is stated: 'The trimester system evolved out of the semester system. It divides the academic year into three equal portions of 10–11 weeks each. Institutions that use the trimester system include the University of Michigan, Lawrence University, Carleton College and the Rochester Institute of Technology.' --William Denali (talk) 13:17, 9 September 2008 (UTC)William Denali

I am removing the "University of Michigan" from this list, since its calendar is not a trimester system. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.202.2.98 (talk) 13:37, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

"Thailand There are two semesters in Thai academic year with an optional summer semester. From kindergarten to high school the first semester opens from mid May and continues until the end of September. The second semester lasts from November until end of February (or early March). The university academic year is slightly different, lasting from June to October and mid November to mid March"

Doing my calculations there is no way such definitions of academical terms allow for any kind of optional seasonal semester, let alone an optional summer semester as those dates override both Thailand's winter and Thailand's Summer... And Spring and Autumn. Therefore this information must be inacurate somehow and a specific definition for the optional summer term must be given. (There is just a two-month space between 2nd and 1st semester, and a one-month space between 1st and 2nd semester)--GTB 15:56, 7th September 2005

I merged Academic term and Academic year, per the request for merge 'tag' on the article. It's a bit awkward where it is sitting at the moment. It might look better further down the page. I'm curious whether its good practice to use a redirect to point to a subsection. If that was the case the redirect from Academic year could point straight to the subsection Academic year. --Randolph 21:28, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

It has been suggested to merge Year-Round School with Academic year. This would be extremely inappropriate as year-round school is the rearranging of existing components of the academic year, not the definition of them. WesWalker 03:32, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not really clear on what is being discussed in this article. Are we talking about colleges and universities only (i.e. post-secondary institutions), or do elementary and secondary schools count? In my personal experience, most public elementray schools in the U.S. have two semesters, each divided into two quarters (which are quite different from the post-secondary quarters which are really a third of the regular school year). Is this some peculiarity of my state, or am I misunderstanding the article, or is it just incomplete? -Aranel ("Sarah") 21:13, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm confused by the paragraph on conversion, which is presently as follows:

"Thus, academic credit earned in quarter hours converts to semester hours at 2/3 of its value, while credit earned in semester hours converts to quarter hours at 3/2 of its value. Or, to put it another way, 3 quarter hours = 2 semester hours, and 2 semester hours = 3 quarter hours."

The latter clause of the second sentence is repeating the former clause, only switched about, so to speak. Is it correct, or is it a typing error? I think it could do with rephrasing, so that it's clearer.SilverDratini (talk) 23:23, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

I am looking for information on a specific topic--if this is the right article for it to be in, I hope someone could edit it to include the information I'm looking for. If not, I hope they could direct me to the appropriate article. I would like to know if there is a general standard by which colleges and universities decide how far into a semester they will allow students to drop a class. My local college has a 15 week semester. During the first week, classes can be dropped without either academic or financial penalty. Thereafter, classes can be dropped for an additional nine weeks, but with both an academic penalty (i.e., one's records show that the student withdrew from the class) and a financial penalty (i.e. one must still pay for the credit hours even though those credit hours will not be received). After ten weeks, the student is bound to remain in the class, even if he is failing. Is this typical for most colleges or not? And on a similar note, I have heard that in Japan, if one does not show up for the final exam, he is considered to have dropped the class--thus, no one ever fails a university course in Japan. Is this true? --GnatsFriend

In the US, each college and university has almost complete freedom to do whatever it likes, resulting in a huge variety of practices. At some colleges, you can even choose which courses will appear on your transcript, as long as the ones that remain give you enough credits. I don't know the situation in Japan, but in much of Europe, the notion is that the only purpose of coursework is to prepare you for the exam: the exam is the entire grade. Practices vary by country. I would guess there are countries where you can take the exam as many times as you want, and not even have to register in advance. But I'm afraid that won't convince anyone at your college to change its practices (unless of course there are legal or regulatory issues). --Macrakis 14:34, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I assume the words semester and trimester were mistaken for divisions of a year, but -mester refers to a length of time equal to a month, and tri- and se- are multipliers, not divisors (e.g. tricycle--three wheels).

We witness one such situations in which English (and especially American English) takes a term and distorts it so much from its original etymology that it can be barely recognized. "Trimester", in all Roman languages, means "a period of three months". English absorbed the terminology from French. However, for some twisted reasons that I believe can be only imputable to the ignorance of early academic and school policymakers across the Channel (or across the Pond), it now means something like "one of the three periods in which the year is divided". So you get the typical situation in which all the World uses "trimester" as equivalent to quarter (that is, 3-months), whereas the English-speakers use it in this distorted way... We are not talking Imperial Measures here, nor we are talking "aluminum" and "aluminium", which is clearly a case of parallel formation. We are talking of just plain obtusity translated into everyday language and cheerfully adopted by policymakers and managers with the same enthusiasm with which they bomb other countries.--78.209.176.102 (talk) 10:22, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

This is a tricky page to edit, due to sometimes arcane terminology, and widely differing practice, with most individuals being aware only of one system. I've tidied up the introduction which had some statements which while true in certain places, are not true generally; I've indicated the etymology of semester and trimester, which so often confuse; and I've added a history section, originally to clarify etymology, but in the end just for interest's sake! – CDV 12:42, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

A trimester is clearly a 3-months' subdivision. There is little to discuss here. Etymology is so obvious all dictionaries report that. Question is why such an entry exists in Wikipedia at all, given it is basic vocabulary stuff. 78.209.176.102 (talk) 10:25, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

This page should not be merged with Year-round_school. Year-round education is more than just an academic-term - it is an entire schema set up to increase student-throughput and appropriate funding in areas of rapid growth. I will make some major contributions to this article, including grabbing a snapshot of the Warning - School Pedestrians - Year Round Operations from a local elementary school up the road. I will also put in some explanations of the 'big-picture' of year-round education, from a demographics and funding standpoint. In the mean-time, you can see Green Hope High School (Funding section) for some information on North Carolina's educational situation. 24.211.161.77 02:40, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

From the original Latin, I believe, the word "semester" actually means six months. Any info on that?

    -Since six months is half a year, then half of a school year is a semester.

There are some wrong facts about holydays in Germany: In some states Christmas Break ends on 1st, 2nd or 3rd January. In states with snowy winters the Winter Break lasts 2 weeks. (e.g. Bavaria, Saxonia) The Whitsun Break is maximum 4 or 5 days in all states. And also Universities have holydays... --89.51.123.244 14:19, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Is that really on a provincial basis? In most places, individual universities basically decide the exact dates when their terms and breaks start and end. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 07:00, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

I have added Bangladeshi University in this article. There is a list that counts number of semester along with their names at each university. Please Wikipedians from respective universities update this list accordingly. Niaz bd 04:28, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Of twenty countries on the list, there is not a single one in Africa, South/Central America or the Middle East, except for Israel. I'm going to post in a few of the respective Education in... talkpages to increase the representation. If anyone knows anything about those regions, please add! samwaltz 22:22, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

We've currently got a mix of years being defined as "start of first term to end of last term" and "calendar period for determining year of entry". The latter is the full school year - the summer holidays are relevant as the exact date determines when a pupil with a birthday in those holidays enters a year. Is anyone able to put the precise changeover for Scotland & Northern Ireland in? Timrollpickering 22:15, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

A UK school year does not end on 31st of August and never has (for the last 27 years at least). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.42.113.82 (talk) 16:00, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

So when does it? Every school I attended had September 1st as the start of the full year, with entry determined by one's age on that date. Timrollpickering 17:40, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

The English and Welsh school year has officially ended on August 31st for the last sixty years to my personal knowledge, and I think, for some time before that. Scotland might have a slightly different end date. Does anyone know? Dbfirs 16:32, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Northwestern University's terms fall under the definition of the quarter system as defined in this article, NOT the trimester system. Northwestern University students call the terms "quarters" as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.74.80.209 (talk) 23:25, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Quarter and trimester are different names for the same system. --Spoon! (talk) 11:47, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

It depends on whether what comes out of it are semester or quarter units. NU uses a very odd system. 45 units to graduate (each course is a one unit course). http://www.wcas.northwestern.edu/advising/degree/quarters/index.html The other way you tell is through looking at the calculus sequence. They use the traditional quarter breakdown in the calculus sequence (differential, integral, multivariable) vs. a semester breakdown in the sequence. Thus, NU is a quarter school. Calwatch (talk) 22:03, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I attended NU as a graduate student (in linguistics, incidentally!). It's definitely on a 'quarter' system. The word 'quarter' is even plastered all over the school's website, explaining this. If you entered into a legal dispute with the university, I guarantee that 'quarter' would be the term used in the proceedings and documentation. Just as importantly, as Calwatch explained, quarter units/'credits' appear on Northwestern students' transcripts, not trimester units. 2600:4040:4545:1500:1C67:7257:1897:324A (talk) 15:28, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

A trimester ('three months') and a quarter of a year are the same, as Spoon pointed out above. Robminchin (talk) 15:45, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Although it seems that the federal government defines trimesters as the same as semesters. Which makes no sense etymologically, but there we are. Robminchin (talk) 20:08, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

The key question here is: if a Ministry agent is illiterate and makes obvious mistakes in its policies, is Wikipedia supposed to mirror such mistakes? I see GPT has already absorbed the "quarter is not a trimester" mantra from the poorly-built US database used to train it. We are doomed if AIs are trained out of US sources only because the amount of trash coming out of that country is uncontrollable. Wikipedia is also responsible for ruining World's knowledge by bowing to crooked institutions instead of actual science. 78.209.176.102 (talk) 10:28, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

The text removed appears verbatim @ . It's not the copyright issue though that prompted the removal but the plausibility. True some individuals attending university in the middle ages might have been called on by their families to participate in agricultural activities, howeve r this is likely to be by far the exception. It simply ignores the reality that university has only become accessible to people who could be farm labor (other than as estate owners or managers) in modern times. Also: autumn actually with harvest would be the time requiring more labor. It is almost certainly correct that the academic year merely reflects the common European social year as observed by the upper classes which began in the fall, ended in the spring and was/is punctuated by the summer season. 74.78.162.229 (talk) 05:26, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm just letting everyone know that I changed the title of United States to United States of America.

Thanks

Crazyla112 (talk) 23:40, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

You should probably discuss that on the Talk Page for the Article on the United States of America, not here. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 06:57, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Which country has the longest school year in the world?
A) Japan, B) Russia, C) China, D) Germany —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.93.13.209 (talk) 04:37, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

please give me the information about the semester system i mp —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.196.209.42 (talk) 15:09, 29 January 2009 (UTC)