Alright, so here’s the deal … University College is not converting to semesters. Big deal, right? Well, like all the other aspects of semester conversion, it all depends.

Every week, I’ve been meeting with various people who do various jobs at various locations on campus. This week, I spoke to the Dean of UC as well as the Dean of Northeastern’s School of Law — neither of which are converting. The law school has its reasons; all of which are valid and make sense, but with UC, things got interesting.

The intriguing piece of the University College puzzle is that for the Northeastern undergraduate day students that use the facility, they desperately need to take advantage of the night classes. By this I mean those students who failed a course and need to take it over again, as well as honors students who need to fill their overload requirements, by either taking an additional course at night or a course while on co-op.

Sounds simple. But there is more. Stop and think … why would day students need to rack up additional credits?

Surprise … it’s called semester conversion.

Although the university says it will hold no student accountable IF they are moving in the right direction. What if, however, you were moving in the right direction and got Mono, and had to drop three classes? There are a lot of “what ifs” that seem to go hand in hand with any dramatic conversion.

Alright, alright, maybe semester conversion is not the culprit. Maybe YOU are to blame. You were lazy and failed economics, a core that you need a C or better in to graduate. For the sake of this column, say you will be on co-op this quarter and spring quarter and the course is not offered during the summer quarter, and you, being lazy, did not want to attempt economics in the elongated semester format.

What do you do? Take a night course at University College … are you following me?

Everything comes with a price. The price tag for a four-credit course at UC is $880, according to the University College staff answering the phones on a Tuesday afternoon. Sounds like a lot of money, huh?

Wrong again. I thought you were with me on this one.

So, compare the 880 beans to what it would cost to overload as an upperclassman at NU during the day – $569 per credit. PER CREDIT! Do the math and that’s $2,276 for one class at the day school, according to a representative in the customer service office.

Here is where it gets tricky. Jump forward to fall quarter 2003, Northeastern University has converted to semesters, University College has not, and you still need that one class.

You petition your college (we’ll say Arts and Sciences) to make sure the course offered at UC matches your graduation requirements. You are in. You pass the course and your $880 transfers back to the day school.

But, wait, there’s a catch.

You took the course on a quarter system, while the day school is on a semester system. This means that of the four credits you paid for, only three transfer.

Gotcha!

University College Dean Judith Stoessel agrees the transition could be tricky.

“We don’t know how it will work, you may take two courses here to equal one course at the day school,” Stoessel said. “The home college will call the shots and we will try to accommodate the students.”

So, what is the underlying lesson for the week? Pay attention, or you’ll be paying from deep within your pocket.