Imagine that you purchased a repeated service from a company. After purchasing the service you expect the service to be rendered each time that the service is paid for. If the company fails to provide the service at any point you expect to be compensated by the company.

One way to think of Butler University is that it is a business and the students are the paying customers. Compared to the K-12 public school system, students choose to attend Butler. Children are essentially coerced to attend a public school or they and their patents face penalties.

The main service that Butler offers is an education. Without education, Butler and all other universities would not exist. Since students are paying Butler for an education students should expect that classes meet every day during the semester.

Sometimes classes are canceled, which causes most students to celebrate. My guess is that most students do not realize how much a canceled class costs them. This year full-time undergraduate students were charged $13,035 in tuition (P1 and P2 pharmacy students were charged $14,070).

Since full-time is considered between 12 and 20 hours it is hard to calculate the general amount per class. Instead, a generalization can be made by the amount part-time students are charged per credit hour. This year students in the CBA, COE, JCFA and LAS paid $1,090 per hour. Students in COPHS paid $1,160.

Generally, one credit hour represents 50 minutes of class time. This is based on the fact that three credit-hour courses meet for 2:30 minutes a week. Since there are 14 weeks in the semester, students in CBA, COE, JCFA and LAS pay $77.86 and pharmacy students pay $82.86 per 50 minute class period.

I realized this and did the math because of the Undergraduate Research Conference (URC) that was held last Friday. This forced many classes to cancel due to the need for rooms for the conference. Additionally, classes were also encouraged to cancel so students, in theory, would go to the presentations.

Since students are paying to attend classes on the day the URC occurs, it is not fair for classrooms to be taken away for the day. Yes, some classes can be moved to other locations, but there is only so much space that this may not be possible for classes to be moved.

Instead, Butler should move the URC to a Saturday. This way classes are not interrupted both for Butler students and students who come in from other universities.

Another thing that Butler can do is incorporate the URC into the schedule for the year and give students the day off. This day off could be made up on Tuesday, the day after the “make-up” day for having Martin Luther King Day off. This would also split exams up nicely as exams would take place on Thursday through Saturday and Monday through Wednesday of the following week.

There are other points in the semester where a professor has to miss class due to a conference, family commitment or illness. To be fair to the students the professor should try to get another professor to cover the class for the day.

Of course last minute situations occur, therefore its hard to find another person to cover the class. So in that situation the only choice is for the class to be canceled. It’s not fair to the students to come in at a different time to make up the class because of an issue that the professor had to address.

Although canceled classes often mean less work it is still time that students are paying to be in class. So, think twice when your class is canceled. Is it worth the amount of money you are loosing?

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