Comment on Trading Labor Day for more days off

NYU makes a lot of money from its summer classes, especially from post-baccalaureates taking courses to qualify for a career change. Realize that NYU will not want to curtail the money-spinning summer sessions. Though summer classes end around August 7, I do not think professors teaching summer classes and employees working over the 12-weeks of summer courses will want to have their vacations cut short.

The American tradition of long summer vacations, however, is absolutely absurd and a vestige of a time when most people worked in agriculture (less than 1 percent do so now). Why do people need 16 weeks off and then return to school to cram 20 weeks worth of material into 14 weeks? People will be perfectly able to balance studies and jobs/internships during the academic year if the pace was more relaxed. 10 weeks of study at a stretch is not draining if there was another 10 weeks to go and people could take it easy. Unfortunately, for "traditional" and commercial (see above) reasons, American educational institutions will never take a common sense approach to teaching and learning.