Summer Session Credit Limits

Recommendation One

Recommendation of the Academic Policy Committee to allow students to enroll in up to a total of 12 credits for all summer sessions, but no more than 4 credits during any session less than or equal to 4 weeks, without requiring an overload appeal.

Rationale

UWM has never formally adopted a summer session credit overload policy. The Registrar’s Office has been publishing a complex policy of unknown origin which limits the number of credits to 13 across all sessions, but also imposes differing limits for each session of enrollment. The registrar’s office reports that the published policy is very difficult to enforce.

A simpler policy would eliminate many appeals and inequities without harming educational quality. The greatest potential for abuse occurs with short sessions, so credit limits are placed on sessions of 4 weeks or less. The Registrar’s Office has agreed to closely monitor the implementation of the new policy and to determine if there is a need for additional constraints.

Recommendation Two

Recommendation of the Academic Policy Committee to allow students to enroll in up to a total of 12 credits for all summer sessions, without requiring an overload appeal.

Rationale

Current policy provides for students to enroll in up to a maximum of the number of credits equal to the number of weeks in a given session. This policy was established when campus offerings were fairly standard, and fell primarily into the early session and the standard eight week session beginning in mid-June. Since then the campus’ summer programs have become extremely diversified with sessions beginning virtually every week. The overlapping nature of our summer session makes this guideline much harder to determine and enforce. The proposed set credit limit for summer session as a whole would allow easy calculation of a credit overload and would be enforceable by the Registrar’s Office with some degree of reliability.