Section 01 · 3 pages
The hour as a container
The Carnegie unit, and the degree assembled from it.
Almost every administrative fact about an American degree follows from a unit of time. The Carnegie Foundation defined it around 1906 to settle a pension question, and it is still the denominator for scheduling, tuition, faculty workload and federal aid. These pages set out where the unit came from, what the arithmetic looks like, and what it cannot see.
- 01.1The Carnegie unit
A unit of seat-time devised around 1906 to make transfer between institutions possible still governs how a degree is assembled.
- 01.2Credit hours in a bachelor's degree, assembled fifteen at a time
The arithmetic of a degree is a total to be accumulated, which shapes scheduling, staffing and what a semester can contain.
- 01.3The hour as a container
Seat-time measures exposure rather than learning, which is the criticism the unit has carried since it was invented.
Accreditation as a private function.
The Morrill Acts and what they built.
How rankings are actually made.