Why Are Lab Credits Not Equivalent To Hours

My friend and I are both enrolled in 5 classes this semester. Two of my classes require me to take a 3-hour lab with them. My friend has no classes that require him to take labs. Oddly, I am only receiving 2 more credits than my friend, even though, I am taking 6 more hours of class than he is. That is not even counting preparation time for the labs either. To make this very clear, what I am saying is that the students that are in labs are doing a lot more work and not being rewarded for it. One would think that doing that extra work would possibly get us closer to graduating, but it does no such thing. So why are lab credits not equivalent to hours? Colleges will tell you that we are receiving a justifiable amount of credits for labs, but according to the logic of how credits are assigned, we are not receiving the fair amount of credits. We need to address this issue before it continues to spiral out of control. …show more content…
The general rule or idea is that for every hour in a class, you spend 2 hours outside on that class. That is where they come up with a 3 credit class. I asked Dr. Dwayne Bajema, an Agricultural professor here at Dordt, how labs were assigned credits. He explained to me that the argument is “that labs do not have the same preparation requirement.” He goes on to say, “labs are supposed to be fairly self-contained”. Meaning that all the work that is to be done for the lab can be done during the lab time. He finished by saying that “if a lab goes for 2 hours, you then have that extra hour to do a lab report or any extra work, and that would then constitute 1 credit.” That is where the school comes up with a course with a lab being assigned 4