101: Course Inflation

[Anne Gilbert]

Geoff:

> Even stranger, I found when I arrived at Wayne State University that
> courses here had grown an additional digit, so that Freshman English is
> now 1010.  This change happened several years ago--recent enough
> that some of my colleagues still call courses by their three-digit names
> (so 2720 is still 272).  Since this changes the morphology
> considerably I have to stop and do arithmetic to figure out which course
> they are talking about.<br><br>
> Geoff</font></body>

That sounds like the "four digit" system a lot of colleges now use for
course numbering.  I know, 'cause I've sometimes had to look up(usually
through Google)the name of some professor whose courses are listed at
whatever college.  Still, this *is* a change from the "three digit" system
"they" used to use.  And presumably *that* is the source of the "101" you've
been discussing.
Anne G