101: Course Inflation

[David Bowie]

From:    Geoff Nathan <an6993 at WAYNE.EDU>
: Page Stephens wrote:

:: 101 no doubt stems from academic usage in terms of the designation
:: of the first course in any subject but in my memory before for
:: whatever reason all too many colleges/universities designated
:: beginning courses by adding the 10 as a prefix to 1 we used to
:: call beginning courses as 1, i.e. Physics 1, Chemistry 1, English 1,
:: etc. The second courses in the subject would then be entitled 2, 3,
:: etc.

:: If anyone out there has any idea where or when 101 replaced 1 I would
:: love to learn about it.

Well, as other responses have pointed out, it's not quite that simple, and
seems to be related to the size of the school and, possibly, the system
schools use to conduct registration.

For example, if a large school (say, the U of Maryland College Park, my
undergrad institution) knows its department with the largest number of
courses has more than 99 but less than 1,000, and the school's system for
registration would go easier if all course numbers had the same number of
digits, then it makes sense for all courses to have 3-digit numbers.

That's just speculation, of course. But a system where (say, like at Penn,
my grad school) 1xx and 2xx marks introductory undergrad courses, 3xx marks
advanced undergrad courses, 4xx marks undergrad courses grad students can
take for credit, 5xx marks grad courses advanced undergrads can take, 6xx
marks grad-only courses, 7xx marks (IIRC) master's thesis credit, and 8xx
(marks (IIRC) dissertation credit seems more transparent than Physics 1, 2,
3,...,n to me, at least once you know the system--you can tell at a glance
with a course is cupposed to be and who can take it.

: 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.

In Florida (for all public institutions and many private institutions) a
4-digit numbering system is *mandatory*. The description of the system
according to the U of Central Florida catalog:

  "Courses in this catalog are identified by prefixes and numbers that
   were assigned by Florida’s Statewide Course Numbering System. This
   common numbering system is used by all public postsecondary
   institutions in Florida and by twenty-six participating non-public
   institutions. The major purpose of this system is to facilitate the
   transfer of courses between participating institutions.

  "Each participating institution controls the title, credit, and content
   of its own courses and recommends the first digit of the course number
   to indicate the level at which students normally take the course.
   Course prefixes and the last three digits of the course numbers are
   assigned by members of faculty discipline committees appointed for that
   purpose by the Florida Department of Education in Tallahassee...

  "The course prefix and each digit in the course number have meaning in
   the Statewide Course Numbering System (SCNS). The list of course
   prefixes and numbers, along with their generic titles, is referred to
   as the 'SCNS taxonomy.' Descriptions of the content of courses are
   referred to as 'course equivalency profiles.'"

So sometimes there is method to the (very deep and disturbed) madness.

David Bowie                                         http://pmpkn.net/lx
    Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
    house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
    chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.