Credit Hour Policy

Undergraduate

A single credit hour at the undergraduate level represents a minimum of three hours (50 minutes per hour) of substantive learning time per week over the course of a fifteen-week semester. Terms or courses shorter than 15 weeks adjust the distribution of the substantive learning time yet still represent the same total number of substantive learning hours.

Graduate/Doctoral

A single credit hour at both the graduate and doctoral level represents a minimum of four hours (50 minutes per hour) of substantive learning time per week over the course of a fifteen-week semester. Terms or courses shorter than 15 weeks adjust the distribution of the substantive learning time yet still represent the same total number of substantive learning hours.

A “substantive learning hour” is considered to be the equivalent of 50 minutes of faculty-student interaction, classroom instruction, online or distributed learning, appropriate experiential learning, and/or studying, writing, reading, or research.