At most colleges, midnight is when the campus is fairly empty, the buildings are locked and the parties are raging off campus. However, if efforts by a small but growing number of community colleges catch on, more and more college students might actually still be in class at this time of the night — or should I say morning? That’s right — students won’t just be hitting the books at that time of night, they might actually be taking a class.
One of such schools is Anne Arundel Community College, a two-year college in Arnold, Maryland. According to the Baltimore Sun, this college is offering a psychology class in Fall 2010 on Thursdays from midnight to 3 p.m. The reason for the night-owl timeframe? Unprecedented demand for more course sections, faculty from the college have said.
Apparently, the midnight class offering is an extreme way the college is striving to cope with a whopping 17 percent increase in enrollment, which caused many introductory courses to become full past capacity, leaving students clamoring for more options. The class was informally dubbed "Midnight Madness," and the college’s faculty have even joked that they hoped the late-night section may even become that quirky class students chat about on campus.
AACC is not the first college to try this technique. The article mentions that schools in Indiana, Missouri and Oregon have offered midnight classes. Also, not too far away in Boston, Bunker Hill Community College did their part to pioneer midnight classes. In an article for Inside Higher Ed, professor Wick Sloane discussed his midnight college writing class that he offers from 11:45 p.m. to 2:45 a.m. Sloane said that not only is his section of the class full, but the psychology class offered at the same time is also full. The article touched on the idea that not only are students willing to sign up for midnight courses when other sections are full, but that the classes help meet the educational needs of night workers whose days begin when everyone else’s ends, such as nurses and taxi drivers.
It’s unknown whether or not the idea will spread and become more commonly offered at other colleges. After all, it is an uncommon professor who is willing to offer a class at midnight in the first place. Even so, one thing’s for sure: there’s a lot more open at midnight than fast-food restaurants, pharmacies and hospitals!