CORRECTION APPENDED SEE BOTTOMThe Undergraduate Curriculum Committee withdrew its motion to change the number of semesters a student must stay on campus from seven semesters to eight semesters due to faculty concerns about the proposal, Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe announced at last Thursday's faculty meeting.

Faculty and students said that they were concerned that the proposal would financially disadvantage students and inconvenience them.

The faculty had passed the motion in a first reading at the previous faculty meeting March 12.

University Registrar Mark Hewitt explained that the reasoning behind the residency proposal had to do with the ability of students to accelerate their graduation and the implementation of the Justice Brandeis Semester, which affect University revenue and the academic experiences of students.

"I thought that the [withdrawal] was extremely well-handled by [Jaffe]," Prof. Dirck Roosevelt (ED) said after the meeting. "Between the first reading and today, there was a lot of discussion on the faculty listserv . that requiring the eighth semester would discourage students who might really want to come here but for either financial [reasons] or for reasons of personal aspirations would want to come here in the hope that they could complete [their degree] in seven rather than eight semesters."

"We don't know whether students are [increasingly] going to end up [graduating] early, whether they'll take two Justice Brandeis Semesters versus one, we don't know," Prof. Malcolm Watson (PSYC) said, suggesting that the faculty could revisit the proposal later when more details were known. "I don't want to take away degrees of freedom, of self-determination from the students [to take fewer semesters]."

With regard to the issue of acceleration, Hewitt said that about 6 percent of the Class of 2009 elected to graduate early. In the current financial climate where the University seeks to increase the number of students to increase revenue and students graduate early, "by not increasing [the residency requirement], then we are looking [at] an additional 40 or 50 [first-years] that we have to admit each year, on top of what has already been proposed for budget reasons," he said. Original models for bringing 100 more students per class over four years as part of larger academic restructuring assumed a change in the residency requirement, he explained. There are more costs associated with first-year students because they are guaranteed housing and because more students have to be accepted to account for any who might leave in the four years that follow, Hewitt explained.

In terms of the JBS, Jaffe explained in a previous interview that under the current model, if students take two JBSs, they would only be on campus for five semesters, which the UCC felt was not academically beneficial.

Currently, students must complete 128 credits, equal to 16 credits for eight semesters. Hewitt explained that students can fulfill up to 16 credits with non-numeric credit gained from AP exams or foreign final exams such as the International Baccalaureate and can thereby graduate in seven semesters. The University Bulletin currently states that students must complete at least seven semesters at Brandeis.

Hewitt explained that an exception currently exists for students who study abroad for two semesters but pay full tuition, and are only required to complete an additional six semesters on campus. "[The increase] covers all students, regardless of whether you take a JBS or not, regardless of whether you go on study abroad or not," he said.

The proposal for the JBS assumed a 12-credit course load at a discounted tuition rate that counts for academic residency, which students could likely complete off-campus. "The thinking was that these Justice Brandeis Semesters were also a method for students to accelerate or reduce some of their tuition costs, so to balance out that cost, we felt that we needed [the increase in residency requirement," Hewitt said.

Hewitt explained that if the study abroad model was applied to JBS, the tuition for the JBS semesters could not be discounted, meaning that JBS would count 16 credits or four classes.. He said it that could be a challenge for the University to offer more courses online as part of the JBS since such a program had not existed before.

Hewitt added that there had been a "vast increase" in students opting for reduced senior status this year, an option that would require eight completed semesters under the withdrawn proposal.

Other options for addressing acceleration, such as taking away non-numeric credit, would have the drawbacks of affecting all students and the number of classes they would have to take.

He added that he also did not think it was a good idea to charge students extra for taking additional classes in a semester.

Student Union President Jason Gray '10 said in his State of the Union address last Tuesday that the Registrar's Office and Office for Students and Enrollment would be working with the CARS committees to "see that students are attending enough semesters at Brandeis in order to have a Brandeis degree."

Correction: The headline originally misidentified the acronym for UCC. It is the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, not the University Curriculum Committee.