This article is featured in the 2025 Commencement & Reunions special issue.
Dartmouth’s quarter system traces back to 1958, when the College shifted from two 16-week semesters to four 10-week quarters, with students taking three courses per term. At the time, College President John Sloan Dickey framed the change as a way to promote “intellectual self-reliance,” by allowing students to focus more deeply on fewer subjects, according to a transcript of Dickey’s 1957 announcement printed in The Dartmouth.
Over time, the quarter system became central to the College’s identity — enabling sophomore summer and the flexible D-Plan, which allows students to take terms off in the fall, winter or spring. But nearly seven decades later, some faculty say the system’s speed undermines the depth and independence it was meant to encourage.
German professor Eric Miller, who has taught at Dartmouth since 2003, said the fast pace of the quarter system limits the time students have to engage with complex ideas, which “need time to ferment.”
“College-level material often needs 15 weeks to mature,” he said. “Nine weeks and two days doesn’t allow for that.”
Miller noted that prerequisite-heavy departments — like German — are especially affected. If students miss a course in a sequence during an off-term, they may lose what they’ve learned, he said. Miller said “barely anyone” can take German language courses consecutively because of their D-Plan.
“There’s no time to build,” he said. “You spend the first week or two catching up, and that’s a lot when you only have nine weeks and two days.”
Some students taking German classes agreed that the gap between courses was harmful. Savanna Degenhardt ’28 took German in high school but took a six month break before taking GERM 2: “Introductory German” in the winter because of the quarter system.
“I lost a lot of my German skills and felt a lot less confident [after the break],” she said. “I was quite behind in some of the basics, but ahead on random vocabulary from high school.”
Math professor Andrew Hanlon agreed, adding that the quarter system makes it difficult to bring students to the same level.
“You get a compounding effect when, in an upper division class, … you spend a bit of time at the beginning just making sure everybody is comfortable with where you’re going to start,” he said. “You have a weird group where half the class knows a lot of background but the other half doesn’t.”
Hanlon teaches MATH 11: “Accelerated Multivariable Calculus,” a course which is infamous for its speed and quantity of material.
“MATH 11 is typically taught over two semesters elsewhere,” he said. “Here, it’s compressed into one term. Students can get through the material, but often without time to fully process it.”
Both Hanlon and Miller said the structure can hinder long-term learning. Hanlon emphasized that instructors often have to narrow their focus.
“I stick to main ideas and examples,” he said. “There’s not enough time to explain the bigger picture.”
Richard Perez ’28 took MATH 11 his freshman fall, an experience that brought him “immense stress” and made him rethink his prospective data science major.
“Like many others, this was my first math class here at Dartmouth, and while I was anticipating for it to be difficult, I wasn’t quite prepared for what the class actually ended up being,” he said. “It was definitely demoralizing.”
Other first year students also had trouble acclimating to the fast-paced terms, including Arielle Citrin Miller ’28, who bemoaned the “constant” exams and deadlines.
“I never feel like there’s a break,” she said. “From week four to week ten, there’s no escaping it. It can be overwhelming.”
Miller added that the quarter system is made worse by “institutional arrogance.”
“It’s the idea that we’re so smart here … we are convinced that we can cover in a quarter what everyone else takes a semester for,” he said. “In reality, we cover less material or we cover the material less well.”
He clarified that this is not simply the fault of the professors or the students.
“Everyone buys into it,” he said.
