Alma changes to 3-credits: thoughts

ABIGAIL SHAUB
PHOTOGRAPHER

JAMIE DIEDRICH
STAFF WRITER

03/16/2026

Recently, Alma College announced that courses would be worth a maximum of three credits. In my opinion, while this decision makes sense, I believe they went about the timing and implementation wrong. Alma College is a commonly-chosen transfer school, and many community colleges and other institutions use 3 credit maximum earned for courses. This change is beneficial overall; it was just handled poorly leading up to this point in time.

The announcement and overall title of this change may cause some confusion. There are now fewer credits needed to graduate, lowering from 136 to, if you’re a Senior, a maximum of 130 credits needed, 127 credits for Juniors, and 122 credits for Sophomores.

“A 3-credit course requires approximately 6-9 hours of homework outside class, compared with 8-12 hours of homework for a 4-credit course. Even in a semester when a student takes five courses, the homework load will be roughly comparable to what is required for four courses now,” said Provost Burke.

That is still not a good thing and should be the one extra thing they changed. 9 hours and four courses are still 32 hours outside of class in addition to extracurricular activities. 

This email was sent after they hosted the information sessions about this change, so those may not have been as successful as they hoped. The email also followed the Student Congress’s discussion about the matter. They hosted two information sessions on Feb. 9 and 11, but the email was sent out on Feb. 19. 

“I’m a little nervous to be taking on more classes, but I do like having the ability to take more electives. I think the college is making the change for the right reasons, and I’m hopeful that it will aid future students. I’m mostly concerned about coursework actually getting lightened to account for our increased time in class; I’m worried we’ll have the same amount of work per class as we do now for more classes,” said Kennedy Mullens (‘29).

When I transferred, Lansing Community College did use a 3-4 credit system, 12 credits for full-time. My advice would be to be smart about which classes you pick and not to choose courses because they sound impressive. Factor in moments to recharge and transport yourself to those courses when planning. The course should not be a hindrance to your health, but rather fit into your schedule with minimal panic, regardless of credits earned.

“I think it will be interesting to see how different faculty members respond to this change. I also wonder how this might impact spring terms. If anything, it puts me at a bit of an advantage as I came in with 27 credits and will now need fewer to graduate. It actually gives me the opportunity to double minor if I would like; I still need a specific number of credits to graduate, so I might as well make those credits count toward something in my degree,” said Mullens.
Hope College and Calvin University are among the institutions that use 3-credits as their guidelines for courses. This should have happened after they’d given students more than the semester before the change was implemented to understand how this would affect them. This change may have its benefits, but they’re vastly overshadowed by the fear rooted in uncertainty because this change hasn’t been explained very well up until this point. They sent out a detailed email, but personally, it was long enough that I immediately closed it.