Foam and Folly: A Need to Restructure the Class Schedule at Sciences Po Menton

British imperialism sharpens into battles of tic-tac-toe; Durkheim’s grasps at sociological greatness darken into pages stained with doodles. The ocean beside me leaves white trails of foam and my folly, churning boredom and desperation so violently I might drown. You guessed it - I’ve been in the petit amphithéâtre for about six hours too long. 

I often leave Sciences Po lectures unsure of the time and anything I’ve just been taught. For weeks, I’ve been worried that the fault is my own, but can we really be expected to be attentive for upwards of three hours at a time? Is Sciences Po’s course schedule structured effectively? In pursuit of an answer, I began by asking other university students around the United States about their course-load. What I found was disappointing but not surprising. Their class hours amounted to an average of fifteen per week, with most first years having twelve credits - or four classes each semester. Instead of  midterms, finals, and presentations, they have regular assignments and essays on top of summative assessments. All were appalled that my class hours were in the twenties — “How do you have time to study?” they asked. “Do you have a life?” The standard course load for a first-year at a U.S. university is between 12 and 15 hours, with a maximum of 18 credit hours allowed. At many universities in the UK, contact time is even less; for an English BA at King's College London, there are only four hours of seminars and four hours of lectures each week. At Cambridge, lectures typically last only around 50 minutes. Comparatively, the standard class load at Sciences Po hovers around 22 hours per week (many have even more if they are taking multiple language courses,) and the shortest class time is two hours long. I examined more scholarly sources next, only to reaffirm my sneaking suspicion that more class time is not always more effective.

In 1996, in a journal called the National Teaching & Learning Forum, two professors from Indiana University, Joan Middendorf and Alan Kalish ,found that long lectures can result in detrimental effects on human attention and retention. They cited a 1976 study that detailed the ebbs and flows of students’ focus during a typical class period. They found that, first, students need a three-to-five minute period of settling down (which, I suppose, is naturally provided to us students that operate on Menton time.) This time was followed by just 10 to 18 minutes of optimal focus. Then, no matter how thrilling the lecture or how powerful the rhetoric, their attention lapsed. The students would “lose it.” While attention would eventually return, it would be in ever-briefer three to four minute spurts. Furthermore, Middendorf and Kalish cited a 1985 study that tested students on their fact recall from a 20-minute presentation. In fact, students remembered far more of what they’d heard at the very beginning of the lecture - by the 15-minute mark, they’d mostly zoned out. 

A few swift clicks on the calculator reveals that there are 16 fifteen-minute increments inside a four hour lecture. Most lecturers here offer us just one to two breaks within that time. If students are unable to remember facts from more than fifteen minutes ago, how can we be expected to retain complex ideas from hours ago? Most, if not all, students concur. “No fraction of this education system is effective,” lamented a Sciences Po Menton student on the way out of her last class of the day. “As fascinating as I can find the subjects presented in the lectures, it is undeniable that in every case, my attention span dwindles almost immediately an hour into it,” said another. Many agree that information retention is even more difficult with a lack of accountability in the form of more frequent assessments.

For a group of students yearning to achieve political greatness, it seems that most are only achieving new records of the fastest Mini Crossword solving time. If we aim to revolutionize the world, we must revolutionize our way of learning first. Maybe it’s in the form of shorter, more frequent classes. Perhaps we should abandon the lecture style altogether. But one thing is for certain: someone in the class of 2026 will go on to be a marvelous NYT game creator.