Brown changed from the traditional system to the new one four years ago because of very strong student lobbying, says Katherine P. Hall, the university registrar.

"The students had been pushing for a new calendar for a very long time, almost 10 years," she says. "The university created several committees to study and discuss the issue, and finally it was agreed upon.

Brown students are happy to end exams before Christmas, but they are realizing that the new system means the end of semesters are very pressured, Hall says.

Faculty were reluctant to accept the new system because they thought it would infringe on their research time, she says. The new calendar requires many faculty to come back to the campus before Labor Day to prepare for classes, and the preparation often conflicts with important professional meetings in late August, Hall says.

Members of Brown's faculty say the free month in January is not enough time for them to conduct significant research, while the summer months important for research are now curtailed, according to Hall.

The Brown students, who were generally in favor of the change, are also finding fault with the new schedule, Hall says. She says it is difficult for students to return to Brown only a day after the Labor Day weekend, because it is hard for them to leave their summer jobs.

In addition, she said that students find that the month of January is a long time to be at home, and there are not many jobs available, so many students get bored with the vacation time.

"There is no perfect calendar. This one hasn't solved all the problems, but if given the option of the old calendar, students would stick with this one," Hall says.

Students at Columbia also have mixed feelings about their school's switch to the new system in 1974, Lobley says.

Under the traditional system, "it would get very expensive for students to go home [over Christmas], especially the international students, and we had a serious problem with students and faculty just not returning after the holidays," Lobley says.

With exams after Christmas, "there was a lot of make-up exams and incompletes, and enrollment definitely dropped after the vacation," she adds, explaining why many students prefer the new system. A poll taken two years ago indicated that people liked the calendar, Lobley says.

But an unfortunate consequence of the change was that reading period was cut short. "Students are constantly struggling for an extra day, but we just can't fit it in," Lobley says.

NYU, one of the few remaining institutions that still follows the traditional calendar, plans to change to the new schedule in two years, school officials say.

The university had considered the change for more than 10 years, and finally decided on it because "everyone was tired of the issue, and people are finally ready for it," says University Registrar Millicent A. Lecount.

She says that neither students nor faculty liked the "disjointed" fall term. "Students felt that it was unfair for them to go home and then come back, it was an imposition to go back and forth," Lecount says.