Dozens of Yeshiva College students have just finished registering for an upcoming semester of courses, but surprisingly, most of them will not be attending YC. This summer, not unlike years past, classrooms at Kean College, Iona College, Farmingdale, and Stony Brook will be filled with YC and Stern College students looking to earn some extra credits, or at least to use their summers productively. Students can choose from a variety of courses without having to worry about grades, since whatever they receive will be recorded as Pass/Fail on their Yeshiva transcripts.

The Yeshiva College administration is not excited about the growing trend, pointing out that the courses offered in many of these New York area colleges are not as demanding as their YC counterparts. Over the past couple of years, the Academic Standards Committee has taken steps to curb this practice. The Sy Syms School of Business no longer accepts any outside credit; even YC has refused to accept transfer credit from community colleges like the popular Rockland. The increasingly limited off-campus acceptable summer programs, coupled with the recent adoption of an increased on-campus credit requirement, has left many Yeshiva students without the option of spending a summer in school in an effort to expedite their graduation dates.

The natural solution to accommodate the interests of both students and faculty alike would be to offer more summer courses at Yeshiva. These courses would maintain whatever standards Yeshiva sets and would also help satisfy the quest for "on-campus" credits. Indeed, many local students already stay around Yeshiva during "June z'man" for shiurim; a lot of them, it seems, would be anxious at the chance to fulfill requirements.

This solution was already considered a few months before the Summer 2000 program commenced. A Summer School Committee headed by Director of Academic Advisement Dr. Nada Glick was formed to look into improving Yeshiva's offerings. Naturally, the committee didn't have time to make much progress before last summer, but they did set out an ambitious plan to develop offerings that that would appeal to current on-campus students as well as to Israel returnees for Summer 2001.

Nevertheless, as this year's Summer Course Catalog begins to circulate, students are surprised to find little evidence of change. The options mirror closely the range that existed before the formation of the Summer School Committee. In the June term, SSSB will be offering a paltry selection of three courses and YC just seven (including physics labs); the July term boasts one Money & Banking class and a Physics course. Even though Yeshiva students are restricted from fulfilling their Composition and Literature requirements off-campus over the summer, only Masterpieces of World Literature is being offered here at YC. In addition, there are no courses that can be used to satisfy universal Yeshiva requirements in Bible, Jewish History, or Hebrew other than at Revel, since these types of courses are not offered at any New York area college.

Many students who do not have summer jobs would like to use the three-month break to lighten their course loads or eliminate pesky YC and SSSB requirements. Unfortunately, due to the college's restrictions, this becomes quite difficult, and according to some students, doing so borders on impossible.

What upsets many is that the solution to the problem seems to be what one student deemed "simply obvious." The bolstering of Yeshiva summer offerings lies in the hands of the elusive Summer School Committee, which has thus far disappointed many.