Guidance on Course Credits and Workload Expectations

Regulations for apportioning academic points of credit for graduate coursework are established by the New York State Education Department (NYSED). Columbia University’s Office of the Provost is responsible for ensuring the university's compliance with NYSED regulations and collaborates with all Columbia schools to achieve this goal.

The Provost’s Office delegates to the curriculum committees of the schools the task of ensuring that all courses carry an appropriate number of points of academic credit. Therefore, the SIPA Committee on Instruction is tasked with ensuring consistency of practice within and among academic programs, as well as protecting the integrity of our students' graduate degrees.

Credit points are assigned to courses based on a minimum of in-class time in combination with a minimum of out-of-class hours for course assignments. The relevant NYSED regulation states:

“Semester hour means a credit point or other unit granted for the satisfactory completion of a course which requires at least 15 hours (of 50 minutes each) of instruction and at least 30 hours of supplementary assignments, except as otherwise provided under section 52.2(c)(4) of this Subchapter. This basic measure shall be adjusted proportionately to translate the value of other academic calendars and formats of study concerning the credit granted for study during the two semesters that comprise an academic year.”

Thus, each point of academic credit requires at least three hours of total work per week over a 15-week semester (including 14 weeks of classes and one week of exams). These three hours typically include one hour of classroom instruction (defined as at least 50 minutes) and two hours of independent work (e.g., readings, problem sets, papers, individual or group projects).

At SIPA, a 3-credit course typically requires approximately 2 hours of in-class instruction per week and approximately 7 hours of out-of-class work each week, spanning 14 weeks, plus a final exam week. Typically, this includes 150 pages of reading per week, or a combination of reading, problem sets, and other assignments. The final assignment is either a cumulative final exam or a semester’s worth of graded writing assignments totaling at least 20 pages of written work per student.

All credits applied toward degree requirements at SIPA must be earned in graduate-level courses numbered 4000 or higher. The sole exception is intermediate-level language courses used to satisfy the modern foreign language requirement for Master of International Affairs (MIA) students.

Coursework must be directly related to the degree program and appropriate for graduate study. Coursework that is unrelated to the program may not be applied toward the degree.

Standard Course Workload Examples

Full-semester course
Points of Academic Credit: 3
Weekly In-class Hours: 2
Weekly Out-of-class Hours: 7
Total Weekly Hours: 9
Total Semester Hours: 126

Half-semester course
Points of Academic Credit: 1.5
Weekly In-class Hours: 2
Weekly Out-of-class Hours: 7
Total Weekly Hours: 9
Total Semester Hours: 63