article_snippet: That's an accidental result of the credit hour system, which was created by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie more than 100 years ago, for the purpose of providing struggling professors with pensions.
article_snippet: At the turn of the 20th century, philanthropist Andrew Carnegie created a $10 million free pension fund to help professors retire.
article_snippet: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which was set up to administer the fund, determined that only "full-time" faculty would qualify for pensions, which only "full-time" faculty defined as teaching 12 "credit units," with each unit equal to one hour of faculty-student contact time per week, over a 15-week semester.
article_snippet: While originally a narrow measure of faculty workload, the credit hour quickly morphed into much more.
article_snippet: philanthropist Andrew Carnegie warned against using the credit hour as a proxy for student learning, but the temptation of an easy-to-understand and seemingly standardized measure was too great to resist.
article_snippet: philanthropist Andrew Carnegie just made organizing the whole higher education enterprise much easier.