The week after Labor Day traditionally marks the start of the semester for high school and college students. Many freshmen will kick off their college careers with courses like Psychology 101, English 101, or History 101.
When did introductory classes get their special number? In the late 1920s. The Oxford English Dictionary finds the first use of "101" as an introductory course number in a 1929 University of Buffalo course catalog. Colleges and universities began to switch to a three-digit course-numbering system around this time.
In 1935, two researchers from Kent State published a paper celebrating the efficiency of the new system: "Recently college catalogs have revealed a commendable trend toward a logical arrangement of course numbers," they wrote. "The loose hodgepodge of former years is giving way to systematic arrangement."
The three-digit arrangement at Kent State began with a number corresponding to the college year. Freshman courses, for example, started with "1." The second digit referred to the content area, or to whether the course could be taken for credit, and the third described its place in a sequence of classes beginning with "0." An intro English class might have gotten the number "160," as a first-year class (1--) serving as the first in a sequence (--0) for a given subject (say, -6-).
2473
被折叠的 条评论
为什么被折叠?
到【灌水乐园】发言
