During a three-hour faculty meeting on Friday, Nov. 8, Middlebury professors voted in favor of the Faculty Council’s proposal to reduce the credits needed for graduation from 36 to 34. The decision will take effect on July 1, 2025, meaning that students enrolled in the fall 2025 semester will now need to take only 34 credits to graduate, but AP or IB credits will not count towards that total.
The recent assembly also debated restricting the college’s Latin honors system, which currently grants the vast majority of students qualify for cum laude honors or higher. In December, the faculty will vote on whether to grant honors at graduation on a much more limited basis.
The approved credit reduction was first passed unanimously by last year’s Student Government Association (SGA) last spring. The motion passed last Friday with 75% support — 82 professors voted in favor, 26 voted against and one abstained.
Previously, approximately two-thirds of the student body arrived at Middlebury with usable credits from high school courses, but only about half of them applied these credits to graduation, and half of them exceeded the minimum credit requirement, according to data collected by Registrar Jen Thompson.
Under the new changes, students with AP and IB credits on their transcript next fall can no longer count those towards graduation, but because they only need 34 credits to graduate, it will not affect their graduation timeline, according to Faculty Council Chair Jason Mittell. Departments may still use pre-collegiate scores for course placement or to waive requirements for a minor or major.
The current SGA administration announced the decision to students in an email on Friday afternoon, which clarified the eligibility and celebrated the decision.
Credit Reduction
At the meeting, Mittell and council member Bert Johnson outlined the proposal and its rationale. They view the reduction in requirements as a follow-through to the change passed in 2004 that reduced the number of required J-Terms from four to two, and further explained the rationale for the changes.
“It promotes equity and creates a level playing field for all students regardless of access to AP and IB courses in high school,” Mittell said. “And it equally allows all students, when planning for a tough semester, working on a thesis or dealing with unplanned, uncertain, unforeseen challenges, to reduce their course load to three or 3.5 credits up to twice in college.”
Mittell stated that the credit reduction will allow a minority of students without AP or IB credits the same flexibility, and it is unlikely to increase the number of students graduating early.
Vice President of SGA Daniza Tazabekova ’26 spoke to faculty in support of the proposal before debate began, urging them to consider the value of granting students flexibility.
“It is unlikely that a swarm of students will drop classes to party, or to network professionally, or ignore their education in alternative ways,” Tazabekova said. “Reducing credits does not reduce rigor.”
Miguel Fernández, the meeting’s moderator and professor of Luso-Hispanic studies, then opened the floor for debate, inviting faculty to speak on the proposal. Most speakers were supportive of eliminating the option to count AP or IB credits to ensure equity among students, but some raised concerns about reducing credit requirements, expressing worry that students who take 34 credits would wind up taking fewer classes outside of their major, a cornerstone of a liberal arts education.
Multiple faculty members predicted that taking 34 credits would become normalized with the lowered requirements, to the detriment of students. They claimed that it has now become “normalized” for students to take only two J-Terms, despite that not having been the intention when the proposal to require only two Winter Term credits passed in 2004.
“The normalization [of 34 credits] is inevitable, as much as we would like it not to be,” another professor added.
However, other faculty members cited how 65% of students currently earn four J-Term credits, and that half of the students who can take only 34 earn 36.
“The whole idea of normalizing 34 as the expected load is something that we are really not trying to do,” Mittel said in defense of the proposal. “It is expected that students will pursue a full course load, leading to 36 credits.”
The potential for students to use this requirement reduction to graduate early was also an objection, as well as possible impacts on enrollment. Currently, approximately 2% of students have accelerated graduation.
One faculty member suggested the college was heading in the wrong direction: They argued for removing AP and IB credits and keeping the requirement at 36 to increase the college’s academic rigor.
“I wonder why you haven't considered leveling it up rather than down,” the professor asked, questioning the effects of the reduction on enrollment. “Higher education is the only commodity where the buyer is willing to pay more and get less.”
Some faculty thought that the vote was being rushed and said such a significant reduction requires more time to think through unforeseen outcomes, especially given the simultaneous discussions on distribution requirements.
“Thirty-six to 34 courses is a momentous change. It’s probably the biggest single academic change we can make at this school,” one professor said.
Members of the ad hoc Curriculum Distribution committee — the group tasked with reevaluating the distribution requirements — clarified that they would prefer to know what the new graduation requirements are as soon as possible so that they can better fit their potential adjustments within these parameters. Johnson added that the timing of this proposal and vote was intended to provide sufficient context for the committee’s work.
The SGA launched a student survey yesterday to solicit student experiences with the distribution requirement system in order to inform the committee’s upcoming proposals, according to Tazabekova, the SGA vice president.
Several faculty members who supported the proposal cited student well-being as a reason to provide more flexibility, and they encouraged other faculty to use their agency to advise students.
“It's been a rough four to six years. I feel like I've been directly engaged in conversations with many colleagues about how students are doing and, and what I would call a pretty severe work workload crisis that has affected a lot of our students,” one faculty member stated.
Latin Honors
Following the vote, the assembled professors discussed a proposed change to the Latin honors system at graduation. Currently, more than 90% of Middlebury students graduate with some form of honors, with 56% graduating at the highest rank of summa cum laude, according to the Faculty Council presentation.
“We thought that if everybody gets honors, which we’re close to, then that sort of means nobody’s getting honors. And so we're simultaneously honoring everybody, but also not really honoring the most distinguished students,” Johnson explained.
The faculty who spoke generally agreed on the need to amend the system to reduce the number of students entitled to graduate with the highest honors of the college. The Faculty Council’s motion as currently written would restrict cum laude honors to the top 30% of graduating students, magna cum laude to the top 15% and summa cum laude to the top 2%.
The proposal would also restrict Dean’s List honors to the top 15% of students who have taken four credits that semester, and it would remove valedictorian and salutatorian honors at graduation starting in spring 2025.
Some professors questioned the technical aspects of calculating the cutoffs for honors and the potential to create a competitive, adversarial environment surrounding grading. The proposal to change Latin honors will be considered in December at the next meeting of the faculty.
Ryan McElroy '25 (he/him) is the Editor in Chief.
Ryan has previously served as a Managing Editor, News Editor and Staff Writer. He is majoring in history with a minor in art history. Outside of The Campus, he is co-captain of Middlebury Mock Trial and previously worked as Head Advising Fellow for Matriculate and a research assistant in the History department. Last summer Ryan interned as a global risk analyst at a bank in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Madeleine Kaptein '25.5 (she/her) is a managing editor.
Madeleine previously served as a staff writer, copy editor and local editor. She is a Comparative Literature major with minors in German and Art History. In Spring 2024, she studied abroad in Mainz, Germany, from where she wrote for the Addison Independent about her host country. In her free time, she enjoys journaling, long walks and runs, and uncomplicated visual arts projects.
