Emerson College ‘Snow Calculator’ Totals How Much Missed Classes Are Worth
Emerson College’s newspaper The Berkeley Beacon lives up to the school’s reputation of being so freakin’ innovative by creating an interactive feature on their website called the “snow calculator.” Though the feature is quite nifty, the results may actually be a big bummer.
Due to the city’s overwhelming amount of snow this winter, the college has canceled five full days of classes. This calculator allows a student to plug in exactly how many classes he or she has missed, and on what days, and then it feeds out an ugly number valuing the canceled classes.
Here’s how the students figured the math according to their methodology:
At Emerson, one credit costs $1,145, and one credit is worth approximately 15 hours of classroom instruction per semester (or one hour of classroom instruction for 15 weeks). This means each hour of classroom instruction is worth approximately $76.33. To calculate the total value of Emerson’s snow days, the number of class hours per day entered is multiplied by the number of days canceled (currently two Mondays, one Monday after 4 p.m., two Tuesdays, and one Wednesday). This calculation does not account for potential makeup days.
Mind that Emerson is also not the only institution that canceled classes due to snow and the MBTA’s shutdown. Though this calculator is specific to Emerson, these numbers are somewhat relative to most of the schools around Boston with a similar tuition. This just puts a bit of (or maybe a large) perspective on what the fluffy white stuff is really costing us.
