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ITC moves to a four-day study week in 2021

Posted on 09/12/2020 by

In 2021, ITC will be moving to a four-day study week for better study-life balance and well-being for our students.

In 2021, ITC will be moving to a four-day study week. This means students will only need to be on campus for classes from Monday to Thursday.

Not only that, we have changed our study hours. In 2021, classes will run from 9am until 2.30pm Monday to Thursday (they used to be from 8am to noon, and 1pm to 5pm).

We’ve made this decision based on a number of factors, and we believe all of them mean less stress, more health, and a better balance for our students.

Here’s a little more about why we’ve made the switch.

2020 was exhausting

We’ll be the first to admit that 2020 was an incredibly difficult year.

No matter whether you were finishing up high school, working full time, at home with the kids, or something else, it was a truly tough year.

We understand that many people will be worn out and need some time to look after themselves in the year to come, and we hope that a four-day study week – and a three-day weekend – will help with that.

A better study/life balance

Fridays are usually days for study, but with this day taken out of the course schedule, it allows students to spend it on their own lives instead.

This could be spending time with friends, catching up with family, or sitting at home with a good book. No matter how you choose to spend it, it should help to balance out the mix of study and free time for ITC students.

It allows for part-time work

We understand that many of our students take up part-time roles outside of their studies. This is an impressive achievement, and we hope that having an extra day will allow them to either fit in more work hours, or simply have one day of the week where they are not either at college or at work.

Less stress and more wellness

We hardly need research to tell us that four days of study is less stressful than five, although it has been proven that four-day work weeks can lower employee sickness and increase satisfaction in the workplace.

We genuinely hope that a four-day week can offer similar wellness benefits for our students, giving them a mood boost and reducing the amount of time they spend sick during the year.

Lower costs

If you only have to take the bus four days per week instead of five, that means less money spent on bus fares. If you only have to drive in four days per week instead of five, that means less money spent on petrol and parking! We also suspect it may mean less money spent on lunches, considering the wonderful and tempting options available near each of our campuses.

In total, students will come in 49 days fewer than normal with this four-day study week – that’s a lot of petrol, parking, bus fares, and lunches!

Flexible study

With the ITC online study tool, students can feel supported when they cannot attend on campus for reasons outside of their control. They continue their studies online and keep up to date with their studies.  

This means that if you prefer to continue studying on Fridays, you’ll have access to all the workbooks and materials online at home, so you can study to catch up, get ahead, or simply remind yourself of what you learned that week.

Keep in mind, our campuses will remain open on Fridays, even though there are no classes. Therefore students can still pop in to study, use the campus resources (such as WiFi, computers, and printers).

Our online option also means that if you are feeling unwell, you can stay at home to study. This will help to protect all students and staff when colds and flus make the rounds, and hopefully keep everyone healthier overall.

Life-appropriate class times  

With the new class times, we aim to offer students classes that are much easier to fit around their personal commitments.

By starting at 9am, this means students should have more time in the mornings to drop kids off to school/kindy, make their way through rush hour traffic, enjoy a great breakfast, or simply get a little more sleep.

By finishing at 2.30pm, the opposite is true – we hope that students will now be able to have enough time to beat the evening traffic, pick kids up from school, make it to their evening sport commitments, work an evening shift, or simply get home with enough energy left to make a delicious, nutritious meal.

We love to be different

Not to mention, a four-day study week isn’t very common in tertiary institutions.

Many other tertiary education providers operate on the five-day a week schedule, so this is just another fantastic reason why ITC is so special!

Following in Unilever’s footsteps

Unilever, an international consumer goods company, has recently announced that it will trial a four-day work week (at full pay) for its New Zealand employees.

The company believes that the old way of doing things is outdated, and is excited to test the new system out and see the results. They’re hoping to increase the work-life balance for staff, and give them greater energy to pursue their career ambitions.

We can’t be sure if Unilever was inspired by our decision, or if they simply came to the same conclusion that we did: Putting student health, happiness, and wellbeing first is essential, and will likely lead to more focus and passion for the task at hand as well.

If you’re interested in a four-day study week, or any of the amazing benefits of studying at ITC, get in touch to find out more or begin the enrolment process.

Campus Study – college@itc.co.nz 0800 TOURISM (0800 868747) or https://www.itc.co.nz/contact-us/

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