With finals week approaching quickly, libraries on campus grow more crowded and energy drink sales rise as students get down to studying. But the light at the end of the tunnel known as summer break is also near. Over three months long, summer vacation is a time for many students to relax and unwind after a long, stressful year of school.

There is much speculations about why summer vacation is so long. A popular, though not necessarily true one, is that in the old days parents needed their children in the fields to help with the harvest.

Summer vacations were nowhere near as long as they are now until the early 20th century. Their length was changed because of various concerns about the year-long calendar, such as that students would burn out staying in school all year long and that keeping many students in a hot, crowded classroom encourages the spread of disease.

Although those concerns eventually faded away, the calendar stayed, partly due to the high costs of maintaining educational institutions for longer periods. Today, academic terms in schools across America average on a measly 180 days a year. In case you didn’t notice, 180 is less than half of 365 – American students spend more days in a year out of school than in it.

The United States lags behind other countries in terms of academic term length. In the United Kingdom, the number is only slightly larger at 192, but in Israel it is 216, and in Japan a whopping 243.

American students’ often disappointing performance compared to other developed nations – measured by standardized tests and graduation rates, among others – is often blamed partly on the short academic year. As summer months go on and on, students’ knowledge slowly fades away, and by fall teachers have to deal with students’ poor mathematical and reading skills, lost in the idleness of summer.

In other words, summer vacation is often a waste of time. This is not to say that students do not need breaks, but three months seems to be far too long, especially considering there is enough time to complete whole courses throughout a summer school term.

What difference does it make, though? Why should it be shortened? The answer is that a shorter vacation period and a longer academic term can allow students to spend less time in school and to graduate earlier. This will allow workers-in-the-making to enter the job market earlier, stimulating the economy of the country.

Others would argue, however, that the long summer break presents students with opportunities to engage in beneficial activities they would have otherwise missed without the long break. There are of course many possible activities, most more productive than killing enemies in Halo all day long or watching season after season of The Office for the umpteenth time.

Many students hold summer jobs, allowing them to make some money to help fund their college education (or not, depending on how the income is used). Still, without a college degree, jobs available to students might not be a worthwhile time investment in the long run – if students are able to graduate early with shorter summer vacations, they are more likely to obtain higher paying jobs that would earn them the same amount of money in a shorter period.

Another way that students make use of the summer is to take summer classes. While this can be a good way to utilize time, summer classes are often extremely condensed (Four lectures of organic chemistry a week? Hell yes!), and a longer academic term would be a better solution than attempting to cram a semester’s worth of materials into a summer.

Perhaps one that most would agree is a worthy activity during the summer is an internship. Whether at a banking institution or at a research institute, internships are long-term commitments that can provide students with valuable experiences that prepare them for their careers. Nonetheless, with the scarcity of positions and increasingly competitive pool of applicants, it seems unfair that so few students can have internships while others are left to their part-time jobs at their hometown.

Summer vacation, while allowing students to take a break from school, has been shaped by the accidents of history and drags on for far too long. The benefits are outweighed by the damages caused, and though it might be too ingrained into the culture to be changed, a shorter summer break would bring tremendous improvement to the American education system.

Albert Budhipramono ([email protected]) is a freshman majoring in biology.