No matter what school you’re in at Washington University, chances are your program requires a significant amount of effort and the utmost level of dedication in order to do well. Even though people joke on Yik Yak about one school or another, at the end of the day, we’re all on the struggle bus. But it’s time to take a serious look at how a whole division of our campus is unable to leave their work behind until 11 at night, if then, when the art students finally get to return to the comfort of their dorm.

For the level of professional work required in art studio classes, it’s almost impossible to do well without spending large chunks of time, outside of class, grinding away in the studios. Having to spend the extra time isn’t an unreasonable requirement, but it increasingly appears to be excessively taxing on the body and mind, given that the amount of credit is half the amount of hours spent in class.

People always say that as long as you balance your schedule and plan ahead, you should have free time to yourself, but that isn’t the case for a majority of students. At the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, students labor away almost every day of the week with barely enough time to catch a majestic sunset over Brookings Hall, which is right next door. Take senior communication design major Maggie Edelman, for instance. She took 18 credit hours this fall, but three of those classes were studios, which ended up being not just 18 hours of class, but a whopping 27 hours of class per week.

“When you add on the time-consuming homework of literally making things, it gets hard to balance that with any extracurriculars,” Edelman wrote to Student Life.

Art students aren’t just doing busywork, though. “You can’t show up empty-handed, and you can’t skip class. That seems like a bit more work than maybe showing up to a lecture class once or twice a week and studying for a test every month, but it can be the same number of credits,” Edelman continued. Herein lies the problem.

The amount of time required to succeed adds up for all Sam Fox students, even art minors. Pursuing an art minor myself, I’ve encountered some of the difficulties firsthand. Last semester for Black and White Film Photography, I was in class or outside of class working on assignments for six mandated hours, in addition to weekends toiling away in the darkroom, while receiving a mere three credits.

Fellow art minor, sophomore Robin Linzmayer, sees this dilemma not only in Sam Fox, but for science classes as well.

“My science courses with labs have five class hours a week and are [given] four credits,” she said. Linzmayer proposes that because art studio and science with lab “courses require excessive amounts of time out of class, they should both be four credits.”

These courses should be at least that, if not five, given the high level of work required. Sam Fox requires a lot of outside-the-classroom work from its students, not limiting their concentrated efforts to the normal school day. To do well requires more than just going to a weekly teaching assistant session for help; it forces students to make a commitment that prevents them from experiencing other aspects of life here.

The dean of Sam Fox, Carmon Colangelo, made a point that studio classes utilize special materials that require this level of work, justifying the credit requirements. In an email to Student Life, Colangelo claims it “is standard practice for art schools,” and that “the nature of…study [in Sam Fox] is different than a lecture class that may involve readings, research papers, writing assignments and exams.”

Sam Fox is accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD), “who as a professional body have set standards for studio courses,” Colangelo commented. Yet, after taking a look at the NASDAD 2015-2016 handbook myself, it becomes clear that Sam Fox’s credit policies aren’t completely restricted by the association. The standard does not “require that a credit hour definition at any institution for any course or purpose duplicate exactly the definition provided,” as Colangelo wrote, and it doesn’t “dictate the ratio of in-class versus out-of-class work,” which is extraordinarily high for students in studio classes at Sam Fox.

Colangelo has the power to set a new standard across the nation for collegiate art students and could begin a trend that improves, most importantly, the quality of life for its students here. The college experience shouldn’t be based on what academic division you’re in.