South University measures learning in quarter credit hours and runs its online courses in two session lengths: an accelerated five to five and a half week format and a standard ten to eleven week format, with identical content either way. New sessions open on a rolling calendar, roughly every five to six weeks, giving about eight online start dates a year. A quarter credit is smaller than a semester credit, so read your program by its total credits rather than comparing rates against a semester school. Coursework is organized by week, Week 1 through Week 11, and each week carries its own graded deliverables.
Quarters, sessions, and weeks
The system nests in three layers. The quarter is the academic term the university runs on. Inside it, an online session is the actual run of your course, and South offers each course in two session lengths that cover the same material: the accelerated version compresses it into five to five and a half weeks, and the standard version spreads it across ten to eleven. Inside the session, work is organized by week. This is why students here talk in weeks rather than months; the unit of planning is Week 4, not October.
Quarter credits versus semester credits
The number that confuses transfers is the credit. A quarter credit represents less seat time than a semester credit, and the common conversion used across quarter-system schools is that three semester credits equal about four and a half quarter credits, or put simply, a semester hour is roughly one and a half quarter hours.
| If you have | It is about | So |
|---|---|---|
| 1 semester credit | 1.5 quarter credits | Semester numbers look smaller than quarter numbers |
| 3 semester credits | 4.5 quarter credits | A typical transferred course |
| A 120 semester-credit degree | about 180 quarter credits | Read totals, not the rate alone |
This is the standard ratio, not a South-specific promise; your admissions representative confirms how each course converts, so treat the table as orientation and their written evaluation as the answer.
Eight doors a year
Because sessions open about every five to six weeks, there are roughly eight online starts across the year. Two things follow. You are rarely more than a few weeks from a fresh start, so a missed window is not a lost quarter. And finished courses can be chained into the next session with very little idle time, which is the honest way to move faster here: not a compressed course, but no wasted gaps between them. The exact upcoming dates are published on South's online pages, so confirm them there when you plan. This is also why the calendar rewards booking the next course before the current one closes: the gap between finishing and starting again is a choice, and left to drift it quietly adds months to a degree the coursework never required.
The week-organized gradebook
Every session, whichever length, grades by week. A typical week mixes a discussion board with peer replies, a written assignment or paper, and periodically a quiz, exam, presentation, or project milestone. The accelerated format does not remove any of this; it doubles the density, so a five and a half week course asks for the same deliverables in half the calendar. That is the single most important thing to understand before choosing a format, and it is worked through in the grading manual and the quarter rhythm manual.
Planning around the system
- Plan in weeks, not months; the syllabus is a Week 1 to Week 11 map
- Convert transferred credit before you compare cost to a semester school
- Book the next session before the current one ends to keep the chain tight
- Match the accelerated format to quiet work seasons, since it doubles weekly load
- Graduate nurses: the B-minimum rule rides on top of all of this
See the whole session at a glance
Send your program and session format. We map every week and carry the heavy ones, with a free first sample.
Sources and verification
Facts on this page come from official and independent sources, and anything that matters is worth checking against the originals:
- www.southuniversity.edu/online: South University's official online hub, primary source for session formats and start dates
- catalog.southuniversity.edu: the official catalog, source for credit and term definitions
- www.sacscoc.org: the institutional accreditor
- apastyle.apa.org: APA Style, the official style authority