For Wesleyan University sophomore Dana Taussig, getting back to college means Saturdays at drama rehearsals and Sundays in the library. But this fall it'll mean something else, too: Fridays in the classroom. After years of watching students take three-day weekends, the college is scheduling more classes at week's end. "It's annoying," says the 19-year-old. "It limits my Thursday-night partying."

There's something new on the schedule for America's college students this year: a five-day workweek. From Syracuse to Miami of Ohio, schools across the country are bringing back more Friday classes to ease up on a lecture-hall space crunch -- and cut down on an extra day of partying, too. Indiana University is considering 7:30 a.m. classes next year (make that a double espresso), while the University of Richmond tells professors to give Friday quizzes to prevent class-cutting. The Ivies are getting into this, too, with Cornell and Penn already considering changes.

The move is something of a shift at many schools, which in recent years have been pampering kids with perks like cushy dorm rooms and gourmet cafeterias. But with tuition at record levels and the economy still off, school officials say more parents want a full week's worth of teaching for their money. Study habits are another issue, with extended weekends encouraging extra procrastination. Then there are administrators who say the idle Fridays just plain look bad. "Would you invest in General Motors if they gave up on Fridays?" says William Cooper, president of the University of Richmond.

Students at Tufts University are among those facing more Friday classes.

To no one's surprise, the change isn't going over well with a lot of students. At Clark University, where officials hope the tough schedule will put a crimp on partying, the campus newspaper joked about an electric fence to keep kids on campus. Students at Tufts griped, while faculty members joined the protest at Notre Dame -- forcing the school to back off a plan to switch classes earlier this year from a Monday/Wednesday to a Wednesday/Friday schedule.

Complaints

And then there's Syracuse, which has announced an ambitious plan to move some 700 classes to Fridays. When the university put up a Web site to explain the move, it was flooded with hundreds of student complaints. The university says the plan will reduce schedule conflicts. But tell that to junior Katherine Workman, who's worried Friday classes will cut into her sorority duties. "I feel like I'm being ripped off of my free time," says the 19-year-old from Sacramento, Calif.

Though it may not seem new, the idea of a short college week is actually a relatively recent phenomenon, and as late as the '70s, colleges like Notre Dame were even holding big courses on Saturdays. But during the '80s, when colleges gave students more say about their schedules, Friday classes started gradually disappearing. And many faculty avoided holding classes on Friday for fear students would skip them. Things got so bad that places like Arizona State have more than 100 classrooms sitting vacant on Fridays.

Now it's changing, with schools dealing with a host of issues. Budget cuts in the slow economy have some colleges trimming classes from the schedule. Schools are also struggling to cut down on drinking (some studies have even suggested a link between course-free Fridays and heavy alcohol use). And with the boom days of campus construction over, overcrowding is becoming a big problem. At one point, Indiana found itself without space for 35 classes heading into the fall, and administrators are gearing up to push sessions on -- yes, you got it -- Saturday. Two more possible additions: Duke, whose "Schedule Task Force" recommended making Fridays "more robust," and Penn, which is surveying its own faculty members. It's "fair to predict" the university will take some remedial steps, says Peter Conn, deputy provost at Penn.

At Wesleyan, senior Cristin Quealy actually likes the Friday move, which the college says reflects an overall effort to balance its schedule that it started three years ago. Last year, the 20-year-old from Westport, Conn., couldn't get into three classes she wanted because they were all offered at the same time. "My mom was furious," says Ms. Quealy. "She says that for the amount of money and hype Wesleyan gets, they don't accommodate students very well."

But it's not easy dragging students like Jeff Theobald back to class. After Tufts added about 25% more Friday classes and doubled its early-morning offerings last year, Mr. Theobald got stuck with a math class at 9:30 Friday mornings -- which started crimping his Thursday-night bar-hopping. Instead, he just skipped the class, still got an A and graduated on time. "I thought the two extra hours of sleep were important," says the 22-year-old.

Going Conservative

There is an argument against the move. Some schools say that while more balanced schedules would be nice, there are more pressing problems they need to fix first, like finding dorm space or improving academics or the quality of residential life on campus. Other schools say they actually work to keep the last day of the week free for students. Barnard, for example, encourages students to take internships on Fridays to supplement their education. But many academic experts think the full week is here to stay, if only because so many other societal trends are going conservative, with grade schools reintroducing dress codes and employers scotching casual Fridays.

Besides, schools say there's some new academic proof that Fridays are good for students. One recent study from the University of Colorado shows that students who cram information into a three- or four-day period, vs. five full days, don't retain as much. (Blame short-term memory.) "Information is lost over the weekend," says Julian Hertzog, an educational psychologist at William Woods University. "The longer the weekend, the more that's lost."