The UC Davis Academic Senate rightfully rejected the plan to raise the minimum required courseload for full-time students. If a proposal to increase the required units per quarter to 13 arises in the future, it should also be voted down. Changing the average number of units taken each year would be confusing and complicated as well as nearly impossible to enforce. Not only would students worry about fulfilling specific general education and graduation unit requirements, but they may be compelled to take more classes than they can handle to make sure they have the correct average number of course units.
Many students choose to take lighter courseloads because they are active outside the classroom.
A lot of learning takes place in internships, education abroad forays, research projects and off-campus jobs that do not come with an assigned unit value or count toward graduation. It is ridiculous to force students to take more classes just to fulfill a needless change in unit requirements. College students realize their own limitations and often choose to take fewer units because they know they will not be able to manage the workload associated with additional classes. Other students may fill the extra unit with two P.E. classes or search for an easy class that needs little effort and will not damage their grade point average - focusing on simply finishing the requirement, not on learning. However, these problems are solving themselves.