Fall break needs to be longer.

Many other universities get more days off from school for holidays and fall and Thanksgiving breaks than we do.

This has to change.

One day without classes isn’t a “break;” it’s a day when you turn your alarm off in your sleep.

One day isn’t enough additional time to give many students a chance to travel home or to other potential destinations. Students from the east or west coasts don’t have enough time to travel home by car, and the expense of an airplane trip is usually not worth spending for a weekend’s amount of time to visit.

James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va. gives students one full week off from school for Thanksgiving holiday. Those students now have the opportunity to travel and spend quality time with family and friends they haven’t seen in a long time whether they live close to or far from campus. Though they don’t get a “fall break,” less travel stresses and expenses and more break time become the more desirable situations.

Let’s make this happen.

Tuition rose last summer. We understand that the cost of education is rising constantly and the increase is necessary for expanding student opportunities, yadda yadda yadda. But surely a longer fall break would help to cut down on expenses as students aren’t using up resources on campus and professors aren’t teaching. Maybe, just maybe, we can make tuition go down.

We’re on to something here. The more break time we get, the less expensive school should be. Why not a full week of no school in the middle of the fall semester? How would that be different than spring break?

Why stop at one week? Prices are dropping further as break time is added. Let’s extend Thanksgiving break to a week as well. That’d be so nice to have so much time off from the stress of classes as the semester nears its end.

What about those first two months of the semester? There’s no break at all between Opening Ceremonies at Chapel and fall break. Let’s take Labor Day and Columbus Day off too.

And let’s not forget dead day. The university is still considering removing dead day from finals week. That’s ridiculous. Instead we should get dead week to be fully prepared for finals, since everyone studies all day long on dead day.

That’s more like it: three and a half weeks of break time during the semester. This isn’t even counting the two weeks of classes you can skip using unexcused absences.

Why don’t we just take the “going” out of “going to college”? We could just take online classes. Those are fun. That should bring costs down even further as we learn and prepare for our careers from the comfort of our own homes.

We’re all for higher education and learning practical application in real-life situations. Can’t it just be easier?