Academic quarter (class timing)

An academic quarter is the quarter-hour (15 minute) discrepancy between the nominal start time for a lecture or lesson ("per schema") and the actual starting time, at some universities in most European countries.

The quarter system started in Sweden and dates back to the days when the ringing of the church bell was the general method of time keeping. When the bell rang on the hour, students had 15 minutes to get to the lecture. Thus a lecture with a defined start time of 10:00 would start at 10:15.

Academic quarter exists to a varying extent in many universities, especially where the campus is spread out over a larger area, necessitating the fifteen-minute delay for the students to walk from one building to another between classes.

In the German university system, lectures scheduled at a certain hour, with or without the addition "c.t." (cum tempore, Latin for "with time"), usually start 15 minutes after the full hour. If this is not the case, usually "s.t." (sine tempore, Latin for "without time") is added to indicate that the lecture will begin at the exact time.

In Polish the phrase kwadrans akademicki refers to an unspoken rule allowing students and lecturers to arrive up to 15 minutes late to a lecture; the students can skip the lecture without repercussions should the lecturer not arrive within that time. Similarly, the Greek phrase ακαδημαϊκό τέταρτο also refers to an unspoken rule that allows both lecturers and students to join the class with a delay of up to 15 minutes; no law is currently in place to formalize this practice which extends to the school system as well as many workplaces. In some institutions it is traditional for the lecturer to always arrive in class 15 minutes late to accommodate the students' potential delay.