The University of Akron is phasing out its Five-Star Fridays, the plan it announced in 2018 to clear students' schedules of classes on Fridays to free them up for more hands-on learning opportunities, internships and more.

Now, it's offering more flexibility to departments to begin adding Friday classes back if they want.

Credit where credit is due: I first heard about this change in The Buchtelite, the University of Akron's student paper and online publication. As a former student reporter/editor myself (I was at Kent State), I know the valuable work student media does. Give The Buchtelite's story on president Gary L. Miller's plans for the university a read.

After I did, I reached out to the University of Akron for more information on Five-Star Fridays' fate.

Five-Star Fridays began in 2018; a year later, Akron polled students, faculty and others on the approach, the university said in information provided to Crain's. The feedback was that the condensed, four-day academic week made it difficult for students to balance school, work, internships and campus activities like student organizations or intramural sports. So going forward, the university will still offer some of the programming it had started offering on Fridays, but departments can schedule classes then, too.

The registrar's office expects to see about 25% of classes back on a Friday schedule by spring of 2020 and about 50%-75% of them back on Fridays by fall 2020, the university said.