Barry Vaughan reported that he had checked with the Higher Learning Commission regarding contact hours and learned that the HLC does not look at contract hours for accreditation purposes.  Barry said that he checked with Carnegie and other places such as universities for their definitions of contact hours.  The new policy has conflicting language; one hour equals three contact hours.  With the new policy, semesters would need to be extended to eighteen weeks.  The tradition is that one hour equals fifty minutes of contact which equals a sixteen week semester.