Generations of college students have been content to shut their brains off during summer, hanging out at the shore or waiting tables.

Not Matthew Felbinger. He went into overdrive.

The University of Pittsburgh sophomore stuffed an entire semester of world geography into one week in May by taking a "fast-track" course at the Community College of Allegheny County. Like a growing number of his peers nationwide, he decided that the quickest and shrewdest route to a college degree runs right through summer.

Sure, there are less masochistic ways to explore the Ural Mountains than sitting through five daylong classes spanning 43 hours or buzzing through a 500-page advance reading assignment.

But the course and another four-week class in English yielded a handsome reward: Six college credits Felbinger otherwise would have to take this coming year at Pitt, each earned at a price sharply lower than what he would have paid there.

"When I was doing it, I hated it because I had essentially been going to school since January," said Felbinger, 19, of Whitehall. "But now that I'm done, I'm glad to have gotten it out of the way."

Once viewed as a safety net for the kid who flunked intro to chemistry or struggled with math, summer classes have become a way for ambitious students to offset soaring college costs and ever-more demanding course loads. Those classes, in turn, have become a moneymaker for schools offering them.

Experts say the result has been a boom in those programs on many campuses, even as some academics wonder if these hurry-up courses shortchange students.

At CCAC, the number of students taking a summer course while pursuing a degree elsewhere is up by 26 percent from five years ago. Many transfer their credits to local campuses such as Pitt, Robert Morris University and Duquesne University, but also to dozens of far-flung schools including Johns Hopkins University, Duke University and the University of California at Berkeley.

Nationwide, data on the trend is spotty. But a survey of 450 campuses in 2003 by the North American Association of Summer Sessions found that enrollment growth over four years averaged 4 percent among private colleges and even more -- 9 percent -- at public campuses.

Many students use summer to study abroad. Or, at such schools as The College of Wooster (Ohio), they are flocking to undergraduate research opportunities.

"Summer is becoming more of a third semester," said Scott Alessandro, an administrator at Boston University, which expects to register an enrollment gain of 6 percent this summer.

And schools including his have discovered the revenue potential of filling seats in buildings that are open anyway during summer. In fact, summer offerings once determined at some schools by which faculty wanted to earn extra pay now are closely targeted to demand and heavily marketed.

And often, these accelerated courses, which can be one week in duration but more typically run four to six weeks, are offered at bargain prices.

At Boston University, for example, credits cost $444 in summer vs. $937 the rest of the year. "That's a significant discount," Alessandro said.

One reason some students are reordering their summer priorities is that nowadays a summer job barely makes a dent in campus costs, said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director with the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

"You can make $7 an hour now or you can expedite your 'time to degree' and make a professional salary a year or so sooner," Nassirian said. "More and more students are opting for the more economically rational outcome."

With costs topping $40,000 at elite private colleges and $10,000 a year at some public campuses, it's not surprising that students are dead set "to get as much as you can at today's prices before the cost goes up," he said.

And if you're intent on pursuing multiple degrees, as a growing number of students are, it may mean more credits and thus longer to graduate.

"We have kids now working on dual majors, graduating with three minors," said West Virginia University's Sue Day-Perroots, dean of extended learning. "Summer is a way they can graduate on time and still pick up another minor."

At WVU, summer enrollment has grown by 25 percent to nearly 14,000 since 1995. One reason may be the state's Promise Scholarship, which provides free tuition for qualified West Virginians but only if they generally maintain a 3.0 and take at least 30 credits each year.

But Day-Perroots points to something else -- a generation of students who from an early age are accustomed to being carted from soccer practice to music lessons to SAT coaching.

"These are kids without down time," she said. "Summer is just another part of that engagement."

At Carnegie Mellon University, Sara Brooks, 21, a writing major, hopes the four six-week courses she's taking on her campus this summer will help her graduate on time, even though she spent time abroad and took a reduced course load during the regular academic year.

Bradley Hoffman, 19, a Mt. Lebanon resident and Temple University sophomore, has an even tighter deadline. "I'm hoping to be out in 3¹/₂ years by taking summer courses" he said.

He's using the summer to attempt what many of his peers have done: Isolate a truly difficult course, in his case managerial accounting, one of two classes he's taking at CCAC.

If he had to take it at Temple this fall while juggling a full-time course load, "I would be suicidal," he said.

"By taking it in the summer, I have only two courses to worry about," he said.

And there's another benefit. Since the credits transfer to Temple but not the grade, Hoffman could slide by in the course with a C without harming his near perfect 3.8 grade point average at Temple.

Likewise, Pitt's Felbinger said the geography and English credits this summer would enable him to take fewer courses in the fall and spring while tackling a challenging two-semester course in organic chemistry that is part of his pharmacy major. He said he was advised at Pitt that those taking fewer credits tend to do better in the class.

"I think I have a really good chance of getting an A," he said.

Some educators, though, wonder if what's actually occurring is an erosion of standards, a victory of student convenience and campus profits over what an education is supposed to be about.

Can anyone really get the essence of a 16-week course condensed into half the normal time or less, asked Jim Perley, a retired professor now living in Maine who is a past president of the American Association of University Professors. Where's the learning curve after three straight classroom hours of calculus?

"If your goal is to get to the finish line faster, then, yeah, I understand the argument," Perley said. "But don't be surprised if the product you turn out is not a person who can reason."

And a condensed course gets even more so if a faculty member tires from several hours lecturing. "The temptation to dismiss class early is a difficult temptation to resist," said Stuart Strother, an associate professor of business and management at Azusa Pacific University near Los Angeles.

Still, those involved in summer programs say students generally take fewer courses and therefore can devote more time to the accelerated workload. And the courses themselves are geared for rapid delivery.

"A faculty member just can't come up with a course and call it a course," said John LaBrie, who is director of program development for summer at Brown University and president-elect of the Summer Session Association. "These courses still go through, in most cases, the same curricular review that regular courses go through," he said.

A CCAC radio ad aimed at selling four-year students on summer study promises "more time for jobs, internships and of course friends. And imagine what you can do with the money you save on tuition."

Hoffman, the Temple student, seemed like a satisfied customer in explaining how taking two courses at CCAC was moving him more quickly toward graduation. Still, the pool in his back yard has seemed a bit farther away as he tries to squeeze in those classes, a job and a social life.

"Trust me," he said. "It does take away from my summer, big time."