With a record number of Stanford students enrolling in introductory programming classes this year, experts have begun to notice inflationary pressure on the unbacked currency known as “late days” that are indiscriminately distributed to every student at the start of the quarter. Once the course coordinators abandoned the gold standard back in 2009, the value of late days have gradually slipped in international exchange markets. “When my father came to Stanford, each late day earned him a 24 hour extension on his coding assignments. Now I’m lucky to get an extra 2-3 hours for each late day I redeem,” explained current sophomore Dan Trotter. Experts in the economics department forecast that if enrollment does not decline in the upcoming school year, hyperinflation could render late days completely useless, forcing students to amass hundreds of late days just to get a five minute extension on the assignment deadline.
