The history of this is controversial. Student Government was charged with polling the student body and making an official recommendation to President Destler on that basis. The students voted to keep 10-week quarters, but SG recommended against the popular vote. It wasn’t just their fault, of course, but this kind of thing is part of the reason I left RIT. Nothing seemed to get done, at least not right.

The Scottish University I attended in the 1980s had years made up of 3 terms of roughly 10 weeks - 9 of teaching and one of exams. A class would typically run for the whole year - so for our first year maths course there were about 6 lectures and 2 tutorials and one exam for that class at the end of the year - the class exams during the year not actually counting for anything. We probably had about ~30 hours of timetabled lectures and tutorials a week - which actually got less as you went through the 4 year course but the overall workload incread a lot - although you were always left to decide how much you wanted to work (in my final year I did a lot of 14 hour days).

Overall I thought it was great, I learned a huge amount, pushed myself really hard (mentally and physically) and had a hoot of a time socially. I don't regret it for a moment - and not just because it didn't cost me or my parents a penny!

[NB My tax payments have more than repaid the investment made in me.]

I don't know who told you that but they're wrong.

Semesters by definition are about 15 weeks long. Some schools (like RIT) operate on shorter quarter schedules of ~9 weeks, but this is definitely not the norm.