Why doesn't the academic year start on January first? The academic year starts somewhere in the middle of the normal calendar year in almost all schools. Even if the courses are divided into semesters, the Fall term is essentially considered to be the beginning of a new academic year. It is also true for the financial year in most places.


Why doesn't the academic year start in January?
If the reasons are so prevalent, then why didn't the normal calendar year start in the month of August, for example?
Basically because schooling is the inverse of farming. That is: Historically farming and feeding the family (and community) took precedence over all other considerations. This is primarily a job that takes place through the spring, summer, and fall -- with little or no activity possible in the winter. Therefore in most cultures the original calendar year starts in the winter and so spans one farming cycle, i.e., spring-summer-fall (in the original Roman calendar, the winter period didn't even have assigned months!). 

When schooling historically started to be of some value, it came secondary to farming, and occurred only as farming allows. So the winter is an excellent time for it, because no useful farming can be done. On the other hand, the harvest season, around August-September, is the busiest time for farming, and critical in traditional communities to have "all hands on deck" for that work, and thus schooling would not occur at that time. And therefore the main school schedule would begin after the fall harvest, and run through to the summer of the next year.

In short, the fact that schooling and farming have an inverse schedule is not too surprising, because traditionally the former only occurred in the time not being used for the latter. Having grown up on a farm in the U.S. in the 1970's, I still experienced some tension between my family and school, because I would need to be out of school for about a week in September for a particular job that we were expected to do with our livestock at that time.