<p>In today’s online Lantern,
</p>
<p>It passed. Boo.</p>
<p>So you only need 181 hours now? That's a good thing to hear. I pretty much dismissed Ohio State after seeing that you need to overload some quarters to graduate on time. Now they just need to fix their crappy financial aid. Despite being an instate public school, it would have cost me more to attend OSU than every other school that accepted me.</p>
<p>Well, tuition-wise that's incorrect, as it falls in the middle of the state's colleges in terms on tuition.</p>
<p>Scholarships are obviously more competitive at Ohio State and require higher standards in order to obtain the financial aid.</p>
<p>You don't need to "overload" any quarters - 15 credit hours is not difficult at all, and most people do more than that. Trust me, you can handle 20 credit hours for a mere two quarters so long as you don't take Organic Chem, Physics, Microbiology and two graduate courses at the same time.</p>
<p>Or, you can take even one AP exam that will knock off those last 10 credit hours for you. Inability to complete the coursework is not the reason most students fail to graduate on time; it is changing majors late in their school career or forgetting about those four levels of foreign language that need to be completed until the very last quarter.</p>
<p>Well I'd say what the BOT was thinking was:</p>
<p>Typical course load at OSU - 15 hrs/quarter</p>
<p>15 hours/quarter x 12 quarters = 180 total hours</p>
<p>Average graduation time at OSU - 13 quarters</p>
<p>4 yr. graduation rate - 47%</p>
<p>"If we reduce the number of hours to adjust to the "typical" OSU student's habits, we can raise the 4 yr. graduation rate, prestige goes up, students happy because they don't go a fifth year, parents happy because they don't have to pay for another 10 hours of education..."</p>
<p>I understand that the typical load is 15 hours, but that's not a heavy load by any means. As long as you choose the right classes to combine for your two 20-hour quarters, it won't be an overload at all. Like I said, most delays in graduation are due to changing majors late in the game, or not paying attention to graduation requirements until senior year, then discovering you need 4 quarters of a foreign language. Very few people can't graduate just because they are unable to "overload" on two quarters.</p>
<p>I was on the Dean's Student Advisory Group this year, and we discussed whether to reduce the requirements. Humanities (that's us) voted no, but oh well.</p>
<p>Well I think it also gives some leeway to students that HAVE to take a class to graduate. Some classes are only offered once per year and every little hour counts to some people when graduating on time...</p>