<p>sakky-- while you’re making some good points you’re also making a classic blunder. So many different explanations and scenarios are falling under this number that as an aggregate its actually providing little information. This number does not tell you whether financial aid is insufficient, academic support is insufficient, or whether students are transferring out in large numbers. While all of these concerns could be raised based on a low four-year graduation rate, why a school has the rate it has above cannot be ascertained from the data at all. Do 50% of students study abroad? Is the problem that they’re not properly setting up programs to get concentration credit abroad? Is it that people tend to do research abroad and take lighter course loads? Is there a trimester system with a mandatory winter session that some kids don’t take classes during or take internships instead?</p>
<p>There are lots of reasons why not being able to produce graduates after four-years may be a real bad sign, but this metric has, underneath the numbers, so many plausible explanations, both good and bad, that it’s hard to accurately and meaningfully analyze it and draw reasonable conclusions.</p>
<p>"Maybe you’ll grow up one day and understand that schools that have low ratings on this are often simply serving a different student body, one that’s often less wealthy and has other things to contend with, such as supporting a family. Your ire is misplaced. "</p>
<p>Maybe you’ll open your eyes one day and see that not everyone who is in college desearves to be there, nor should they be. you really don’t see a connection between a student being bright and responsable and their graduating on time? WOW!</p>
<p>"I would actually turn that logic on its head and ask: why exactly do certain majors have to be harder than others, as well as why does a school admit those students who are going to enter difficult majors and perform poorly? Don’t admit those students in the first place, or if you do, let them transition to one of the easy majors seamlessly. "</p>
<p>Agreed- don’t let students into engineering, physics, math, hard science, etc unless they passs a rigerous screening- be that SAT scores, pre-req’s, whatever.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl- Want to bet that when adjusting for certain majors and part timers, the graduation rate is TIGHTLY correlated with the aggregate SAT score.</p>
<p>Brown doesn’t have any requirements specific to any program upon entrance (except PLME). Students are free to take whatever courses they want and choose to concentrate in whatever they want once they’re admitted here. We have one of the higher four-year rates and one of the highest six-year rates. I don’t think the problem is with the nature of the courses and materials, like some engineers like to think, I think the problem is with the acceptance of ****ty pedagogy, especially since quite a few schools do overcome this so-called hard sciences issue.</p>
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<p>I do see a connection with being able to spell responsible right and graduating on time, especially since Firefox has a spell checker built in. That being said, there are significant issues here at play other than simply motivations and brains and to not understand and accept that fact is simply to deny reality.</p>
<p>“Maybe you’ll grow up one day and understand that schools that have low ratings on this are often simply serving a different student body, one that’s often less wealthy and has other things to contend with, such as supporting a family”</p>
<p>Yes, Pizza girl- let’s raise taxes and give these people more money to support them- we can call it the “downtrodden 4 year tax”. Of course, there is NO WAY that what drives this percentage of low 4 year graduation is people in school that just aren’t bright enough to weed their way through, whether it be GPA or not taking a high enough courseload or that immature kids prioratize partying over graduating on time. Of course acknowledging these factors- no matter how real just doesn’t fit the agenda you are pushing, does it now? So, let’s just pretend these factors don’t exist and if they do, that they aren’t really signifigant. In a way, I can’t blame you though- living in the real world is a harsh experience sometimes.</p>
<p>"The majority of MIT’s undergrads major in engineering, yet MIT boasts of a significantly higher 4-year graduation rate than does Michigan. Care to explain that? "</p>
<p>I will explane it- it’s an anomoly. MIT is an outlier. I suspect that the kids at MIT are so smart that they can take a large course load every semester and still not get burned out, but that is just my conjecture. The fact is that with the exception if maybe a few more anomolus schools, engineering majors take more than 4 years to complete. </p>
<p>If your point is that MIT should be held up as a model system and other schools should aspire to educate engineers as MIT does, then we agree 100%.</p>
<p>“That being said, there are significant issues here at play other than simply motivations and brains and to not understand and accept that fact is simply to deny reality”</p>
<p>Agrees- BUT I’m talking about the MAJOR driving forces, not ALL driving forces. I believe that responsibility (spelled korektley?) and brains are the two biggest aggregate driving forces here. Period. </p>
<p>By the way, I don’t have firefox but I DO have my 5 year old daughter hanging on me, but thanks for the snide remark correlating my typo with my ability to handle school. That was classy.</p>
<p>Your tone throughout your responses has made it clear that you’re really just saying, “Screw the facts that the minority and the poor, and those coming from the worst high schools (disproportionately an overlapping group) have major problems graduating that are alleviated by putting specific intervention mechanisms that were designed based upon well-understood sociology.”</p>
<p>It’s not a bootstrap issue, everyone is not on equal footing and there is considerable reason to try and put people on equal footing so that effort is the only reason why people would or wouldn’t graduate.</p>
<p>There’s a simpler explanation. Highly technical fields like engineering tend to have more technically demanding and specific major requirements—more prescribed courses, more prerequisites for advanced courses, more courses in a prescribed sequence. Miss any of those targets and it will set you back at least a semester, maybe a year. And anyone transferring into engineering from another discipline for from “undeclared” has almost no chance of graduating in four years. No doubt engineering courses are “hard” and academic standards are rigorous, but at good schools that will be true of other disciplines as well. But the major requirements in most other fields are far more flexible and less technically demanding—perhaps a few required intro courses, then typically just a specified number of upper-level courses or credit hours in the major field, so if you don’t get a course you want it really doesn’t matter so much because you can simply substitute another course to satisfy your major requirements, and/or take the same course later without pushing back graduation because in all likelihood that course is not a required prerequisite for other courses.</p>
<p>Ha! I suspect that plenty of students at HYPS couldn’t handle the rigor at Caltech. </p>
<p>But the point stands: there is no reason for Caltech, or any school for that matter, to admit students who can’t handle its level of rigor. </p>
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<p>Exactly - so then maybe that’s the key: schools should be more selective. I see no reason for schools to admit students who can’t handle the level of rigor. Everybody is hurt when that occurs - especially those students in question. Those students would be better off at less rigorous schools where they could flourish. It’s clearly better to graduate from the University of Georgia than to flunk out of Georgia Tech. I’ve never understood why schools persist in admitting students that they know, or can reasonably predict, are going to flunk out. </p>
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<p>Nope, it’s the majority. For example, in the latest year, 1146 bachelor’s degrees were conferred, 626 of which were engineering degrees. </p>
<p>Yes - true. After all, maybe schools that have engineering co-ops shouldn’t have them, or at least not run them in a manner that delays graduation. For example, MIT doesn’t run a coop program that results in a delay in graduation, and the possibly comparable UROP is fully integrated into the regular 4-year program, yet I doubt that anybody would seriously accuse MIT of not being a serious engineering school. Furthermore, I fail to see why premeds who transfer to engineering or business necessarily must have their graduation delayed, or, heck, why those premeds even feel the need to transfer in the first place. (If the problem is that those former premeds performed poorly in their premed classes, then, again, the answer is that they should not have even been admitted in the first place but rather have gone to an easier school where they would have done well in their premed coursework). </p>
<p>As far as 5-year architecture degrees or 6-year PharmD programs, I would say that those schools should offer 4-year generalist bachelor’s degrees as waypoint interim degrees. Why not? After all, not every student who enters those programs will actually finish them. Some of them will simply want to enter the workforce with just a regular bachelor’s after 4 years, and they should be provided that option. </p>
<p>If somebody in a PharmD program has been doing well in the first 4 years, why not grant such a person a “bachelor’s in pharmacological science” or similar-sounding degree? Sure, you can’t practice as a pharmacist with such a degree, but at least it’s still a bachelor’s degree. If an employer asks if you’re a college graduate, you can legitimately say ‘yes’. As we all surely know, many employers don’t really care what you majored in; all they care about is that you have a degree in something. If you want to apply to law, med, or business school, you are armed with requisite bachelor’s degree. </p>
<p>This is no different than how many PhD programs award interim master’s degrees to PhD candidates, such that if the student decides he doesn’t really want to finish the program, he still walks away with something.</p>
<p>sakky-- the reason is because there is no actual reasonable credentialization to give to students who haven’t completed the Pharm.D. program. If there was a shorter pedagogical unit that made sense, it would exist and have a degree. The 6-year Pharm.D. programs come from two years of pre-requisites that can be done anywhere and four years of pharmacy school. Those programs are combined programs-- truthfully, pharmacy is like medical school where you take pre-med courses as an undergrad then do four years of schooling, however in the case of pharmacy, many programs do not require that you have a bachelor’s before entering pharmacy school and combined programs became popular early because of this.</p>
<p>After four years you have pre-med courses plus half of pharmacy school. If you wanted a bachelor’s, you should have studied biology, chemistry, or biochemistry or whatever you want + pre-pharm classes and gotten a bachelor’s before entering pharmacy school for the four years.</p>
<p>You’re not an architect after five years, so what’s your degree? You don’t know enough to be called an architect or the program would be over and you don’t have a specialization in something else.</p>
<p>The B.Arch., PharmD, MD, JD, and engineering degree all mean something because they are credentials that are earned through a standardized practice and people know the value of these credentials as a result. There is no “I’m half done with medical school,” degree, so why should this be the case in other areas other than saying that bachelor’s does not mean you’ve completed something specific, rather, it just means you’ve studied at a college level for four years.</p>
<p>Interim master’s can be offered because master’s degrees have requirements that are naturally fulfilled on the way to the Ph.D. The degrees are designed to be compatible in this way. There is no “half-B.Arch,” whereas the master’s in many fields is essentially the half-Ph.D. by design.</p>
<p>I don’t think I’m making any blunder whatsoever. While I agree with you that many reasons could be ascribed to why a particular school suffers from a low graduation rate, that simply means that any particular school ought to fix whatever specific problem is reducing its graduation rate. </p>
<p>Allow me to address some of your specific concerns:</p>
<p>*Is financial aid insufficient? </p>
<p>Then make it sufficient. Provide more opportunities for work-study. Reduce your tuition cost. Or, as a last resort, don’t admit students who can’t afford to come. {After all, I see nothing to be gained by admitting students who can’t actually afford to pay their way through to graduation. You’re taking money from those people who can least afford it.} </p>
<p>*Do 50% of students study abroad? </p>
<p>Then construct a more flexible and integrated curriculum that allows students to study abroad while still graduating on time. Let’s keep in mind that study abroad is not supposed to be a vacation. Students are actually supposed to be taking classes and earning credit while abroad. {If that is not the case, and students are merely using abroad studies as a disguised vacation, then those programs ought to be abolished.} Those credits ideally should be fully transferrable into the standard curricula such that formerly abroad students should have no issue in graduating on time. </p>
<p>*Is it that people tend to do research abroad and take lighter course loads?</p>
<p>Then assign course credit to the research projects, as many schools do, such that the research itself becomes a ‘class’. Again, presumably, a research program abroad has pedagogical value and so should be rendered equivalent to a class. {If the research program lacks such value and is merely a disguised vacation, then the answer is to abolish such a program.} </p>
<p>*Is the problem that they’re not properly setting up programs to get concentration credit abroad?</p>
<p>That question encapsulates its own solution.</p>
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<p>I am not sympathetic to these questions either, for I don’t see why students should not be required during such trimesters to take either classes or non-credit internships.</p>
<p>Look, here’s the bottom line. We can all agree that a variety of reasons exist as to why any particular school may suffer from a relatively low graduation rate. But that’s really neither here nor there. All that means is that the school ought to remedy whatever specific problem is tamping down its graduation rate. If the curricula is too rigorous for some students, then the answer is to not admit those students. If the curricula is too rigidly lockstepped such that too many courses require too many prereqs, then the answer is to reform the curricula such that fewer prereqs are required for each class and that one integrated intro class can serve as the prereq for multiple courses, or even whether certain courses are truly necessary at all. {For example, I’ve never understood why ChemE’s at my old school were all required to take quantum chemistry, as practically no chemical engineer actually uses it.}</p>
<p>I don’t disagree that the schools should remedy this and that these are major problems, what I am disagreeing with is putting stock into an aggregate number that is not descriptive whatsoever of what, if any problems exist.</p>
<p>Your degree could be a bachelor’s degree in art and design. It wouldn’t be a fully-fledged B.Arch., but it would still be a bachelor’s degree. </p>
<p>Ridiculous? Well, let me tell you that that’s precisely what MIT offers right now within its School of Architecture. Sure, it’s not a fully fledged and professionally accredited architecture degree, and many MIT architecture undergrads will stay to earn a professionally accredited M.Arch degree. But hey, at least they’re provided a bachelor’s degree. They now have the option to pursue some other career armed with a degree, if they so choose. </p>
<p>As another case, in point, Berkeley offers a 4-year Bachelor of Arts in Architecture, which is also not a professionally accredited degree. Many of Berkeley’s undergrad architects will, akin to the MIT undergrads, stay to earn an M.Arch. But, again, at least they’ve earned an interim bachelor’s degree. They’re now free to pursue some other career if they so choose. </p>
<p>So that raises the question: if schools like MIT and Berkeley can provide such an option, why can’t others? </p>
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<p>Oh really? Are you sure? </p>
<p>Then consider the (admittedly vanishingly rare) case of students who actually enter medical school without bachelor’s degrees. Those students may indeed be able to earn interim bachelor’s degrees from their medical school. That’s right - a bachelor’s degree conferred by the medical school.</p>
<p>For example, the UCSF Medical School doesn’t formally require that medical students actually have a bachelor’s degree. The only requirement is that students have 90 semester credits, although obviously few students will be admitted to UCSF without a bachelor’s. Those rare students do indeed have the option of earning a bachelor’s degree in medical science - indeed the only undergrad degree that UCSF offers - as part of their medical studies.</p>
<p>*We strongly recommend that premedical students pursue a four-year undergraduate curriculum and obtain a baccalaureate degree before entering medical school.</p>
<p>However, we only require completion of three years (135 quarter units or 90 semester units) of acceptable transfer college credit from an accredited institution, including the required college-level courses listed below. Only 105 acceptable quarter units can be transferred from a junior or community college.</p>
<p>Students who enter the School of Medicine without a bachelor’s degree may receive a bachelor of science degree in medical sciences after satisfactorily completing the first three terms of the curriculum leading to the doctor of medicine degree.*</p>
<p>Hence, the question stands: if even a medical school such as UCSF can nevertheless offer interim bachelor’s degrees, is it really so ridiculous for other professional programs to do the same? </p>
<p>True, maybe the first 4 years of a PharmD program don’t offer a particularly well-integrated body of knowledge. But I can hardly see how that’s any worse than certain (arguably bullcr*p) extant undergrad majors such as American Studies or Leisure Studies, yet people are awarded bachelor’s degrees in them. Seriously, when a football player who barely steps foot in class and spends all his time either playing ball or partying/picking up hot girls can nevertheless earn a bachelor’s degree in “recreational studies”, surely a PharmD program can award an interim bachelor’s in “pharmacological studies”.</p>
<p>Again, but that’s not a professional degree. So are you against the notion of a professional degree like that for undergraduate? Those students need to do the M.Arch., as you say afterwards. So do you think that there should be no integrated programs that take longer to complete? Brown, for instance, offers architectural studies without offering a B.Arch. You don’t learn your drafting or any of the things you’d use as an architect, you’re learning about architecture in a way that combines something like history of art and industrial design. Those students earn bachelor’s and can pursue whatever, including M.Arch. programs (which many of them do). </p>
<p>These longer, combined programs do exist for the expressed purpose of saving time and money, overall, and streamlining the process for those who are sure of what they want to do. Otherwise, all you’re doing is shifting the burden from undergraduate to an additional degree which has additional monetary costs as well as additional time and the hassle of an application process, etc, all for the purpose of redirected professionally minded students into a degree program that may not interest them so they can rack up some kind of credential in less time.</p>
<p>The real solution here is not apply to a B.Arch. program unless you’re 100% sure and you’re committed to completing, much like a combined M.D. program.</p>
<p>I think it’s kind of crazy for UCSF to offer a bachelor’s like that, personally, and I’m not going to address comments about the validity of other areas of study. That’s not what we’re talking about right now, and I don’t make a habit out of knocking down straw men.</p>
<p>I agree, but that leads to my point: why does that necessarily need to be the case? Why exactly does the required engineering curricula have to proceed in lockstep? Why can’t engineering programs be more flexible? </p>
<p>Let me provide a specific example. Take Chemical Engineering. I’ve never understood why the complete chemical engineering thermodynamics course was a prerequisite for the chemical kinetics course, for the fact is, the kinetics course requires very little chem thermodynamics knowledge beyond perhaps the first few chapters of the thermo textbook. You certainly don’t need to know how to calculate Maxwell Relations and fugacity coefficients which comprises much of the latter half of the thermo course. Heck, the very premise behind the kinetics course is to examine chemical systems that are not in themodynamic equilibrium, which means that while you may need to understand what equilibrium is, you don’t really need to know how to calculate every single possible theoretical parameter of equilibrium. {Just like while engineers may need to know how to use the tools of calculus, they don’t really need to know the theoretical underpinnings of calculus, i.e. they don’t need to know how to prove the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus.} Hence, I see nothing wrong with allowing students to take thermo and kinetics concurrently, or even kinetics before thermo. Neither one needs to be a prereq to the other.</p>
<p>In short, engineering programs should become more flexible. Prereq requirements should be scrutinized and, in some cases, abolished completely. More upper division courses that are available to anybody who has completed the gateway intro course should be introduced. And more elective options for students to graduate on time should be made available.</p>