Colleges sabotaging graduating in 4 years.

DH and I met with our financial advisor last night and of course with one kid in college and one applying, the cost of college was a topic. I mentioned we are looking at 4 year graduation rates to make sure the kids don’t drag it out too long. Our advisor said he has clients that are professors at a University of Wisconsin school. About 10 years ago the schools got caught setting up classes and schedules to make it almost impossible to graduate in 4 years. 10 years ago my oldest was in elementary school so this was not on my radar at all. Has anyone heard of this? Apparently there was a computer program they were using to accomplish keeping the kids there longer than strictly necessary.

Yes this is not uncommon, whether by circumstances or by design. It’s hard to tell.

One benefit of SOME honors programs at public schools is that they may give the honors students first crack at the classes and so they may graduate on time. Not all honors programs do this. Choose wisely. Some honors programs load the classrooms with professors while the rank and file get TAs that may or may not be great teachers, no matter how smart they are.

One benefit of privates – if you can find ones that have merit or other forms of FA that make them affordable for you – is that they may not have impacted intro classes and the other humps that publics often may have.

The upshot from my POV is to 1) research exactly what you’re getting when you apply to a college in terms of “will my child get the classes he/she needs to graduate” and 2) what you’re getting in terms of instruction (will my son/daughter get TAs and how competent are the? Or will he/she get an adjunct that’s also teaching at several other area colleges and won’t be on campus for questions and/or mentoring? Or will he/she get full professors on campus and mentoring them both academically and through their inevitable maturation process and maybe into grad school?

The other upshot is to figure in yoru financial calculations 1) what the cost will be for 5 years of school if it should come to that and 2) be sure to include any not just TUITION hikes but hikes in other COSTS such as “fees” for thsi and that and “administrative expenses”. In my estimation publics keep tuition costs down but pile on the other fees and expenses/ Most parents and lawmakers can then say: tuition hasn’t risen. But the cost of college overall has gone up by X percentage that most parents don’t seem to notice until they are, like you guys, standing before the bill.

Privates I’m sure have their own set of shanigans, but one way that you may want to figure private vs public cost is to use these tools. 1) College Navigator : a government website that lists each college in the country and under “net price” tells you what that college will cost you ON AVERAGE. YMMV. 2) Collegedata: this website consolidates the Common Data Set for each school. This will let you know how much MERIT funding the school gives and why they give it. does everyone get some? Is it mainly reserved for recruiting top students? You can parse the numbers and figure this out. It helps with the overall application strategy. You may find, for example, in your area, that Lake Forest will provide a private education with lots of merit, and it might come in for under the cost of UW Madison, esp if you take into consideration your child may be at school at UW for 5 years instead of 4. That sort of thing.

Using a spreadsheet really helps to track this info.

Best of luck.

I don’t think colleges generally do this intentionally. But they do lack the funding to offer numerous sections of the same class or the same class every semester. Certainly cuts in state college funding over the past 10 years have made this problem worse.

Some majors have long strings if required courses (engineering, for example). A student who doesn’t plan out and start the sequence early enough runs a risk of needing extra semesters (same with students who change majors).

That is one reason students should see advisors early and regularly. As a parent, for my less organized kid, I kept a spreadsheet tracking degree & major progress just in case. It was my nickel if she didn’t finish in 4 years.

I think it’s smart to financially plan for 5 years if you can (but don’t tell the kids that!), because a late change in major or changing schools can drag things out. Or you might want your student to take a lighter load some semesters in order to do an internship or if they have a very rigorous program, and that will add time.

Stupid question but don’t many of these kids come into freshman year of college with at least a semester of credit from AP/DE courses?

@socaldad2002 - while this may be true, it is also true that many colleges only offer elective credit for these classes rather than core credit. So, they don’t fulful core class requirements and hence aren’t as useful in helping the student progress more quickly.

We were very careful in selecting a college that would accept all the college credit that our kids earned in high school - and that it would be accepted as core credit so that they would be able to accelerate through college. Also, they had a plan for study set in place early on and would bring the checklist to meetings with the academic adviser to ensure that they continued to be on schedule for graduation.

Also note that many schools use Grad Assistants and academic advisers and they sometimes make mistakes. My daughter had this role while in grad school and she saw mistakes that other grad assistants had made and these mistakes sometimes cost the student in a big way - needed an extra semester.

“Credit” means so many different things. Perhaps the AP credit is attached to a specific course.Or it can be assigned as a nebulous “general elective” credit. At some colleges, AP credits can’t be used to fulfill gen ed requirements and/or major requirements. So it is possible to enter college with a boatload of APs and still struggle to graduate in 4 years.

It can be hard to graduate in 4 years from many public universities, especially the non-flagships which aren’t as well funded.

If you have the expectation your child will finish in 4 years, you need to make this very clear to her/him and choose the campus carefully. Additionally, your child may need to attend summer school and take heavier-than-normal course loads to make this happen.

As a parent, you need to be aware that a 4-year graduation may not be realistic in some schools – particularly if the child has to work part time and/or changes their major. Plan accordingly!

@skieurope That’s unfortunate if a kid can’t graduate in 4 years and took a ton of AP/IB/DE classed in HS. For example, D20 will have 9 APs completed by end of HS and if say she only got a 4 or 5 on 50% of the exams, I just assumed she would be getting at least a semester of college credit and requirements done before even attending college. Do kids at private colleges graduate more often in 4 years (especially because of the high cost of attendance and less impacted classes)? Might make me rethink public vs. private colleges…

That seems extremely unlikely as general policy for a public university where most students are on subsidized in-state tuition. The goal of a public university is typically to get students graduated as quickly as possible, so that each in-state student uses the minimum amount of subsidy to become a bachelor’s degree graduate who will contribute more to the state economy and tax revenue than a high school graduate. (Wisconsin is 57% in-state, 35% out-of-state, but some of the out-of-state enrollment is on subsidized tuition for Minnesota residents.)

However, it is certainly possible that some departments handle scheduling poorly, particularly when they change curriculum requirements, so that some students have insufficient warning about when they should take certain needed prerequisites. For example see this thread about SDSU’s EE department: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/2074999-my-school-made-horrible-changes-p1.html

I don’t think that universities try to keep students from graduating in 4 years.

I do think that certain schools work harder to get students to graduate in 8 semesters than others. Such as getting a student into a section of a class that is full but that the student needs to graduate on time.

Big public universities have a harder time than smaller private schools circumventing red tape. That may not be true in all circumstances but in my experience, smaller schools do a better job advocating for their students

High school students choosing AP or college courses while in high school generally are not looking into applicability to requirements for their bachelor’s degrees in college (many or most do not even know which college they will attend). So students with AP or college credit earned while in high school may have credit that is not useful for the college and major that they end up choosing.

Not one of mine made it out in exactly 4 years minus summers. Each kid had to take a summer session either before or after walking through graduation. Reasons included: inability to get the major flow chart classes as designed due to scheduling conflicts so sequencing was off and major requirements changing in junior year without the ability to get an overide for a “new” required majors class and no way to fit the “new required class” into the schedule, Even “mulligan” AP credits sometimes can’t cover up these kinds of issues.

@ucbalumnus a friend of mine who teaches at a state university previously said that administration is in no rush to graduate kids in 4 years. In her state the administration is not incentivized to get kids up and out and instead are actually incentivized in a round about way to keep more kids in school. The bigger the enrollment, the bigger the budget, the bigger their salary. I totally agree it SHOULD be the way you say, but I suspect my friend’s state is not alone.

Non-flagships also have student-related low graduation rates, such as weaker students to begin with, and students who have work or family commitments that keep them from taking full course loads or which impose scheduling constraints (e.g. the needed prerequisite course in a sequence is offered only at a time when the student has work or family obligations).

“Do kids at private colleges graduate more often in 4 years (especially because of the high cost of attendance and less impacted classes)? Might make me rethink public vs. private colleges…”

@socaldad2002 – yes, many private schools have much, much higher 4-year graduation rates than public schools. It’s public information, and you can check it out easily online.

OTOH, the difference in cost can be pretty astronomical. If you think paying $50,000+ per year for 4 years vs. $20,000 per year for 5 years is worth it, a private school may be of interest to you – especially if your child will qualify for some financial aid.

But even going to summer school to graduate in 4 years comes at a cost of additional tuition and room/board, right?

The answer is - it depends.

First a clarification: “high cost of attendance” may not be the case for many. Many private colleges offer a level of FA which for some families would make it more affordable than the state flagship.

Now an anecdote (and I know the plural of anecdote is not data). I attend a private university. I also graduated HS with a boatload of AP credits. My college, like many privates, caps AP credits (in this case, it’s a year. it’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s the simple version, And some privates cap at one semester). But, the AP credits don’t count to the freshman writing requirement, gen ed requirements, or, in my major, to the major requirements (calc 1 and 2 are prereqs to the major, and are not part of the major requirements). Compound that with the fact that my major has sequential courses that are not offered each semester, and most courses across the university have only one section, meaning I could have unresolvable time conflicts… So in theory, I could have graduated in 3 years, the reality is that it would have been unlikely. That said, graduating in 4 years is rarely an issue, oftentimes with an honors degree and/or a minor, assuming a focused course plan that was structured early on.

People- remind your kids (again and again) of the importance of seeing their adviser BEFORE the drop/add date. Not every version of every course is going to keep your kid on track. The version of Statistics taught to Psych or marketing majors is NOT going to count for a physics or engineering major. The “physics without calculus” which would cover the distribution requirement for a fine arts major is NOT going to count for an econ major. The kids I know who are dragging out their BA’s all have “reasons”- and usually dumb ones.

You thought that retaking a class you already got AP credit for was a good idea so you’d have a “solid foundation”? That’s fine- but did you really think your college was going to give you credit for the same class twice? You thought that retaking German 3 during your junior year in Germany would help because you are shaky on grammar? That’s fine. But your college isn’t giving you credit for German 3 at home AND abroad. Pick one.

It can vary by major at a given university. Totally anecdotal, but I’ve heard that because CS has jumped in popularity so quickly over the past 10 years or so as a major (and that working in industry pays so much better than teaching in that subject), that that’s one major to especially check out for the 4 year graduation rate (because of bottlenecks in the early years… not enough sections for courses that are required before moving on to upper-division classes that one can take in any order). Similarly other technical majors (engineering) where there’s a must-pass class early on. I know of at least one and I’m thinking 2 kids who didn’t do well enough in a class like that that was only offered in fall quarters, so they took the winter and spring quarters off that year rather than waste their tuition on more unnecessary credits before repeating the must-pass class the following fall.

That’s not so much deliberate sabotage as just not enough resources put into the lower-division courses for the demand, though.