Perhaps a more politically palatable change by state universities would be to make it so that, if a student has gone beyond 8 semesters since frosh entry and over the number of credits needed to graduate in his/her major (plus perhaps a small buffer)*, any future enrollment in the fall or spring semester would be at out-of-state tuition (or some other surcharge). I.e. they can keep in-state tuition low, but have the “threat” of out-of-state tuition for extended attendance to provide more of an incentive to graduate on time.
*With pro-rated limits based on class level for transfer students, with some accounting for any need to “catch up” on lower level courses that were not available at the pre-transfer school.
@ucbalumnus ok but for say architects, the universities plans on the student being there for 5 years and everyone expects architects to have studied for 5 years. My point is - on time graduation - whether it is 3 years in the UK, 2 years in community college, 4 years for a regular US bachelors, 5 years for coops/architecture. I disagree with giving too much flexibility to students to shape their own college experience in terms of time allocated and number of credits allowed. You can always graduate with more credits than needed if you wish to and/or before the time allocated but you cant exceed the time limit or fall behind the graduation requirements track without having a valid reason (health etc). If you do so, you are taxing the system.
@dfbdfb I did not get more time to answer the 8 questions in say my Fluid Mechanics II exam and I could not answer 7 out of 8 and expect to get an A. So there was a task list and a specified time. I had to answer all the questions in the specified time limit. It is the same reality in the workplace - you have time limits and responsibilities within those time limits. If colleges are to prepare student for a career as well, should they not enforce the time limits and credit requirements, be they 2, 4, 5 years? Even high schools are supposed to graduate HS kids in 4 years - why then do we expect to have a lot more time latitude in college?
We can accommodate special situations but only to an extent. If there are people who have some work, child rearing, caring for grandparents or other responsibilities - I would expect most of them to take summer terms to make up for the credits they fall behind on during the fall and winter terms so that they can remain on track to graduate in 4 years. And very bluntly those whose other responsibilities are very significant should enroll in evening/online classes - alternate education. The regular college system can not be expected to account for those who are unable to keep pace with the rest of the class.
Those “special” situations are more common than you probably think that they are. Universities and community colleges serving predominantly local commuter populations tend to have lots of non-traditional and part-time students who would not be able to attend college full time. But it is still in the interests of everyone if those who are capable of earning a bachelor’s degree do so, even if it takes them longer than four years to do so because they have to attend college part-time around their other (work and/or family) obligations.
Note that part time attendance of 120 credits over more than four years does not consume any more instructional resources than full time attendance of 120 credits over four years, which is presumably why some of the state universities frame their enrollment limitations in terms of excessive credits, rather than excessive semesters. For dorm space, at most state universities, upper division students typically live off-campus, and non-traditional students are less likely to live in the dorm anyway.
“If we define the number of credits required for graduation as 120, and nearly every course is 3 credits, then 15 credits per semester results in graduation in 4 years.*
However, 12 credits per semester is also full-time under federal rules, and at 12 credits per semester, 120 credits results in graduation in 5 years.
Is there something inherently better about the first path than the second one?”
This is all very personal. Why we should “force” everybody do whatever some group wants to do? Some (actually many), want to graduate with the combo of major(s) / minor(s) and another group plans to graduate in 5 years with the combo of major(s) + Master’s degree. Whatever " inherently better" for some, would be considered " inherently very limiting" to others. My own kid had up to 18/19 hours in first 2 years and made sure that she had no more than 16 in junior / senior. Why? She had certain things that she had to take care of in junior / senior year. So, even with one student, the schedule needs to be lighter / heavier depending on the specifics of the certain year at college. I myself was taking only 8 hrs because I was working full time and my employers were still paying my tuition and that was the only thing that I cared about. There is no general solution for that.
I wholeheartedly disagree with khanam’s ideas. One goes to college not just to get job skills but primarily to get an education. Otherwise we could have many more institutions just offering perceived skills for a job. The concept of insisting on graduating in four years without regard to the education seems horrible to me. Only taking the minimum required classes to meet requirements- including advisors hovering to be sure one doesn’t deviate from the 4 years to graduation path is not conducive to exploring fields for the fun of it. Adding a second major is great. Expecting lab science majors to forgo some classes because they can’t fit them around their required ones while those who do one credit per classroom hour have plenty of time to take pure electives penalizes those who do more than just heir narrow major.
Some students mature later than others. Winnowing students based on past grades may eliminate some of the best who didn’t settle down early in HS. Keeping student options open throughout their HS career is good for teens. The European model of steering kids to certain tracks does not allow for “late bloomers”.
Increasing tuition is NOT the solution to earlier graduations. btw- what is so sacred about rushing to get into the labor market??? btw- my gifted son changed his mind about grad school and used a fifth (inexpensive, did not matter for our means, plus he spent the skipped year of elementary school in college to finish at age 22) year to finish the second major which resulted in a currently lucrative job. Thank goodness he wasn’t at one of those schools that limits electives as well.
I could go on and on. There is a philosophical difference here. I see college as education. Others see mainly the economic impact.
@khanam, you’re still making the assumption that there is something inherently four-year about the length of an undergraduate program, and attempting to prove that by repeated assertion. I really don’t get what is, at core, underlying that claim for you.
Not to mention that the exceptions you’re willing to carve out would seem to make the generalization of four years very much not general anyway, as others have been pointing out.
@wis75 i think there is some confusion between my focus on defining a term limit to get a degree and the common belief that a college degree is the same thing as an education. I am trying to define term limits for college degrees and certifications, not educational accomplishments. i know enough people who have acquired proper degrees but are “uneducated” and some who are actual dropouts but are learned.
i believe you pay for a college degree, education is not what you are buying - that is what you hopefully acquire while interacting with professors and peers, studying course material and maturing on your own while getting a degree. furthermore, some continue to educate themselves every day and some assume their education stopped when they got their diplomas. to assume that a college degree must coincide with education is mixing 2 things. that is the basis for my disagreement.
finally, you do not have to go to college to acquire an education. that might have been true in the past but in this day and age, with the social interactions on the web, tools and knowledge bases available online, I suspect universities will lose their significance as the main educational influences on the younger folk over the next few decades.
there is a reason it is a 4 year degree in my mind - we even have a name for the 4 years - freshman, soph... there are no terms for a group of delayed seniors.
exceptions to the 4 year path are acknowledged but do not explain the 19% on time graduation rate at non flagship state universities - i claim that many of those enrolled there are not academically proficient to be allowed to enroll. i have an issue with relaxing academic standards to push the underprepared into college like the CA legislature is doing. garbage in = garbage out. we have confused college graduates running around as it is. it is just going to get worse.
the absence of a structured path toward getting a degree is confusing to some of us in a number of ways. if there is too much latitude, then exactly why are we even trying to define a degree as a body of work and knowledge to be absorbed? why not let that be flexible and tailor made to one's own personality too? why is that so sacrosanct? why do people pooh pooh an open curriculum if they are open to relaxing time limits for specified bodies of work? that seems inconsistent to me.
i actually have no issue with relaxing the time limits to squeeze in 2 majors or to do a deeper dive but if it is because you can't handle the load, you should not be at the college. that is my big bugaboo. i see too many kids applying to college and HS teachers pushing them through with grade inflation, state colleges accepting them because of political pressure and so on. And i do not see these kids doing any better in college or thereafter. I worry that we have been pushing through entire generations of underprepared kids at every stage. Kind of making it someone else's problem. And the last point before these hordes are released on the employer base is at college.
California’s baseline admission standards for four year schools (CSUs) are not as low as those for some other states’ four year schools. California also offers community colleges for students with weaker high school preparation to get back on track. Not all will succeed, of course, but offering that chance to succeed means that one is not permanently limited by weak high school performance.
What is your threshold for “underprepared”? Would you advocate a policy to exclude such people from college (even community college) completely, or would you prefer to offer them a path to college (e.g. start at community college), even if you realistically assume that only some will succeed?
@ucbalumnus No I do believe there should definitely be a path to college through a) remedial classes b) forcing the high schools to graduate only those that meet acceptable standards and c) Community college. There should always be a way to succeed but only if you are prepared and have achieved success in the previous steps. Stumbling through HS and then college should not be acceptable.
It is hard to personally define a threshold - someone else can do that better than me but I do believe something needs to be done. I have just come across kids that feel so lost that I cant believe they wont have a hard time in college. We do need many more community colleges to strengthen the academic base for sure.
However, the underprepared student who takes the community college path may not be transfer-ready in 2 years, due to needing remedial courses; because of that, s/he may not graduate with a bachelor’s degree in 4 years after starting college (at the community college). It is unlikely that you can get your wish of a hard 4 year limit while offering another chance or pathway to college for students who did poorly in high school or whose high schools taught them poorly.
What do you think of non-traditional students, who are more likely to be unable to attend full time due to work or family obligations? Since many of them cannot finish bachelor’s degrees in 4 years (for non-academic reasons), would you consider them unworthy of attending college?
@ucbalumnus Thats a fair point but it will at least be better than the mess we have currently. And that is also why we should also force the high schools to not graduate the unprepared kids. I think if the HS hold a few back, they will have to work harder and so will the parents to prepare the kids for college.
the non-traditional students should have their own path. I think mixing them with the rest of the students might help them with peer interactions but is detrimental in other ways. Many of the courses can be studied online and supplemented with class visits - for the non-traditional students this might be the path to success.
Why would it be detrimental if non-traditional students attend classes with other students? Granted, some of them may find the option of on-line formats useful, but others may find regular classes (though perhaps fewer of them at a time) doable around work and family obligations and perhaps preferable from an educational standpoint.
Re: the claimed 19% four-year graduation rate at non-flagship public universities…
That’s a spurious number. At the decidedly non-flagship public I work at, as far as we can tell (because it turns out this is very, very hard to track), an astonishingly huge chunk of our freshman students end up transferring to other institutions, where they complete their baccalaureate degrees (though not necessarily within four years from first entry into college. This is because the statistics for institutional degree completion don’t count those who transfer into an institution and complete their degrees, and count a student who transfers out of a college as a non-completion for that institution (ludicrously, even if they complete where they transfer to).
For non-flagship publics, where a lot of students go to burnish their credentials in preparation for transferring to the flagship (primarily, though certainly not exclusively), this is ridiculous, and deflates the completion rates for those institutions.
We need a different measure, because this one is so flawed that decisions based on it aren’t just likely to be wrong, they’re quite possibly going to be detrimental.
Would the National Student Clearinghouse have information that would allow more useful information about completion rates, accounting for transfers?
I.e. using such information, would it be possible to report, for entering frosh, percentage graduating from the same school in 4/5/6 years, and also 8/10/12 semesters (to account for those who take semesters off for some reason), as well as the same percentages who graduate from some other school after transferring away?
@ucbalumnus I say that because of the possibility that non traditional students have time constraints that might interfere with their ability to attend lectures and labs at the same time. My daughter supplemented her HS curriculum with some courses at the local CC. Her observation was that even though the one of her classes and associated labs was entirely in the evenings, it felt like a full on experience, just very concentrated. Imagine trying to have these non traditional students try to attend a series of day classes and labs with their work pressures. They would probably miss a bunch of classes and related assignments, teacher interactions. She also considered taking an online course in introductory psychology online but couldn’t because she was too late so I most certainly do not think either evening / weekend / online classes are low quality. I’d rather see them get the full intensity of the curriculum, not a diluted version.
@dfbdfb ah, if it includes transfers as well then I completely see your point - I thought this was only the on time rate. I was absolutely shocked with the 19% on time number. If it is not that low then it would be good to see what the true dropout number and true delayed numbers are.
What exactly is the problem here? The college offers classes at various time slots (including some non-traditional-friendly evening slots), and the non-traditional students select courses that fit with their other time constraints.
There are always some low enrollment classes that have these complications. I remember one of my daughter’s friends who is non traditional was complaining about a class she couldn’t take because it wasn’t offered at any of the time slots convenient for her that term. Budget cuts at the state u. So it was messing up her schedule.
@ucbalumnus: Soon, hopefully. They haven’t, as I understand it, been tracking individuals (or at least, the information necessary to track individuals properly) for long enough to give a good picture, but they will have been soon. Of course, what they’re going to be allowed to release is all tangled up in privacy concerns and whatnot, so it’s all still playing out.
EDIT: Nope, spoke without checking. Interesting information here, though not at the level of results for individual institutions (or even types of institutions, or at least at the granularity I’d like to see): https://nscresearchcenter.org/signaturereport10/