Some reasons may be seen as bad, but are not really in the full control of the school, in that they reflect the students:
Student needs remedial course work.
Student changes major late.
Student is not careful with prerequisite sequencing for his/her major.
Student voluntarily takes lower than 15-16 credit course loads on average, perhaps due to needing to work to afford school.
Student fails some courses and needs to repeat them or make up the credits.
Some of these can be partially addressed by the school with things like tutoring services for students needing remedial course work or in danger of failing courses, better advising for students selecting courses (particularly frosh/soph undeclared/undecided students), and better financial aid. But these cost money, so we then get the argument about what additional spending is “necessary” for a school.
An alternative route for the school could be to spend more on marketing to attract a better qualified admission class, reducing the need for remedial course work and reducing the failed courses that way. Emphasizing merit scholarships over need-based financial aid may also be for this purpose as well as tilt the students away from needier ones who need to work while in school or risk running out of money.
Some reasons people don’t graduate in 4 years in engineering (and for some of these all majors)
lack of maturity means they party all freshman year and get miserable grades and need to repeat some classes
high school coursework was subpar, which is only noticeable once you take say Calc1 or Physics1
you are rational and after getting say a 2.4 freshman year, you take a year off to work or maybe travel and get more mature rather than waste another year at university and likely get thrown out
you change majors
you co-op or just extend a good summer job to either make money or get some good experience
they did not follow a 4 year plan well enough
required classes not available (I think this one is rare, especially if you are on a 4 year plan)
While college is really expensive now, so is life as a newly employed person. College has lots of freebies, including entertainment, sports, furnished rooms, no car, dress code, etc, so very few people are going to be cash positive the moment they get a paycheck.
And with a weak job market, it is not obvious that everyone has an opportunity cost either. A person who spends a semester on campus and lands a job in January might be getting a job right with his/her peer that graduated in June.
I think if you really want or need your student to graduate in 4 years, you just really have to tell them you won’t fund year 5 and they have to keep up with their program and get out of there. Of course, it may be more rational for them to grow up and take a year off and then go back to an 8-semester plan. You can also try to cherrypick a school that is supportive, interested in getting people out the door in 4 years, and one that does not penalize major changes with a lot of classes that don’t apply to all majors. No co-op schools, do in-class projects instead and work for 8-10 weeks in summer.
Actually, many do offer optional co-op programs, even though only a few make co-op programs centerpieces of their curricula (Northeastern, Drexel, and Cincinnati being among the better known). Even when there is no formal co-op program, many schools have lenient withdrawal and readmission policies that allow students to roll their own co-op programs.
A student taking college courses while in high school (or AP or IB HL high school courses and tests) may not necessarily be taking those which fulfill prerequisite sequences for his/her major in college (which s/he may not have decided while in high school). So it is not necessarily true that bringing in 60 credits as a frosh will cut four semesters off the time needed to finish the degree. Also, some of the more selective colleges are rather stingy on giving transfer credit and placement for college courses taken while in high school, or AP or IB HL scores.
“Why should having a smaller engineering program matter? To graduate in engineering in 4 years you need to start in engineering. You just can’t switch into it later due to required foundation courses. It has nothing to do with the size of the program. In this case you are just saying large Us should get a pass.”
Large US universities like Michigan, have over 20% of their undergraduate students enrolled in engineering. When I said smaller engineering programs, I was referring to schools that have a smaller percentage of their students enrolled. For example, Duke has approx. 700 undergraduate students enrolled in engineering out of an approx. total of 6500. That’s less than 11% of the undergraduate student body.
If a student is taking dual enrollment to graduate college much earlier than normal, and is actually qualified at age 16 to take 4-year equivalent classes, for example, calc-based physics rather than physics for liberal arts majors or calc1 rather than college algebra or whatever would actually be on a 4 year plan, it would seem that you would need to be really focused on planning a path where those credits directly transfer. Similarly, if early graduation is the goal of your AP credits, rather than maximizing rigor and getting into the most selective schools, you need to find schools that accept that credit and in classes that directly count towards your major. I would think state universities would accept transfer credit for CC courses that would normally be taken by freshman and sophomore college students.
I think dual enrollment is really more an “add rigor to high schools without large AP population” type thing, but that may be generalizing too much as well. I don’t think there are huge populations of students taking real college classes and then transferring to somewhere they aren’t’ recognized and then being upset about it (their parents can certainly influence choice of college to match their timelines).
Lots of AP courses are also really not college-equivalent in terms of major requirements, maybe OK for general electives and the like. They are just not rigorous enough and the number of high school teachers who could teach a college level class is probably limited.
If 4 year graduation is very important to you as a parent, then go look for schools that make it happen. If you can somehow dual enroll your student and get them out in 2 years, great. I am not sure this is really a high priority for a lot of people.
As someone said, total debt on graduation would really tell you the story of folks kicking back to take that art history minor rather than graduating …
Probably elitist too, since a rational way for a lower middle class student to get a bachelor’s degree might involve working significant hours during their 4 or 5 or 6 year college years. Not every student is hanging out on the quad and taking 12 credits.
“I graduated from an engineering program over 20-years ago and was able to do so in 4-years (8-semesters). The total credit requirement to graduate back then was 135 credits (now 126). In order to graduate in 4-years, I had to take as high as 22-credits a couple of semesters.”
Thanks for proving my point jamrock411. How many students are going to take what amounts to an entire year (2 semesters) of 22 credit hours? That’s why it’s harder to graduate in four years with an engineering degree. A typical work load that most other majors offer would not be enough for future engineers to complete their degrees in four years. Thus schools that emphasize engineering are going to have lower overall graduation rates than those who don’t. It has less to do with student quality or a need for remedial education and more to do with the fact that engineering degrees require more credit hours to graduate.
Needing remedial courses is often a larger penalty for engineering majors than for other majors, particularly if remedial math is needed. Since the often-long prerequisite sequences start with calculus 1, an engineering major who is not ready for calculus 1 (or higher) as an entering frosh is very unlikely to finish in 8 semesters.
At Michigan, for example, an engineer needs to complete 128 credit hours to obtain his/her degree. The requirements for graduation with a degree from the largest college on campus, LSA, is 120 credit hours.
In the State of Florida the prerequisite requirements per major is very well laid out for their public university system, along with the almost universal course numbering system. A Dual Enrolled High School student with a career goal in mind, can pretty much select the dual enrollment courses required to meet a specific major. There are a large number of Dual Enrollment High School located on the campuses of Community Colleges and they have a pre-select course schedule for their 2-year Dual Enrollment High School/CC Program.
Here is just one example:
(Sample Educational Plan based on major; Junior Year)
So, an Pre-Engineering student would follow the Engineering Curriculum and be able to transfer all 60 (+ or -) credits to a engineering program at one of Florida’ 4-year University. DE students that are not part of a structured College Academy can follow a prerequisite list (per major) for 4-year institutions when selecting the DE courses. In Florida, tuition/books/fees are free to public school students.
Some of the 60 credits in the pre engineering track are what would be remedial courses in college (e.g. precalculus). The student in this program would gain 3 semesters in the math and science sequences, not 4 semesters, so it may be more realistic to try for 2.5 or 3 year graduation rather than 2 year graduation. Or perhaps try for a masters degree by the end of 4 years.
But how many students in high school actually do take such a structured dual enrollment program, as opposed to whatever seems interesting as an undecided student?
I was told that, many years ago, colleges were not required to report graduation rates. Those which did report them had no standard method for calculating them. Prospective students were much more likely to be deceived under those circumstances.
I think Congress passed a “student-right-to-know” law about 25 years ago which required all colleges to calculate their graduation rates the same way and to make the graduation rates publicly available (catalog, web site, etc.). Congress made the standard “150% of the normal time for completion of the longest degree program”. For 4-year colleges, that would be 6 years. For schools with 5-year engineering programs, that would be 7.5 years and that is what they report to the US Dept of Ed. The IPEDS data base has 4-, 5-, 6-, and 7-year graduation rates. These 6- or 7-year graduation rates are their official graduation rates. US News uses the official grad rates.
BTW, grad rates are highly correlated with SAT scores.
I use the coop example because I have a child who is in one. It will take them 5 years to graduate, however, they will be in class 8 semesters the same as one who goes straight through. They will just graduate with 22 months of work experience.
“* Student needs remedial course work.”
In my opinion remedial work should not be counted as part of ones four years of college. I risk changing the subject, however, I really don’t think Pell grants and Stafford loans should be allowed for remedial work. One should enter college with the courses required for entry complete. Frankly, I think if states want to have their universities accept Pell grants and Stafford loans they should have to have a mechanism in place to provide a certain amount of remedial education for those who need it. It could be done at the HS level or CC level. Pell Grants and Stafford loans would only be available for those accepted to degree programs (2 or 4 year even if it is undecided) and their continuance made contingent on receiving a passing grade (2.0).
128 semester hours provided above for UMich engineering is still only 16 hours/semester. As @ucbalumnus mentioned having remedial courses is much more of a limiting factor.
Eliminating the need for remedial work means ensuring that all high schools adequately teach what they are supposed to be teaching in college-prep courses. Much easier said than done.
Note that even some of the most selective schools offer remedial courses (e.g. Harvard Math Ma, Princeton MAT100, both for students who are insufficiently prepared for the normal calculus 1 course).
@Jamrock411 that is really an impressive program and some of their alumni have leveraged this into some really great college acceptances and/or accelerated programs (they have profiled some including one student who went to MIT and only needed 2 years to get his BS). Looks like they would have bio, chem, calc1-3, and physics out of the way. This would be a really difficult program for most 16 year olds (it challenges a lot of smart 18 year olds).
Obviously a state run program would have the best transfer odds and also the best correlation from CC content to 4yr school content.
The 5 year engineering program seems to have disappeared sometime in the 80s …
I also had two friends in a small high school who graduated high school early and went to Ivy League schools, but I don’t think this is possible anymore.
Remedial has a lot of different meanings and current educational thinking (try google searches) seems to be eliminating the remedial courses which lead to poor graduation rates and replacing them with a lot of tutoring and enhanced courses. One semester of MAT100 seems a bit controversial here on CC, but is likely a much needed idea for anyone whose high school math was not well taught and like for others. MIT has an impressive 4 year completion rate.
Mathematics
Course List:
Course ID Class Title
MAC1105 College Algebra
MAC1114 Trigonometry
MAC1140 Pre Calculus Algebra
MAC1147 Precalculus Algebra And Trigonometry
MAC2233 Calculus For Business Social And Life Sciences
MAC2311 Calculus And Analytical Geometry I
MAC2312 Calculus And Analytical Geometry Ii
MAC2313 Calculus And Analytical Geometry Iii
MAD2104 Discrete Mathematics
MAP2302 Differential Equations
MAS2103 Linear Algebra{/quote]
Any course at or above College Algebra is not considered remedial. These are kids are entering their Junior Year of High School and many of them did not take a rigorous Precalculus Algebra And Trigonometry (MAC1140) before hand.
@tk21769: This is the first time I see those 4-yr graduation numbers for engineering majors. They seem quite low to me. Do you think the “actual” graduation rate is closer to 5 years (more than 80%) than 4.5 for the representative sample of universities shown above?
MAC1105, MAC1114, MAC1140, MAC1147 are not remedial at the high school level, but are remedial at the college level, since college frosh (particularly engineering majors) are expected to start in calculus 1 (MAC2311) or higher. This means that if they are part of the 60 credits that a frosh engineering major brings in, they do not really help the student graduate any earlier, since they do not have any use as subject credit for an engineering major.
For example, UF’s recommended plan for mechanical engineering majors at https://catalog.ufl.edu/ugrad/current/engineering/majors/mechanical-engineering.aspx#sp shows MAC2311 as the expected first semester math course. A student who starts in a lower math course will likely need extra semesters, and credit for lower math courses does not apply to any requirements for the degree.
Oddly, UF assumes that, instead of taking slight overloads of 16-17 credits per semester like many other engineering majors at other schools, the student will take at least one summer session (looks like the 9-credit “semester 5” in this plan), so that actual time to graduation is 8.5 semesters rather than 8 semesters for a non-advanced (but also non-remedial) student.
I went to the “all colleges” list on the Kiplinger’s “best values” site, click-sorted on column 6, then looked down from the top for colleges that seem to have solid engineering programs yet high graduation rates (>= 80%). I tossed in a couple of LACs with relatively low graduation rates (and no engineering, of course) for comparison, as well as a few highly-regarded public universities (which have lower 4y graduation rates but also lower percentages of engineering majors than some of the higher-ranked schools).
For some reason, the Air Force Academy doesn’t seem to be on the Kiplinger’s list.
But the point is, it’s fairly easy to identify colleges that have high 4y graduation rates despite relatively high percentages of engineering majors (as well as colleges with lower 4y graduation rates despite lower numbers of engineering majors). So I don’t think the percentage of engineering majors easily explains differences in 4y graduation rates (although it might be a factor in some cases).