<p>OOS son is considering applying to UA Eller school of business (undergraduate). In looking at the school’s 4-year graduation rate of 32% (per CollegeData.com) we’re concerned that the chances of a 5th year of school are very high which then becomes a significant detractor financially.</p>
<p>Would like to get student/parent opinions on class availability and their experiences with trying to obtain a business degree (or any other degree, for that matter) within a 4-year timeframe at UA. I realize that student motivation, one’s major, etc. can all play a big role but most interested in if the university in general tries to make this a possibility or if one seems to have to ‘fight the system’ in order to accomplish it.</p>
<p>On a side note, has anyone by chance noticed if graduation within 4-years has become noticeably harder since the downturn in the economy in the past 2-3 years?</p>
<p>The 32% you’re seeing though is also a result of including people that never graduate at all. Thus 32% in 4 years plus 40% dropping out implies 28% (sum = 100%) take more than 4 years to graduate, but eventually do. So that’s why the average degree completion time from start to finish is 4.5 years when you exclude people who never graduate.</p>
<p>Skill:
How quickly you can get a degree, in my experience, is limited by your abilities and not by what the university imposes on you. The only complaint I can make is that (in engineering at least), it’s not really possible to graduate in less than 4 years due to prerequisites. There’s also a few keystone classes (in engineering, again) that if you don’t pass, you’re totally screwed for hitting 4 years because every other class needs that one class before you can move on. </p>
<p>Course Availability:
Unpopular majors will probably have more issues with course availability, but gen eds and lower division stuff are pretty well stocked (both Fall and Spring). Business I believe is in the top 3 for most popular majors, so I’d doubt that there is a lack of course availability regardless. Now that I’m taking 400 level classes (in engineering), there is a few problems with courses being offered but no one to teach them, so I’ve just taken other less interesting tech electives that still fulfill my degree requirements.</p>
<p>UAKid - thanks for your input. I realize this subject is hard to quantify. We’ve been hearing some horror stories from friends in CA regarding the highly impacted UC and Cal State school systems with regard to class availability. Wasn’t sure if AZ might be going through the same sorts of problems with their state schools given the state budget problems there, too. Figured we’d better start asking these questions now.</p>
<p>For budget cutting I think a lot of what UA did was hiring/raise freezes and consolidating similar majors into fewer colleges to save on administrative overhead (or outright eliminating obscure majors). I know they were also planning on increasing class sizes, but I haven’t heard any grumblings about classes disappearing all together. UA also draws only 30% (don’t quote me) of their budget from state funding, so when cuts came down the line they were significant but not crippling. The economic outlook is a lot better compared to last year as well, so I think your son should have no significant obstacles for graduating in 4 years.</p>
<p>I’d also hazard to say that CA is a much more screwed up state fiscally than AZ :)</p>