<p>No. Grad rates matter. But you don’t have a damn clue why UW’s graduation rate is low. Barron’s offered some studies with potential explanations, but the reality is that none of us know beyond that. And Jiff was coming up with hypotheticals before that was posted. </p>
<p>Here’s what I know: high achieving students can graduate in 4, even 3 years, if they desire. If you keep track of your course requirements, view DARS audits frequently, and pick your majors quickly, then you will graduate whenever the hell you want. I, and others with many AP/CLEP credits, could’ve graduated the summer after sophomore year. But I didn’t, because I could afford the tuition necessary to double major.</p>
<p>Why aren’t many UW students graduating on time, and how can we change this (and should we change this)? Good question. Stop pretending that you have answers. Course lockouts? Please. Talk about something you know–not secondhand information you gained from an anonymous poster last year. </p>
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<p>Nice; that’s really a relevant comparison. At least nova related UW’s graduation rates to relatively cheap and large public alternatives.</p>
<p>The advantages of taking some time out are universal according to the H article. The fact that more H students may be driven to get ahead faster is their choice/problem. And it’s 36 points higher. Your data is old.</p>
<p>justtotalk brings up some good points. my point was basically his. i was not trying to bring down the UC system. we are talking about UW.</p>
<p>low 4-year graduation rates become issues when they are caused by a lack in providing advisors and class seats. i really do not think this is the case at UW. instead, i think it is simply that advisors don’t pressure students to lay out 4 year plans for graduating. for many students, a brief overview of their dars during their freshman year is not enough to make them comfortable with independently referring to the report and using it as a resource when selecting classes, etc. While the dars shows students what they must take to graduate, it does not set any sort of plan into action. some may find this disturbing, for it does not give a timetable, and therefore the students are left to set the standard for themselves.</p>
<p>if it is up to the students to set their individual standard at UW, then who are you, US News/Nova/etc., to bring everything to a halt and penalize our system for not adhering to YOUR standard? after graduation, many students will be thrust into the real world where no one will hold their hand, and no dars report will give them even a rough outline of the best path to reach their goals. at UW the resources are in place to help every student. however, you must find these resources; they will not find you. they’re not hiding, but they’re also not wasting their time rushing students through the system. what does hand-holding teach a young adult about living in the real world? NOTHING.</p>
<p>maybe what UW could do better would be to somehow make students more aware of the resources available to them, through email, SOAR, etc. quick fix.</p>
<p>ON WISCONSIN!</p>
<p>NOVA = No Obnoxious Visitors Allowed</p>
<p>seriously though, get a life. or make your criticism constructive.</p>
<p>MY standard? Boy do you like to cherry-pick. I guess I need to quote from UW-MADISON’S OWN STUDY AGAIN. You know, the one that barrons somehow thinks proves me wrong. We’re not talking about MY standard – we are talking about UW’S OWN STANDARD. </p>
<p>“Time-to-degree is a metric associated with several high-priority concerns in higher education,
among them the three ‘A’s’ - access, affordability, accountability - and diversity issues. About
access, it is important that each student graduate on time so that space becomes available to
enroll another student. The number of students the University is able to enroll at any time is
finite and there is a public interest in maximizing the number of students who complete a
degree. About affordability, students and their families are concerned about the high costs of
college attendance - both the direct costs and lost opportunity costs – and graduating on time
helps keeps the overall cost of attendance down. About diversity, minority students take longer
to graduate and we seek to close that gap. Time-to-degree is a measure of accountability for all
these issues.”</p>
<p>Until UW brings up its graduation rate it belongs where it is on US News. This is a perfectly valid and constructive criticism. Offering excuses for UW’s low graduation rate isn’t the answer, and isn’t constructive. Suggesting that UW should be ranked higher simply because it has outstanding professors isn’t contructive either. It takes more than that to be top-ranked. It takes getting your students out on time.</p>
You must not be following the discussion adequately. I was commenting directly on barrons comparison of UW to Harvard in regards to taking time off from school.</p>
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Course lock-outs do exist. Students enrolled in colleges and degree programs can register for courses in those colleges and degree programs before other students of equal academic (earned credits) standing. Students not enrolled are locked out. Classes fill before registration is open to all. I know quite a few students who have had direct experience with that problem. If that hasn’t happened to you, you may not be aware of the problem. </p>
<p>Notice how more than 120 credit hours is the norm. That’s prolonging UW’s graduation times, and may be indicative of having to waste semesters because students are locked out of the courses they need, as AxeBack has already noted.</p>
<p>Maybe you should look more at years to graduation and less at # of credits accumulated. Students who take over 15 credits a semester will have >120 credits after 4 years of school. They are high achievers, not “locked out” students. </p>
<p>The average time to graduation was 4.2 years. Considering that there’s a lower bound of ~3 years, but no upper bound of 5 years, that’s a great number to be at.</p>
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<p>The opportunity cost of taking a year off is nearly the same at Harvard and UW. The cost of attending Harvard for an extra year is NOT the same as the cost of attending UW for an extra year.</p>
<p>I think we can mutually understand why this makes graduation rates at Harvard vs UW a sloppy comparison and deferrals at Harvard vs. deferrals at UW a reasonable comparison.</p>
<p>Let’s clear up a couple of things right now.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>It was barrons, not Jiffsmom, who attempted to muddy the waters by inserting Harvard into the mix. Harvard does not encourage students to take time off DURING college and offers no support to the proposition that taking time off is beneficial to UW; Harvard merely encourages students to take a year off BEFORE college, and the reasoning is that Harvard students, being notoriously high achievers, risk burnout if they go straight from being uber-perfect in high school to enrolling at pressure-cooker Harvard. UW doesn’t have this problem; UW’s problem is motivating the more average student to stay in and get through school.</p></li>
<li><p>Barrons is right that UW does (almost) catch up to the top schools by the sixth year – it’s the four year graduation rate that’s real abysmal. As recently as 2008 fewer than half of UW’s undergrads got out in four years, well below the rate of every other highly ranked flagship university. This can’t be solely because UW students are less motivated, are substantially poorer, like to travel a lot more, or are bigger fans of a Kibbutz than students at every top flagship university; it’s a least partially because of bureaucratic roadblocks that the academic programs impose on students as well as limits in funding and facilities. The UW boosters would gain a lot more credibility if they simply acknowledged that this is a problem and assured posters on this board that UW is working on these deficiences – instead of pretending that the problem doesn’t exist or falsely portraying UW’s poor four year graduation rate as a strength that somehow benefits a student’s education and is in the public interest.</p></li>
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That would only be true if they were graduating in 4 years. On average, they’re not. Look at the data again as it seems you don’t understand. The cause could very well be students locked out of the classes they need.</p>
<p>Even UW admin recognizes the problem:
It’s odd that UW Admin doesn’t seem to be doing much about it.
<p>The cost of 4 years at Harvard is less than the cost of 4 years at UW for families earning less than $180,000 per year. The cost of more than 4 years at UW adds even more to the cost imbalance.</p>
<p>In other words, you agree that years to graduation is the correct measure. Accumulated credits is only relevant if years to graduation is abnormally high or low. So let’s focus on those types and view their accumulated credits. </p>
<p>Notice that the majors with the most years to graduation are engineering and education. However, most engineering majors are falling within the 125-133 credit range at UW–the same range that engineering majors must complete to graduate. They aren’t taking superfluous credits; they’re simply not taking the 17 credits per semester that the 4 year plan for engineering requires. Instead, they’re slowing down–probably because the courses are difficult, or perhaps because their plans aren’t carefully laid out.</p>
<p>Also notice that the other application based school–business–is averaging between 4.0-4.1 years for all majors except International Business (4.3). </p>
<p>So much for lockouts at the two application based colleges. One of these “lockout colleges” is graduating students on time, and the other has students taking fewer credits per semester than required for graduation. If there were lockouts, you’d expect high course loads and long graduation times for high achieving students that can’t get their required classes.</p>
<p>If you reread the Harvard article it talks about taking off before and DURING college. As that section of the website is geared to freshmen the focus is on taking a year off before. However the article says</p>
<p>“Taking Time Off Before or During College”</p>
<p>“In fact about 20 percent of Harvard students follow the practice of “time-out” at some point before graduation.”</p>
<p>With only a few percent doing it before college it should be obvious to even your math skills that a much large number do it DURING college.</p>
Comment on the funding… again, using College Results Online as a source, UW’s Student and Related Expenditures data is mid-range compared to its peers.</p>
<p>The problem isn’t adequate funding. Some of UW’s peer schools are graduating significantly more students in 4 years with less funding. The problem would appear to be administrative mismanagement.</p>
Are you suggesting that 40% of UW’s students’ families earn more than $180,000 per year? I’d like to see the data to support that.</p>
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My point was that years to graduate is higher because credits were higher. That can be explained by AxeBack’s report that students he knows have to waste a semester taking classes they don’t need while waiting to get into the classes they do need to complete their degree requirements.</p>
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Or they can’t register for the classes they need because they’re locked out, as AxeBack has reported and as we’ve heard from home town Badgers.</p>
<p>Are you suggesting that $50,000 per semester is easy, blow-off money for families just because they earn more than 180k? </p>
<p>10k is easier to spend than 50k. Income isn’t the whole story.</p>
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<p>And thus choosing to take no classes at all instead? Aren’t these supposed high achievers that want to get engineering/business/journalism credits as freshmen because they’ve already satisfied their gen ed requirements? </p>
<p>It’s a theory, I suppose–that the top students who already have so many AP/CLEP credits that they need to take their majors’ credits have been locked out and are thus choosing to take less credits per semester. And that these students account for enough of UW’s student body to affect the average graduation times. </p>
<p>Look, what you’re saying is very nice to hear as a student; you’re assuming that UW’s student body is, on average, extraordinary and that UW’s management is hindering these students. In my experience, that’s not the case. UW’s student body isn’t so extraordinary (at least across the board), and UW’s facilities aren’t so bad. It’s very easy to find classes that satisfy degree requirements when there’s a billion classes to choose from.</p>
<p>I think a simpler explanation is that DARS and 4 year plans need to be more clear cut, and that advisers need to be more proactive in helping students stay on track for timely graduation.</p>
No. I’m stating that most Harvard students don’t pay $50,000. And their student aid packages do not consist of taking out loans to make up all or part of the difference, as is frequently the case at UW. Their cost is a flat 10% of family income.
Not sure where you’re getting that idea. They’re taking classes they don’t need while biding time and building seniority to get into the classes they do need, accruing extra costs and taking a longer time to graduate.
Are you trying to claim that students can freely substitute other classes for their degree requirements? I’d like to see proof of that.
You’re still going with the claim that UW students aren’t smart enough to figure it out on their own, huh? Hundreds of thousands of students have no problem figuring it out at UW’s peer universities without such excessive hand-holding. What makes UW students singularly deficient in that regard?</p>
<p>40+% do. No one at UW pays 50k, whether you make 10k/yr or 1M/yr. </p>
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<p>Then why are engineering majors graduation with 125-133 resident credits–the amount required by UW? Like I said, they’re taking longer to graduate but they’re NOT accruing superfluous credits in the process. Thus, they’re taking less credits per semester. </p>
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<p>Check out undergrad catalog for more details. Comm b, ethnic studies, lit, humanities, social sciences, math, intro major courses, and often advanced major requirements have multiple offerings and tracks. There’s endless possibilities.</p>
Look at the average total credits to degree (examples: ChemE 152.2 credits to degree, NuclearE 150, etc.). They’re higher. Engineering doesn’t require all credits to be resident credits. AP credits are accepted - for example, a high score on the AP Calc BC exam yields 10 credits. Students are having to complete 125-133 resident credits because they waste semesters taking unneeded classes because they’re locked out of the classes they need.
The catalog does indeed contain a lot of course listings. But take a look at specific degree requirements. Not a lot of substitution is allowed. Can’t get a class you need, even after contacting the Dept/Prof? You have to try again next semester. That adds to time to graduate, not to mention adding to the student’s cost.</p>
<p>Wrong. Start comparing our 200 majors’ and degree requirements, and their respective flexibilities, to other universities. It’s impressive.</p>
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<p>Higher than what? They’re 20 credits more than the required minimum to graduate–and these numbers include transfer, AP and CLEP credits. These credits have nothing to do with UW’s course registration system. It’s simply an issue of whether the AP Euro, US, and World history classes from high school were all useful for gen ed requirements–along with many other factors like a student’s interest in outside electives that the chemE department barely includes, etc.</p>
<p>Course lockouts would imply that residence credits are unusually high for locked out students. There’s no indication that they are. You have one guy complaining about one course (Calc III–which he GOT IN TO and didn’t like the lecture times) over 10 months ago. It’s rare. Trust me–I’m the one with access to course registration, not you.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t give UW undue credit. If there was a problem, I’d want it fixed too. I don’t know the exact issue underlying graduation rates, but you’re not offering reasonable explanations.</p>
<p>Many engineering students do a semester or even two semester long co-op which involves working for good pay at an approved engineering firm. You don’t get many credits for this (3 per semester) but the experience is considered highly desirable. Thus as the engineering graduation plan sheet indicates–it can take 4.5-5 years to graduate.</p>
<p>“Credit Load Recommendations
The curriculum requirements for the BSCE degree can be satisfied in eight semesters of study by completing 15-17 credits of work each semester (see Page 43). However, many students choose to take longer. A nine-semester or ten-semester program may be selected to achieve broader coverage of an area of specialization, penetrate an area more deeply, pursue a certificate program, or pursue a second major. In addition, many students participate in the engineering cooperative education (co-op) program, which requires one or two additional semesters.”</p>