Very proud of my daughter. She got her degree in four years while working, made very good grades, and got her MBA two years later, again while working. It was hard but she worked very hard.
I noticed this in the 1980s when my kids were in school. Especially at the University of Washington where required courses were not available in a timely manner due to University management.
They had a policy there (in engineering) that a student could not be admitted to upper division unless he/she maintained a certain grade average in classes already completed. The magic number changed by the students and by the major. Therefore, the university developed a policy where a student could take a class up until finals and then drop it without incurring any penalty if he/she did not like their grade. Of course he/she would have to take it over the following semester.
My son took classes with folks who were on their third try. Naturally this affected the curve and the classes were always overflowing.
There’s no point graduating on time if you can’t get a good paying job utilizing your degree in women’s studies.
American “higher education.” Never have so many invested so much for so little that is decent, real, or useful.
I took 6 years.
Of course, not only did I fail/drop a few, but I went to 3 different colleges.
And it was all with the aim of an engineering degree.
I did NOT take tons of classes at once, although I usually had around 14-15 credits. Even schedule-wise it could be hard because of the official 3-hr labs needed.
A number of years ago....I worked with a guy who was paying his daughter through some state university. He was the guy who’d ask questions and knew the whole trail, the cost picture, and the requirements....even though his daughter was totally oblivious to the big picture and money involved.
So, about three years into this routine, he was preparing for his daughter’s last year of college, and got this call from the daughter that some counselor had told her that two of the classes taken from the first year...weren’t going to be accepted for the program she was involved in....thus she was two classes short, with one semester left before supposed graduation. All of this was going to invoke one additional semester.
He picks up the phone....calls up the counselor and lets them know that he’s got the original class requirements listing, and the two courses count. This goes back and forth. Finally, the counselor agrees, and a brief one-line fax is sent to him to settle the affair.
I get the impression that this is a common theme, and kinda like a new car lot deal where you pay for rubber-coating on the underbody, and some special elephant-wax protective coat for the roof. The trouble is....there is no better business bureau to take university idiots for gimmicks like this.
We have to be the only society in history where you have a lot of 25-26 year olds that have never had a job. Most of them have never done real work. It’s one of the reasons we have so many illegals.
It is almost like a welfare program to so many. Mother stay in school on the taxpayer’s dime and then want it forgiven when they find no one wants to hire them with a useless major. Most of them shouldn’t be in four year programs. The so-called educators certainly don’t mind taking them because it is MONEY to them. Sooner or later, the education fleecing of taxpayers has got to end.
So many would have been so much better off working for six years instead of getting a degree in a useless field and then getting a job serving fast food.
I guess my oldest is an outlier.
She finished her undergrad in 3.5 years and entered the workforce. She is now in grad school and will be finishing an MPH in epidemiology on schedule.
Now her dad was on the 7 year plan. My Freshman year was the best 3 years of my life.
(Just kidding, I was working and going to school part time.)
My daughter got a degree in Biomedical Science in 4 and a half years. I guess she did pretty well considering her major was super hard.
It took me 6 years—3 for the AA, 3 for the BS. It actually took longer, if you count the classes I took while not formally enrolled in a college or university.
Then I went on to graduate school, where I took another 7 years to get a PhD.
I was married, with a family.
The good thing is that with my degree, I never have to worry about unemployment. That’s because I majored in a science field, not some stupid thing like “women’s studies.”
Funny thing, I NEVER saw a humanities major in any of my math and physics classes.
I started College in 1968. It was either the 4 year plan or Vietnam.
I was on my way to a 5 maybe 6 year degree when I decided to withdraw. It was not by choice. My chosen master was in a rather narrow field of study and often two required courses would be offered at the same time. This meant I would have to wait till next time around to take one of them. I would then load up on electives to keep my full time status. The same thing happened with my daughter when she went. She too ended up changing majors and did finally get her B.A. I never completed mine which I sometimes regret but not often.
Took me 6, but I worked one full time job and one part time job and acquired no debt outside a small loan ($2,000) my last year so I could go full-time. Of course it was 35 years ago when you could afford to go to college without a rich uncle.
My degree in engineering required 142 semester hours in 1970. No way you can do that in four years. Add in 14 semester hours of ROTC... I also did part time school and work for one year. Took me six years.
An extra semester? An extra year?... Heck, that’s what we call a victory lap!
In some cases, colleges will force a longer stay by not offering the required courses, or enough of them.
I took 3 years for my Biology degree. I CLEP’d out of my general studies.
What I’ve noticed when I took classes after I retired (and some fellow community college students have noticed as well) is that colleges are increasingly refusing to accept credit earned elsewhere and having required classes that are offered too rarely to accommodate the students.
For example, in their paralegal program, you have to register online for required classes prior to 4AM on the day they open registration. If you try to register at 8 AM on the first day classes are offered, they will be filled.
In a math class I took, several girls said they were being forced to take language classes even after taking the language for 3 years in high school and maxing out the assessment test. The college only gave them credit for one semester of Spanish - and one of them was raised speaking Spanish at home!
The same college told me if I wanted an associate’s degree, I would have to take English composition and a course in how to use computers - even though I have a BS in Biology, an MBA, and 25 years in the military. I remember using Word 6, but the college says I need to take basic word processing. I took FORTRAN back when the university was renting computer time from a mainframe located in another state...but I need to learn about computers. I had a perfect score on their English assessment test, but I need to take English 100. Right!
My conclusion is the college is requiring students take classes so they can make more money off of them. The bottlenecks are there so students will take fluff courses while waiting to get in the required classes. They make money off of butts in seats, not by accepting credits from state universities...
I took classes in the fall, winter, and then two more classes in the summer of my first year. Finished my first 20 credits with a 3.85 and was admitted full-time, working toward a BS in MIS. I worked and went to school for the next three years, taking 1-2 classes every summer to "catch up" to where I should've been, had I been admitted FT at the start. Graduated with honors, and never looked back. Surprising what a student can do if they treat college like a job, rather than fun.
I got my 4 year degree in 3 and 1/2. I took the maximum course load every semester and took summer courses every summer. I could have almost completed it in three years but was a couple classes short that final semester. Looking back on it, I probably would have been better off pacing myself and taking the full 4 years as my GPA did suffer a bit because of my packed schedule (I still graduated with a 3.4).