Posted on 12/02/2014 7:22:24 AM PST by afraidfortherepublic
The vast majority of students at American public colleges do not graduate on time, according to a new report from Complete College America, a nonprofit group based in Indianapolis.
“Students and parents know that time is money,” said the report, called “Four-Year Myth.” “The reality is that our system of higher education costs too much, takes too long and graduates too few.”
At most public universities, only 19 percent of full-time students earn a bachelor’s degree in four years, the report found. Even at state flagship universities — selective, research-intensive institutions — only 36 percent of full-time students complete their bachelor’s degree on time.
Nationwide, only 50 of more than 580 public four-year institutions graduate a majority of their full-time students on time. Some of the causes of slow student progress, the report said, are inability to register for required courses, credits lost in transfer and remediation sequences that do not work. The report also said some students take too few credits per semester to finish on time. The problem is even worse at community colleges, where 5 percent of full-time students earned an associate degree within two years, and 15.9 percent earned a one- to two-year certificate on time.
The lengthy time to graduate has become so much the status quo that education policy experts now routinely use benchmarks of six years to earn a bachelor’s degree and three years for an associate degree.
“Using these metrics may improve the numbers, but it is costing students and their parents billions of extra dollars...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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 worked full time and had a family but still carrying a full load it took me 5 years.
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.
Name of school?
American “higher education.” Never have so many invested so much for so little that is decent, real, or useful.
excellent!
North Greenville University, SC
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.
None of my kids majored in “Wymin’s Studies”. 2 engineers, one teacher, one musician. They all worked. Only the musician got out “on time”.
Congratulations.
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.)
Thanks for the belly laugh.
And congratulations to you and your daughter!
Yep, I always hated that. Have a couple of 3 hour labs a week and only get 1 credit hour for each of them.
My hat is off to your daughter for being one of the exception. One of my three took five years and then got her master's. Another took six because she needed to take time off to work and avoid the debt trap. Our youngest was right between, five and a half, for partly that reason and because she got married at 21 and also took a year off to work. Our grandson was born one month before her graduation.
The enemedia successfully convinced a large slice of the sheeple because Sarah Palin took seven years years to complete her degree, for much the same reasons as most of us.
Of course back in the day, a lot of the young men would have been employed, in the military.
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