Decisions, decisions — and please be quick: Students often are forced into more-than-four-year graduation plans because they choose to drastically change their majors or because they have to re-start a new major after not being accepted into professional schools.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
When I first arrived at the University in the fall of 2005 with 4,121 other freshmen, I thought I had my college career sorted out.
From the start of my freshman year I would take a consistent load of at least 15 credit hours and go to summer school so that I could earn degrees in journalism and environmental studies by May 2009.
Famous perpetual students
The stereotype may not conform to the reality of most college students, but famous perpetual students have usually been people who refuse to graduate so that they can keep enjoying college life. Here are some examples of these “I Love College” types:
John “Bluto” Blutarski
One of the pack leaders, John Belushi’s character in the 1978 movie Animal House set the standard of living up college life in drunken debauchery. In the movie, Bluto was in his seventh year of college and had a 0.0 GPA. But he went on to become a U.S. Senator, showing everyone that even if you take forever to graduate you can still do great things in life.
Van Wilder
Played by Ryan Reynolds, this popular student’s credo was, “Don’t be a fool. Stay in school.” But even though Wilder got his fair dose of partying, he also contributed to society, hosting a fund-raising party for the swim team and helping unpopular fraternity brothers get laid.
Johnny Lechner
A real-life perpetual student — to the extreme. Lechner has been going to school in Wisconsin since 1994. He uses his fame and marketing deals to rake in some money for tuition, which for him is more expensive than normal. In 2004 the Wisconsin Board of Regents doubled the price of tuition for students who have more than 165 credit hours — it is popularly known as the “Johnny Lechner Rule.”
But on May 17, 2009 — the day I was supposed to graduate — I was at home barbecuing with my roommates while the procession of students made its way down the Hill. A distant relative sent me a congratulatory e-mail and I had to reply explaining why I was taking an extra year to graduate.
I told him that by the middle of the second semester of my freshman year I had realized environmental studies was not for me, so I replaced it with history and added two minors: French and peace and conflict studies. Also, I realized that going back to my home country (Brazil) and visiting friends and family during the summer was worth more than catching up on credit hours. Graduating in four years became impossible.
I’m hardly in the minority. Not many of my friends got to walk down the Hill when their time had come. In fact, in the last 15 years, fewer than one out of three full-time students graduated in four years, despite the University’s goal to have most students out on time.
Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little brought up the issue in her first all-University convocation. She discussed the need to increase graduation rates and explained how the Four-Year Tuition Compact was an incentive to finish up on time.
The University encourages timely graduation because graduation rates are used as a form of accountability, says Marlesa Roney, vice provost for student success. The public perceives schools with high graduation rates as efficient, which brings in investments. Also, taking longer to graduate can be an unexpected expense for students, especially those under the Four-Year Tuition Compact. The compact guarantees a standard tuition rate for four years, but after that it is based on standard tuition. And, as Roney says, history shows tuition never goes down. Increases in in-state tuition in the last 10 years have varied from 2.3 percent to 25.1 percent, and the fact that rates are decided in June before school starts makes financial planning difficult.
Standard tuition already is higher than what the first students enrolled under the tuition compact, freshmen who entered in 2007, are paying. So students who are expected to graduate in 2011 but end up staying longer can anticipate a price hike in their tuition. Another point students need to consider, Roney says, is that most scholarships only cover four years of school.
TAKING THE TIME TO FIND A PASSION
Chris Gordon, Leawood senior, is part of the majority that is taking longer to graduate. When she arrived at the University in 2006, she thought she would be a design major. She enrolled in the five-year design program and planned to graduate in 2011. But after two and a half years of design school she realized that it wasn’t what she really wanted to do. Even though she enjoyed designing, she wanted to work more closely with people than design would allow.
Gordon talked to a friend who recommended nursing. An open house at the KU Medical Center convinced her to follow that path. Nursing combined her passions for working with people and aiding those in need. However, changing majors would add an extra year — totaling six years as an undergraduate. “At first I thought six years would be a long time, but I realized it was worth it because it is something I’m really passionate about,” Gordon says.
Gordon dreaded telling her parents about her decision because she didn’t want to ask them to spend more money on her education. But, after talking it over, her parents ended up fully supporting her.
Gordon thinks that part of the reason she ended up changing majors was because she was under too much pressure to make a decision in the first place. “I just jumped into a major without thinking what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do that,” she says.
Julianne Kueffer, Overland Park senior, is in a similar situation to Gordon’s. She is set to earn her journalism degree in December, after six and a half years of bouncing from major to major. As a freshman in 2003, Kueffer wanted to study journalism, but she soon changed her mind and applied to the School of Fine Arts. It took her a semester to get into the school, and another year to complete the basic requirements. Once she got those out of the way she started studying industrial design.
But then Kueffer panicked. She didn’t think she had strong drawing skills and switched to graphic design. Kueffer passed her first review, an evaluation made by professors based on a student’s grades and work, but when she failed her second review she had to pick a new major. So she dropped graphic design and went back to her first choice: journalism.
Kueffer thinks it’s difficult for students to graduate on time if they are uncertain about their track, especially if they choose a professional school.
Tony Rosenthal, associate professor of history, has closely advised dozens of students and understands Kueffer’s situation. He says that professional school requirements can be difficult, and once students find out they can’t get in they have to start over. Kueffer, for example, has a year of design credits that can’t be applied toward any other majors. Rosenthal also believes there are too many general education requirements in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, which don’t leave much room for students to explore different majors.
Parental and institutional pressures often push students to follow a certain path, Rosenthal says. But it usually takes some time for students to find out what they really want. “My view in general is that one size does not fit all. People reach intellectual maturity at different times,” he says.
Rosenthal doesn’t think students who take longer to graduate should be perceived as failures. Sometimes taking some extra time might be a good idea. Students who have done poorly their first couple of semesters might want to raise their GPA to make them more competitive for graduate school.
DOUBLE-MAJOR ... OVERTIME
Even though Kueffer is already taking six and a half years to graduate with a journalism degree, she still thinks about extending her undergraduate career for another semester. Doing so would allow her to get a photomedia degree, which was recently created by the department of design. She picked up a passion for photography while taking design classes.
But staying an extra semester would have its price, and she would be paying it.
Barbara Newbold, Kueffer’s mother, would like her to get some actual work experience before going back to school. Newbold understands that when students are unsure of what they want to do, as is the case with her daughter, it takes him or her some time to get on track. But there’s a limit. “After six and a half years she probably, hopefully, figured out what she wants to do,” she says.
It’s possible that Kueffer has some fear of moving on beyond college, Newbold says. Kueffer acknowledges that fear. “I’ve gone to school full-time all of my life; ever since I left high school six and a half years ago. I never took a break from college and I just don’t know anything different from it.”
RAISING THE GRADUATION RATES
The University has made some progress in in-
creasing the number of students who graduate in four years. Less than a quarter of the 1990 freshman class graduated in four years; for the 2004 class the proportion increased to 32 percent.
But efforts are still underway. Roney says the University made some changes after a task force issued a report in 2005 analyzing why students were taking longer to graduate. The task force reported that part of the problem was that the University’s messages and actions were not consistent with the ideal of graduating in four years. As an example, public relations materials often showed a typical courseload of 12 hours, when the truth is that if a student comes in without any college credits he or she has to take an average of 15.5 credit hours per semester to graduate in four years.
While the University is trying to adopt a consistent message, it has not implemented some of the other recommendations. For example, the task force recommended setting “a minimum enrollment of 15 hours for full-time students” and limiting “the number of drops/withdrawals over a student’s career.” These measures have not been adopted.
Other schools have enacted a more radical policy. All three of Arizona’s state schools, for example, place a 20 percent surcharge on tuition if students have completed more than 145 credit hours and the University of Wisconsin doubles the price of tuition after 165 credit hours. Starting in 2011, students entering the University of North Carolina will have to request permission to stay longer than eight semesters.
“Our focus has been not to penalize students, but to encourage them,” Roney says. In that sense, she perceives the tuition compact to be an inducement for students to graduate in four years, although she concedes it may pressure them to rush and just get done with school.
WORK + STUDY =
MORE THAN FOUR
Rosenthal, history professor, is concerned with this increased pressure for students to graduate on time. He says a lot of students feel pressured to take 18 credit hours or more, when that is not necessarily a good idea. Many students can’t handle such a load, especially if they are also working.
Rosenthal says he has perceived an increase in the last 10 years in the number of students working longer hours. “I don’t think the institution does enough to discourage people from working and studying,” he says.
Kyra Myers, Pratt senior, works approximately 35 hours per week at four jobs and is taking only 12 credit hours this semester. She’s taking an extra semester to graduate because of her heavy work schedule.
Myers started working long hours after moving out of her parents’ house. At first she stressed out about balancing school and work, though eventually she got used to it. But it still isn’t easy. Long hours make diligent studying difficult and she feels as though she doesn’t get to enjoy the full college experience like a lot of students do. “It makes me wonder what all these kids who take 12 hours and don’t work do with their free time,” she says.
But Myers thinks that a heavy workload doesn’t necessarily stop anyone from graduating on time, even if it proves to be difficult. It all depends on what the person is willing to give up and how much he or she plans in advance. Myers reserves some time for her social life, and she wouldn’t have to work four jobs if all she wanted to do was sustain herself. “I just really like to shop,” she says.
TUNING THE MESSAGE
Roney says that even though the University wants to increase its graduation rates, there are still legitimate reasons to take more than four years to graduate. Students who changed majors, such as Gordon, who are double majoring, such as Kueffer is considering, or who also work, such as Myers, are all examples. That is why the message the University is trying to pass needs to be finely tuned.
“It’s a really hard message. I really don’t want anyone to feel bad because they took more than four years to graduate for legitimate reasons,” Roney says.
But even if the University’s message is successful, it may still face larger problems in its goal to increase graduation rates. One of the points in the most recent tuition proposal submitted to the Kansas Board of Regents is that budget cuts are a threat to graduation rates. It reads that even with the new tuition rates, “students’ ability to graduate on-time will be threatened by reductions in course and section offerings.”
If everything goes according to what I’ve planned, seven months from now I should be staring at the Campanile’s ceiling as I walk through its doors and head down the Hill into Memorial Stadium. There, after five years as a Jayhawk, I will officially end my career as an undergraduate student. End, that is, if all the classes I need are offered next semester — or if I’m not tempted to prolong my time as a “perpetual student.”
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