<p>The daughter of a close family friend just finished her senior year at a top LAC. This LAC requires a senior thesis on top of a full course load senior year. The thesis does not itself carry any credit hours, but is required for graduation. </p>
<p>This girl turned in her senior thesis on May 4th and heard TWO DAYS before graduation that it was not acceptable and she would not be allowed to participate in graduation. Her parents, grandparents were already on their way driving across the country expecting to see her graduation. </p>
<p>She has now been told that even if she submits her thesis by the middle of June, she will not be listed as an August graduate (they have a summer session) and her degree will instead show her graduating in January of 2014. In addition, they are demanding $5000 for her to remain enrolled while the senior thesis is being finished. This seems INSANE to me. I don’t see how the LAC can charge $5000 to basically hold an enrollment spot, nor how a senior thesis committee can take 6 months to grade/evaluate an essay. They obviously have a huge number of theses turned in on May 4th, yet are able to confer degrees on the majority of seniors 10 days later.</p>
<p>A few salient points:
-The thesis topic is a STEM topic, it requires a lot of special formatting for equations, etc. so part of the issue has been simply putting the paper into a well formatted end product.
-The student in question is not great at soliciting help or sending up red flags when she’s struggling. She’s a silent sufferer and this has not helped the situation. This situation was obviously going badly for awhile and yet she did not cry out for help, either to the school or to her parents. I’m not saying this is okay for her to have done, it’s just the way things happened.
-She is a very strong student and is applying to medical school next year, although the weird graduation date may cause schools to question what happened.
-The parents paid full freight for her tuition, $220,000+, and the school has the gall to ask for $5000 more, it almost feels like they’re holding her degree hostage.</p>
<p>Has anyone out there heard of such a thing? I tried searching CC but the question is complex. Any guidance, past experiences would be of enormous help.</p>
<p>I personally can’t imagine letting things get so bad before I said something, but that’s what she did and this is now the mess that she is in.</p>
<p>Wow - is May 4th the due date for every senior thesis? That gives precious little time for review and deciding which have fulfilled the grad requirement. I imagine that every year, there are students/parents/grandparents in this awkward position.</p>
<p>I can understand why you might hesitate to post the name of the LAC, so as not to cause additional embarrassment or difficulty for the student. But it would certainly be of help to current and future students. Was there no adviser to make sure she was staying on track in an earlier draft? You say she was aware that things weren’t going well, but the adviser should have prepared her for this possibility.</p>
<p>Most students who did honors/senior thesis…including those in STEM fields got their thesis finished and turned in on time or in an extreme few cases, even early. </p>
<p>Unless her LAC requires everyone to do a senior thesis(i.e. Reed), then the choice to do one was her own and there were requirements, obligations(i.e. Seeking help as needed) and deadlines she needed to meet to complete it. </p>
<p>Considering you’ve mentioned that she’s a silent sufferer and didn’t reach out for help when there was still time, the onus is on her shoulders. Especially considering most colleges I know of allocate at least a full academic year to complete the senior/honors thesis and students know…or SHOULD KNOW that it will involve extra work on top of one’s academic load.</p>
<p>Unless she has documented case of an illness or disability with the disability office, she and her family aren’t likely to have much success in appealing the graduation or the $5000 registration fee. </p>
<p>Her thesis failed to meet graduation requirements and she didn’t reach out for help when she could have.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>My reading of the OP was that the student in question completed her senior/honors thesis. However, for some reason, the faculty evaluating it felt it was lacking enough in quality to feel it didn’t fulfill academic and departmental thesis requirements.</p>
<p>From the few cases where this happened at my LAC with classmates, it usually meant the problem was a serious one as minor issues were dealt with by faculty allowing a quick rewrite within the same day so the student could graduate on time.</p>
<p>“Was there no adviser to make sure she was staying on track in an earlier draft?”</p>
<p>That is where the story breaks down and makes no sense, imo. I know at my kid’s school, every senior has a thesis adviser and they meet with them frequently.</p>
<p>“My reading of the OP was that the student in question completed her senior/honors thesis. However, for some reason, the faculty evaluating it felt it was lacking enough in quality to feel it didn’t fulfill academic and departmental thesis requirements.”</p>
<p>I can’t imagine the advisor wouldn’t recognize her thesis wouldn’t meet the necessary requirements.</p>
<p>That’s where the story breaks down to me, too. Do you know if there was a thesis advisor who reviewed hypotheses and progress over time? It would help if you named the school.</p>
<p>^It is required for all graduating seniors, it was not an option. I agree with your tough love answer Cobrat, she did fail to meet the requirements. </p>
<p>However, it’s the new graduation date as well as the $5000 fee (what possible costs can she be incurring that would add up to $5000?) that leave me with a bad taste. Is this one of the back door ways LAC’s line their coffers in the face of declining enrollment and questions about returns on investment for LAC degrees? It feels unseemly.</p>
<p>Her parents are making her take out a student loan to pay the additional fee. I feel badly for her. </p>
<p>Small LAC’s trumpet their ‘attention to the student’ benefits. This student is getting run over.</p>
<p>Has she gone all the way up the chain of command, ie has the school’s President affirmed this? If not, do that. </p>
<p>Is the $5k fee found anywhere in writing? As in, does the school state, in writing separate from this issue, that this fee exists? </p>
<p>Has the girl submitted drafts that were deemed adequate? Did her advisors give her any indication that her thesis was not up to standards? </p>
<p>"-The parents paid full freight for her tuition, $220,000+, and the school has the gall to ask for $5000 more, it almost feels like they’re holding her degree hostage."</p>
<p>That is an issue for an attorney who s familiar with the laws in the state in which the LAC exists.</p>
<p>My husband didn’t complete a paper he needed to graduate (way back in the dark ages) and my in laws had to pay for the class every semester until he finished it - which finally happened 10 years later when he decided he wanted to go to grad school.</p>
<p>Everyone’s questions about the adviser and why the progress wasn’t monitored, etc. are the same ones I have. It makes me CRAZY that this girl can’t reach out for help and can let the ball drop as far as she did. This is a student who is so introverted (another thread on CC, lol), she cannot elicit help when she needs it. I am incapable of understanding how she let it get so bad. I will say that her adviser is new, and her thesis subject is obscure enough (especially for an LAC-ie STEM related). </p>
<p>HOWEVER- small LAC should equal, personal treatment right? I realize the adviser can’t bang on her door to help her, but does it really get to a denial (by email) of degree two days before graduation? </p>
<p>I am worried about revealing the name of the school because it’s a pretty identifiable case at the moment. When it all gets settled, believe me I will broadcast it on CC.</p>
<p>Obviously I don’t know this student’s situation with her advisor, but I can personally vouch for the fact that even at an elite college known for taking great care of undergraduates, a student can end up with a thesis advisor who is no help. </p>
<p>My D’s advisor was basically AWOL for the entire semester, then swooped in at the last minute to declare the work unsatisfactory, then disappeared, never to be heard from again despite emails, calls, and hanging out at his office during office hours. Further, my D later learned that this professor has a reputation for operating in this manner.</p>
<p>Thanks goodness D had a couple of weeks rather than a couple of days to recover, and when the advisor went AWOL the second time, she quickly took the initiative to reach out to other resources for feedback as she revised her work. Otherwise, she could have ended up like the OP’s acquaintance.</p>
<p>Unless that $5000 fee is abnormally high for what is essentially a self-inflicted delay, I view this fee more along the lines of a penalty fee one receives for turning in library CDs/DVDs after a several days or moreso the various legal penalty fees for being late in filing one’s taxes or paying court-ordered judgments in civil litigation cases. </p>
<p>As the fine in the NYPL and Queens Libraries are $3 each/day…those fines can add up quickly and in the case of defendants delaying/refusing to pay such judgments…the penalties can be far more severe.</p>
<p>Yes, you can probably get an attorney to threaten the college enough to lower/eliminate the fee. However, doing so may effectively burn her bridges with her Profs when she may later need recommendations for med/grad school or for certain jobs which require faculty recommendations.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>While small LACs do provide personal attention, we’re talking about ostensible young adults who are 18-22+ years old who are/were in my undergrad days…expected to be responsible and independent enough to seek help when needed.</p>
<p>While reaching out is much easier and LAC Profs do reach out to students…the onus is still on the student to be proactive in seeking out help as needed. I’d think this would be moreso for a graduating senior.</p>
<p>I rather doubt this LAC uses “thesis failure” as a way of generating a bit of extra income every year. It seems much more likely that this student dropped the ball, was warned repeatedly, ignored the warnings, and is now suffering the consequences.</p>
<p>However, if the school in fact has a summer session, I would also question the rationale for making her wait until fall to finish the thesis. Yes, it’s possible that her advisor and/or grading committee won’t be around during the summer . . . but that’s where you go up the chain of command until you find someone willing to approve an alternate advisor/and or grading committee so the student can graduate this summer. Yes, it would likely be unusual, and would require special accommodation, but I’ve no doubt that someone, somewhere in the school administration, can make it happen if they want to.</p>
<p>^By your fine analogy, she will be done with her thesis in a few weeks, so a daily fine would be acceptable. They however are saying she can’t “return her book” until January of 2014, even the Queens Library doesn’t postdate late returns…</p>
<p>The civil litigation example is probably much more apt…especially considering judges from what I’ve seen/heard have some latitude in determining the scope and extent of penalties…including increasing them quickly. </p>
<p>As for late graduation dates, she could be attending Columbia University as it’s technically possible to not graduate on time even when one completed all academic requirements…including thesis if applicable if the student concerned forgot to file an “Application to graduate” or some bureaucratic form like that. </p>
<p>That snagged a few grad student friends attending GSAS so some did end up graduating in the January of the following year.</p>
<p>Exactly. This obviously needs to go up the chain of command at that school. I don’t disagree that she shouldn’t suffer the consequences of what happened. I just feel like the punishment way outweighs the crime. Unfortunately the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and neither parent is much of an advocate either. I am stuck watching this slow motion train wreck without control to do anything.</p>
<p>Cobrat, it’s not Columbia. Did those student you mentioned have to pay tuition until their January graduation date?</p>
<p>If the topic under question is extremely specialized, this may not be possible as the alternate advisor would need some decent working knowledge of that specialization which isn’t always guaranteed…and if such faculty members are available…they may not be interested in giving up summer research/academic conference/administrative/other summer plans plans to advise a student, especially one who dropped the ball academically. </p>
<p>Senior thesis advising…if taken seriously requires a Prof with some working knowledge of the thesis topic…it’s not like one can tack any Prof within a given department as if their mass-produced cogs in a machine.</p>
<p>My D is required to write a senior thesis. She has an entire academic year to finish and has already started working on it this summer (will be a senior in the fall). However, she gets academic credit for this each semester (3 hrs/semester). I would assume, that if she fails to get her thesis approved, she would be required to enroll (and we would have to pay for) 3 academic hours per semester until she finishes. I guess in the case of the OP, there is no academic credit hours involved. But, even so, I would consider the $5000 about equivalent of paying for additional hours until the thesis is finished. I’m not sure I really see the problem lying with the college.</p>
<p>Yes, where was the adviser all this time? And for that matter where was the professor? Isn’t one of the supposed advantages of an LAC all the support and personalized attention that students get to prevent just this sort of “falling through the cracks?”</p>
<p>megpmom^That makes sense if the thesis comes with credit, in this situation there are no credit hours associated with the thesis.</p>
<p>Cobrat, the thesis is about 85% complete, the final 15% couldn’t possibly take that long to evaluate. It’s an undergraduate, not graduate/PhD type thesis.</p>