Should "typical" college freshmen plan on 9+ semesters?

compmom · May 13, 2012, 6:33pm

Just to answer a couple of questions. Students with disabilities of various kinds must register with the college’s disabilities office (or whatever it is called on that campus), submit documentation, including evaluations and MD letters, meet with someone in the office, and obtain a list of allowed accommodations, one of which might, in some cases, be a reduced course load. The student then meets with teachers at the beginning of the year and gives them a letter with the list. Of course, reduced course load does not have anything to do with professors: it is an administrative accommodation.

Logically, with the Americans with Disabilities Act in the background, if a college allows a reduced course load for a student, then that student should also receive aid for the extra semesters that course load entails.

We did not push this on any college: they figured it out themselves. But I could certainly see that it might be an issue to actively raise in some situations. As for merit aid, I would ask the college, and if they say no, do some advocacy over the next few years. Check precedents.

It seems just that financial aid should cover the entire time a student is on campus, if graduation was delayed by a disability covered under the ADA.

But This stuff is evolving legally, and it is always possible that you might need to pioneer.

calimami · May 13, 2012, 6:57pm

if by “typical” you mean low-income, then probably yes–9 semesters. but so what? for a low-income kid (or a kid with some sort of disability as compmom pointed out), getting a degree is a victory in itself. there are kids walking these campuses whose families exist on $6000/year!! imagine making it to college after coming from that kind of poverty. the 4-year graduation model has evolved and changed, and i don’t see anything inherently wrong with that.

umdclassof80 · May 13, 2012, 7:48pm

I think that this depends on the student. What is their major? Did they change majors? Will they have to retake courses due to poor grades? Are they taking a full course load or light course load? Are they taking a semester abroad?

Our D is a freshman. She has carefully planned out her entire 4 years. She anticipates being able to easily graduate in 4 years if all goes as planned. However, she has mentioned two friends who already know it is going to take more than 4 years. Another friend will be graduating one semester early.

qdogpa · May 13, 2012, 8:06pm

Simple, the answer is a resounding NO…though the bigger the school, perhaps, the longer it may take

ucbalumnus · May 14, 2012, 1:38am

Several CSUs (Bakersfield, Fresno, Fullerton, Pomona, San Bernardino, Stanislaus) have four year graduation pledges (i.e. will give you first registration priority for courses needed for graduation in your major and/or waive fees for any additional semesters or quarters) if you follow the four year graduation plan for your major and do not need remedial courses. However, their actual four year graduation rates are quite low, usually under 20%.

ucbalumnus · May 14, 2012, 1:40am

“Typical” means non-elite-level academic qualifications.

As far as the student from the low income family goes, such a student is the one least likely to be able to afford an additional semester beyond the initially planned eight semesters.

calmom · May 14, 2012, 1:58am

In an ideal world, that might be so – but most of the CSU students I know are working their way through college, often at less than full time enrollment, because that is what they have to do. When my son was at a CSU, his Pell grant was enough to cover the full cost of tuition – but tuitions have doubled since then, so that wouldn’t be the case for current CSU students. My son was able to work half time while also maintaining a full coarse load, but he wasn’t a “typical” in the sense of “non-elite-level academic qualifications” – he was an NMF who started at a private LAC that had a 63% 4-year graduation rate for his cohort, but he wasn’t counted among them. He graduated from a different college 7 years after he started, which was fine by me. He only attended college for 8 semesters, they just weren’t consecutive, and he saved a considerable amount of money by shifting to a public institution.

That’s one other big hole in your assumptions based on grad rate figures – you are assuming that those who graduate in 5 or 6 years have attended successive, consecutive semesters. I am sure there are many students graduating from UC’s or CSU’s in year #5 or #6 who have attended and paid for only 4 semesters, but just weren’t able to do so continuously.

ucbalumnus · May 14, 2012, 2:14am

Yes, there are, especially at co-op heavy schools like the Cal Polys, but that probably does not explain all or most of the late graduates. Most CSU students are not NMFs or others with elite-level academic qualifications from high school. (And the original question was framed in terms of semesters, rather than years, to exclude cases like your son who took only 8 semesters of school.)

When I went to college, when it was much less selective than today, the four year graduation rate was around 40% or less (versus 70% today). A lot of the students were taking more than 8 semesters because they were averaging lighter than normal course loads, and/or needed to take remedial courses (over half of freshmen had to take remedial English back then).

calmom · May 14, 2012, 4:32am

Just to clarify a typo - in post #27, I meant to write, “many students graduating from UC’s or CSU’s in year #5 or #6 who have attended and paid for only 8 semesters, but just weren’t able to do so continuously.”

(You clearly understood what I meant to post, but just in case someone else reads it, it’s a big enough error on my part that I think it needs a correction).

You wrote:

But I am not aware of any source of information that would give you stats for semesters. My son started college in 2001 and graduated in 2008; he would not show up in any any colleges graduation stats, no matter how many semesters he attended. As far as college #1 is concerned, he never graduated; as far as college #2 is concerned, he essentially never started.

College #1 does currently report a “transfer out” rate, but I don’t think they would pick up kids like my son because he wasn’t a direct transfer either. He officially took a one year leave of absence; at the end of that year he simply didn’t return. I don’t know whether he informed the college or not. Obviously at some point he ordered the college transcript to to transfer to college #2, but that may have been beyond the time frame for which the college now report the transfers.

My point is simply that the statistics give you some basic numbers, but they don’t tell you the “why” or the “how”. I do think that at public colleges, especially the less selective, commuter-type schools, it is probably fairly common that students do not attend college continuously. There just really is no particularly good reason why those students should attend continuously, except for the natural desire to complete the degree and move on. Most are not living in dorms, they are not centering their social lives around the campus, many are non-traditional students (older students, students who are married or have children, etc.).

I am not saying that all of the students who fail to graduate fit my proposed alternative model – I am just saying that you are looking at numbers that don’t mean much one way or another without more info.

I think you are trying to frame a common argument that I see on CC – that limitations of course availability at CSU’s and similar campuses force large number of students to attend for more than 8 semesters in order to graduate, and that extra cost should be factored in when comparing public to private costs. But I just don’t think there’s enough evidence to support that argument, as a large percentage of the students who don’t graduate in 4 years probably never graduate at all from those colleges, for reasons that have nothing to do with course availability. Also, the cost differential is so great between in-state public and private, especially at the lower tier publics, that even an extra 2 or 3 semesters would not cost nearly as much as attending as a full-pay student at a private college. I mean that’s simple math – if a semester at a CSU costs $4000 and a semester at a private college costs $18,000 – then 9 semesters at the CSU would be the monetary equivalent of 2 semesters (1 year) at the private college. So certainly the prospect of an additional semester to complete the degree would not be a logical reason to choose the private college over the public one.

ucbalumnus · May 14, 2012, 11:39am

Huh? That was not the argument at all. Indeed, less selective private universities also have low four year graduation rates.

barrons · May 14, 2012, 12:51pm

Usually the reasons for taking longer have less to do with academics and more to do with individual factors. Taking time off or a very reduced load is the major reason for taking longer. And the reasons for that vary from economic to very personal.

Lemaitre1 · May 14, 2012, 5:03pm

I have two sons at a CSU. One is a Geology major and the other a Physics major and course availability is a major issue for them and is delaying their graduations. They have to take all the same lower division courses as Engineering majors and these courses are heavily impacted.

ucbalumnus · May 14, 2012, 5:09pm

Your sons are at CSU Sacramento? Unfortunately, it looks like it is not one of the CSUs with four year graduation agreements available to students.

calmom · May 14, 2012, 5:43pm

Re post #30:

Then I am afraid I don’t understand your point at all.

You seem to be arguing that the path to a degree for a “typical” college freshmen at some colleges is 9 or more semesters… but you are focusing on a set of universities which do not cater to “typical” college students. If you go to a CSU and talk to faculty and students you are going to see a much broader range of individuals in attendance – the “typical” CSU freshman is not necessarily an 18 year old, recent high school grad.

It seems to me that the only answer to your question is, “it depends on the student.” The CSU’s are facing near catastrophic problems right now, and of course it impacts the students --but their own choices also have an impact. They can choose whether to carry 12 units or 15 or 18 each semester. They can choose their major. They also have alternatives when courses are not available – for example, my son took several general ed courses on line via a community college, freeing up his schedule to focus on more advanced courses in his major.

fieldsports · May 14, 2012, 5:46pm

It would be so much more instructive for budgeting if the available completion data was framed in terms of “semesters attended to completion of degree”, as opposed to “years from starting to finishing”. I think financial planning to degree completion is probably part of most people’s decisionmaking process, starting in 10th or 11th grade.

The latter metric lumps people who paid for up to 12 semesters together with people who may have only paid for 8 semesters, but did it over 6 years. Is the semesters-paid data available anywhere, to anybody’s knowledge, such as through the Common Data Set?

Hanna · May 14, 2012, 5:46pm

“But a “typical” student at SDSU (let’s say median high school academic credentials for SDSU freshmen) would appear to have a non-trivial risk of not graduating in four years, so student and parent cost and financial aid planning may have to take that into account.”

Yes, I agree that it is smart to take this into account.

ucbalumnus · May 14, 2012, 5:51pm

Yes, I agree that “8 semester graduation rate” (or “12 quarter graduation rate” for quarter system schools) is more useful data than “4 year graduation rate” for most purposes.

Should "typical" college freshmen plan on 9+ semesters?

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