The "6 year" graduation rate

ucbalumnus
Tue, 15 Sep 2015 15:23:08 +0000

CSU Sacramento’s mechanical engineering department has a table that may be relevant to this discussion:
http://www.ecs.csus.edu/me/Enrollment%20and%20Graduation%20Data/Degrees%20Conferred%20Data.pdf

For 2012-2013, the median years to a bachelor’s degree for frosh admits was 5.8 in mechanical engineering, 5.5 in the engineering division, and 4.8 in the school overall. For junior transfers, the numbers were 2.8 in mechanical engineering, 3.3 in the engineering division, and 2.3 in the school overall.

Yes, it does look odd that the median (as opposed to the mean) can end in .8, though it may be due to how summer sessions are counted (e.g. it could be that 5.8 = 11 regular semesters with one summer session thrown in).

It does look like students take a substantially larger number of credit units than the number nominally required. Median units to degree in 2012-2013 were 158.0 in mechanical engineering, 159.0 in the engineering division, and 135.5 in the school overall. The normal minimum number of credit units to graduate from CSU Sacramento generally is 120, but mechanical engineering requires 122, according to http://www.ecs.csus.edu/me/docs/curriculum%20roadmap.pdf .