<p>Let’s clear up a couple of things right now.</p>
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<li><p>It was barrons, not Jiffsmom, who attempted to muddy the waters by inserting Harvard into the mix. Harvard does not encourage students to take time off DURING college and offers no support to the proposition that taking time off is beneficial to UW; Harvard merely encourages students to take a year off BEFORE college, and the reasoning is that Harvard students, being notoriously high achievers, risk burnout if they go straight from being uber-perfect in high school to enrolling at pressure-cooker Harvard. UW doesn’t have this problem; UW’s problem is motivating the more average student to stay in and get through school.</p></li>
<li><p>Barrons is right that UW does (almost) catch up to the top schools by the sixth year – it’s the four year graduation rate that’s real abysmal. As recently as 2008 fewer than half of UW’s undergrads got out in four years, well below the rate of every other highly ranked flagship university. This can’t be solely because UW students are less motivated, are substantially poorer, like to travel a lot more, or are bigger fans of a Kibbutz than students at every top flagship university; it’s a least partially because of bureaucratic roadblocks that the academic programs impose on students as well as limits in funding and facilities. The UW boosters would gain a lot more credibility if they simply acknowledged that this is a problem and assured posters on this board that UW is working on these deficiences – instead of pretending that the problem doesn’t exist or falsely portraying UW’s poor four year graduation rate as a strength that somehow benefits a student’s education and is in the public interest.</p></li>
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