Written by Lauren Bucher
Unless a student participated in work-study, graduating from college in four years used to be the norm. Now, seeing a fifth or even sixth year senior is unremarkable.
The average time that students spend obtaining a degree has increased over the past 30 years,according to a working paper by Michael Lovenheim, Sarah Turner, and John Bound.
Tuition, scholarships, socioeconomic status, gender and personal ambition. These are just some of the factors that contribute to this phenomenon, and the degrees to which they affect time spent in school are largely speculative, according to the researchers.
The paper, “Increasing time to Baccalaureate degree in the United States,” was released in April 2010, and the study compared two groups, high school classes from 1972 and 1992, using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1972 and 1988.
The researchers found “evidence of large aggregate shifts in time to degree: in the 1972 cohort, 58 percent of eventual B.A. degree recipients graduated within four years of finishing high school, but for the 1992 high school cohort only 44 percent did so.”
Harding University’s registrar’s office does not track the average time it takes undergraduate students to complete their degree. Students, however, have many thoughts about whether graduating in four years is realistic for them.
Some students cite money as a motivating factor in graduating on time. For example, scholarships usually have strings attached. Traditional scholarships usually are cut off after eight semesters, have a GPA requirement and mandate students take a full course load each semester. This ticking clock discourages students from changing majors or becoming a part-time student and spurs many students to take larger course loads to graduate within in the four-year time frame.
Samantha Covalt, a senior education major, is taking 20 hours this semester. She works as a secretary 10 hours a week. Furthermore, she will complete 40 hours of classroom observation this semester. Covalt entered college with several credit hours and has taken a class during intercession to graduate on time. She said this schedule is necessary because these classes are prerequisites for student-teaching.
Jane Messina, a senior history major, will graduate on time and is taking 18 hours, a move she said was necessary after her father lost his job.
“My dad was killing himself trying to pay for my college,” Messina said. “I decided to just take out loans, because I can’t afford to stay another semester. Otherwise, I would never take 18 hours.”
Conversely, some students elect to spread out their hour requirements over an extra semester or year. Stress, time and quality of semesters are explanations they give for staying longer.
Alana Smith, a fifth-year senior education major, was a Spring Sing director last semester. She decided to take 13 hours last semester rather than take 16 hours.
“I decided not to graduate on time so I wouldn’t over-stress myself with too many hours and Spring Sing,” Smith said. “I thought ‘this is my last semester of college. I want to enjoy it’. I would have been stressed and miserable if I took all those classes and did Spring Sing.”
Similarly, Zachary Cantrell, a senior dietetics major, will take 10 semesters, an extra year, to graduate. He said he plans to take 13 hours each semester for the next three semesters.
“I declared late and to finish a semester earlier I would have to take over 18 hours some semesters and kill myself….for what?,” Cantrell said.
A change in a major, failing or dropping a class, sickness and personal issues can also extend the time a student spends in school.
Arsenio Moss, a senior psychology major, will obtain his degree in four-and-a-half years.
“I started my degree the fall of my junior year in psychology, which is really late,” Moss said. “I didn’t think I was going to go in that direction. I started with a major in biology and I knew I wanted to change my major, so I took a psychology class and decided that’s what I wanted to do.”
Other students return to school later in life. Susan Orozco, a non-traditional student, return to school after earning her AA from Arkansas State University and Certificate in Music Business UCLA Extension. Since, she has been a student “off and on for several years.” Orozco also works part-time at Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock.
“I returned to school to increase my value in the workforce. It is crazy out there right now and without a degree in something, you are often overlooked even though your skills and experience may be more suited for a job,” Orozco said. “I also returned to study a foreign language to add to my skill set and for personal enjoyment.”
Still, some students will graduate on-time or early without taking more than 16 hours a semester.
Brittany Mountford is one such example. Mountford, a junior psychology major, will graduate a semester early. She decided her major before college and came in with AP credits.
Other factors that affect time spent in school include rising tuition costs, race, institutional resources, credits transferring, double majoring and the type of college the student attends.
The paper determined “Mean time to degree increased from 4.69 to 4.97 years. In addition, not only did the proportion finishing within four years decline by a statistically significant 14.2 percentage points (or 24.6 percent), but the entire distribution shifted outward.”
Harding’s graduation rate was 61 percent as of 2003, meaning 61 percent of first-time freshman graduated within six years. Comparatively, Arkansas State University had a graduation rate of 37 percent; University of Arkansas, 59 percent; Abilene Christian University, 61 percent; and Oklahoma Christian University, 51 percent.
Ultimately, it is impossible to determine if Harding is consistent with the trend, and for many students the question of a national trend is theoretical and irrelevant. They do, however, care deeply about their own time of gradation, and the paper suggests that the question will emerge to the forefront of public discussion in the future.
