Students Stay in College Longer

By: Peggy Walsh-Sarnecki/Knight Ridder Newspapers
Posted In: News

DETROIT – Angela Samuels is in her fifth year at Grand Valley State University. Her art major is almost impossible to finish in the traditional 4 years, she said – although that’s not what she thought when she started college.

“I was thinking the usual 4 years,” said Samuels, 22, of River Rouge, Mich. “I think everyone averages around 5, 5 years. I’m going to be 5 .”

Samuels takes fewer classes to keep her course load manageable and her grades high. “I realized I was burning myself out,” Samuels said. “You could do it, but you’d only do half in each of your classes, because you only have so much time.”

Her parents planned ahead to pay for her college – 4 years of it. They decided there was nothing they could do but keep paying. Her mother, Addie Samuels, has one piece of advice for parents: “I would tell them to put back more money, because it’s expensive.”

During the past couple of decades, students have been steadily taking longer to finish a bachelor’s degree. Now, 5 or even 6 years is becoming more common than the traditional 4.

“Most likely, they’re going to pay for 5 plus,” said Michael Boulus, executive director of the Presidents Council, State Universities of Michigan. “To finish in 4 years means 4 years full time.”

At the same time, the cost of a degree is increasing. Nationwide, 4 years of tuition and room and board at a public university average $10,636 annually, up 9.8 percent from last year; the average is $26,854 for a private university, up 5.7 percent from last year.

What’s the holdup? Students are weighing class difficulty and affordability when they sign up for classes. Among the issues:

• More students are working, leaving less time for classes.
• More students are cutting down on the number of classes they take to keep grades high.
• Students are changing their majors, making it likely they need additional courses.
• More students are taking remedial classes, especially math, because they didn’t get enough in high school.
• More classes are required for some degrees, such as engineering and teaching.

Some universities are trying to find ways to encourage students to graduate faster. “The graduation rate is a figure we watch closely,” said Michigan State University President Peter McPherson. “It’s a matter of our focus, and one we’ve been doing a lot of thinking about, as to whether it could be reduced.”

Taking more time in college not only makes education more costly, it also costs students income from their postponed career, McPherson said. “If you graduate sooner, you go to work sooner,” he said.

Northern Michigan University studied its graduation rate in the mid-1990s and decided the lack of a financial incentive was part of the problem, said Paul Duby, NMU associate vice president for institutional research.

A generation ago, most universities charged a flat rate for a full-time course load. The practice, called block tuition, made taking more classes a bargain. Now, most universities have done away with block tuition and charge by the credit hour. The more classes a student takes, the higher the tuition bill.

“We saw more of our students drop from taking 15, 16 credit hours down to 12,” Duby said. “We found more students were dropping out in the process. As the time to the end of the tunnel got longer, you found more reasons for students not to finish.” NMU’s solution was to reinstitute block tuition for full-time students. “We saw a turn-around right away,” Duby said.

There is one type of university that’s bucking the trend – highly selective schools.

The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor has a 63.9 percent 4-year graduation rate. Its 6-year graduation rate is 84.4 percent, well above that of other Michigan schools. One reason is that U-M’s selectivity guarantees its students will be both highly qualified and highly motivated.

Another reason: U-M has a relatively affluent student body. Students from affluent high schools tend to be better prepared for college. More than half of U-M’s students come from families with incomes over $100,000; only 20 percent have family incomes less than $50,000, said Julie Petersen, associate vice president for university relations.

Commuter campuses, on the other hand, have always had more students who work.

“Almost all of our students work while they’re going to school, many of them 20 hours or more, some full time,” said Donna McKinley, vice chancellor for student affairs at the University of Michigan at Dearborn. “So unless they go to school year-round, it’s likely to take them more than the traditional 4 years.”

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2004, Detroit Free Press.

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