Many students taking more than 4 years to earn degree

November 16, 2009 —

Four-year college undergraduates are becoming an endangered species.

National statistics reveal that more than 70 percent of college students pursuing a bachelor degree now take five or more years to do so.

At SVSU, the numbers don’t vary much from national figures, according to Robert Maurovich, vice president of student services and enrollment management. He added that this change isn’t a result of just one thing.

Factors include a change in the socioeconomic landscape of college and in program requirements.

“College has become a more open-opportunity experience,” he said. “Because of this, the socioeconomic strata of college have changed.”

For many students to work through their programs, they must take on 31 credits each academic year. With the broadening of social and economic classes attending college, not everyone can find such class loads financially feasible.

“It’s become much more common for a student to stop out for a while and work to help pay for their education,” Maurovich said. “Before, it wasn’t really socially acceptable to not finish college in more than four years.”

Financially related or not, fewer students are now taking enough credits to complete their degree within four years.

About 40 percent of undergraduates this semester are taking 12 or fewer credits. This makes spring and summer courses a necessity to remain on pace for a bachelor degree’s four-year completion.

Maurovich notes, however, many are not likely to use the spring and summer semesters to make up ground since the majority of students go home after the winter semester.

For example, more than 75 percent of this year’s freshmen class lives outside the Saginaw area, eliminating spring or summer courses as an option for many.

For some students, a willingness to take 31 credits during fall and winter each year still isn’t enough to obtain a degree in four years.

A key reason for this is the maturation of several programs at the University. Requirements for areas such as education, engineering and occupational therapy have modified the makeup of college curricula to include at least an additional semester for students.

While the phenomenon of a four- or five-year college undergraduate seems to be gaining more attention in recent years, Maurovich said it has existed for several decades. At one point, national surveys that assessed college graduation rates only gave recognition to four-year graduates.

“As time went on,” Maurovich said, “they realized they needed to start considering the five- and sixyear graduation rates if they really wanted to capture the reality.”