Average 6 years for 4 year degree?

[Rick Law]

I thought of myself as well informed...  I knew some kids take a bit more time, but my mind was: well...  May be an extra semester or two.

As it turned out, I was way off here!

Today, I heard on a financial talk show about saving for college: "... on average, it takes 6 years..."  I was shocked!  Looking it up, according to this report: during an interview with Senator Ron Johnson, he said "On average, a college degree takes six years".  The journalist there didn't believe him (thinking he was exaggerating), they researched and based on Department of Education numbers, the Senator actually understated it! - The average actually number is 6 years and 4 months on average for kids here in the USA to finish their 4 year degree!!!
^{http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2013/aug/11/ron-johnson/average-college-degree-takes-six-years-us-sen-ron-/}

I looked up colleges in my state - most are graduating less than 50% in 4 years.  A few has single digit percentage graduating in 4 years!  The best one has ~75% graduation rate in 6 years but only 59% did it in 4!


You know, I would have a problem if a job candidate (as college new hire) took that long to finish a college degree.  What would you think?

[Mr. Scram]

Why would you have a problem if someone has performed as expected?

[knapik]

University is incredibly stressful to the point where if you want to actually finish a 4 year degree in 4 years, you'll have to decide to either half arse your work or suffer from mental health issues. Furthermore, some people have to pay bills and rent, and therefore don't have the opportunity to study full time.

[ataradov]

American system of higher education is very puzzling to me. In Russia you have a certain set and fixed program, and you can't move forward before you pas the exams. At the very best you will get a few months to clean up things from the last semester. But this will happen at the same time you need to learn the stuff from the current semester, so leaving things hanging is not a good idea.

I wonder if this extension is related to some subtle way to extract more money that is done intentionally by the colleges.

[BillB]

Not surprising given the state of the economy leading up to and after 2009.  Plus, with the government getting into the loan business and providing cheap money for schools to accept anyone who can fill out an application, those who have no business going to college are struggling to complete the watered-down programs offered.

These programs provide no marketable skills, and the students are realizing there aren't any jobs available for them when they graduate.  This causes them to stay in school even longer.

[IanB]

I suspect you could finish a 4 year degree in 4 years if you were fully funded and didn't have to do paid work to support yourself.

It is very different from my experience where a degree program had a fixed length and the modules to be studied in each year were predetermined. The only way a 4 year degree could take 5 or 6 years was for a student to fail a year and have to retake it from scratch. I did see that occasionally with wealthy students who could afford the additional fees. But for normal students you either progressed to the next year or you were out.

[xrunner]

I suspect you could finish a 4 year degree in 4 years if you were fully funded and didn't have to do paid work to support yourself.

I finished in 4 because I had the G.I. bill to help me pay and I took two classes in the summer each year. 

[ataradov]

I'm not sure how this will even come up at an interview. On all my CVs I only have the name of the university, but not the years attended and this never was a problem.

[georges80]

I have 2 boys in college, both doing mech eng. One is finishing his 3rd year and the other his 1st year. Older is at Cal Poly (a CSU - california state university) and younger at UCD (university california Davis).

Both are on track to finish the bachelor's degree in 4 years. One key aspect is of course to be able to pay for all the tuition so as to not have to stretch out the duration of the degree. The other key aspect is to maintain grades that enable you to get priority class selection which has quite an impact in finishing in 4 years, especially when some early classes are prerequisites for future classes.

Both boys utilize the counselors to ensure they are on track from a unit perspective (minimum number of required units) and prerequisite perspective.

There certainly are 'impacted' courses where it is hard to get a class you may need when you request it and that can throw things for a loop. But, as above, maintaining marks to a medium-high level will help you get priority selection.

The Cal Poly has a 4 year plan where you make a commitment to maintain marks (essentially a contract) and that will help you get priority selection.

At UCD if you are in the honors program that will also give you priority selection for classes - you can select/enroll into a class prior to the general stream.

So, yes, it is quite possible and feasible to finish in 4 years or at most 1 extra qtr/semester.

I don't see taking longer to correlate with not being 'as good' since there are 1) financial reasons and 2) impacted classes where you don't 'win the lottery' and have to wait a qtr/semester (or longer) to be able to get your selection.

The benefit of completing in 4 vs 5 or 6 years is obviously to enter the work stream (or start a post-grad degree) sooner than later, but may not be possible.

cheers,
george.

[IanB]

I don't see taking longer to correlate with not being 'as good' since there are 1) financial reasons and 2) impacted classes where you don't 'win the lottery' and have to wait a qtr/semester (or longer) to be able to get your selection.

Based on everything you just wrote, I think the system in the USA is broken. American students would be much better off studying overseas and not supporting the dysfunctional American university system.

[ataradov]

Yes, this would be very stressful,if I had to think about scheduling of the classes. I'm not sure I would do too well either. It really looks like the program has to be planned by someone who knows what they are doing.

For most of the courses I had to take descriptions would not be sufficient to make an informed decision. You had to take a few lectures to see how much attention you need to pay to a specific course.

[IanB]

If you enroll in a 4 year degree program in the UK, the institution commits that you will graduate at the end of year 4 if you achieve a passing grade in all the modules that make up your degree. It is quite ridiculous to hear that there is competition for modules and you might not be able to take a required module in the appropriate year. The education system in the USA sounds like a money-making scam designed to treat students as nothing more than a source of income to be exploited at will.

[georges80]

I don't see taking longer to correlate with not being 'as good' since there are 1) financial reasons and 2) impacted classes where you don't 'win the lottery' and have to wait a qtr/semester (or longer) to be able to get your selection.

Based on everything you just wrote, I think the system in the USA is broken. American students would be much better off studying overseas and not supporting the dysfunctional American university system.

Yes, it is quite broken. Both my wife & I were educated in our countries of origin - a significantly different system (better?) than is implemented in the US...

The 'recommended retail price' of a 4yr degree in the US is frightening (within your state and financially destructive when out of state) and designed to bankrupt either the parents and/or the student. The only saving grace is availability of scholarships (both academic or sports/etc) and some federal aid that is means tested. Unfortunately a large number of students are not able to access those scholarships and for them and their parents the financial impact places huge burdens in paying back loans and/or having to work during their studies which invariably will impact their academic performance.

The sad thing we see in this country is the expectation of automatically having to go to a university/college to 'fit in'. It seems that vocational schools (not the private kind...) are few and far between or not even mentioned as a career path or seen as a 2nd rate career path. Too many kids end up in university/college to get a degree that will never find them a job in that field. So many degrees that don't even have a 'field' without supplementing  with further degrees which just take more time and create larger expenses to cover/pay back.

cheers,
george.

[Mr. Scram]

If you enroll in a 4 year degree program in the UK, the institution commits that you will graduate at the end of year 4 if you achieve a passing grade in all the modules that make up your degree. It is quite ridiculous to hear that there is competition for modules and you might not be able to take a required module in the appropriate year. The education system in the USA sounds like a money-making scam designed to treat students as nothing more than a source of income to be exploited at will.

Well, providing modules to all paying students would just be communism. 

[ucanel]

First glance I got the conclusion 'classes at American Universities must be very hard to pass'
but no, I have got an EEE degree from Turkey, I watched Walter Lewin's lessons,
and I translated a lesson from Standford University,
from time to time I am watching lessons like these,
and they are not different from what I have got.

It must be related about environmental factors.
If it is, this is not a guilt of the students.
I am not sure but as I understood it is expensive to be a student in America.

[ataradov]

The lectures that universities put on YouTube are mostly from 101 classes, I don't think they are representative of the whole education. But they do match pretty well with freshman programs in other places as far as I can tell.

[ucanel]

It must do match otherwise would be illogical.

That could not be a statistical but
we have also got the same books about some lessons (also for the 2. 3. 4. grades),
some was as a referance some as a direct source.

But I do not know about the exams that could be different.

[julianhigginson]

The best thing I can say about the assumption behind the original post, is that at least by making it as you do, you're sparing those kids from having to work with any more of your assumptions on the job.

[Bassman59]

You know, I would have a problem if a job candidate (as college new hire) took that long to finish a college degree.  What would you think?

I think that, without knowing the candidate’s specific circumstances, you can’t make any judgement.

And those circumstances are really none of your, or your company’s, business.

All that matters is that the student graduated. What was his/her GPA?

[Rick Law]

I think the world would be a better place if people didn't use all of their prejudices and pre-conceived notions to make judgements. Instead relying on actual facts borne out of effort put in to gain them.

It is the perception is reality phenomonon. It is a lazy way to reinforce your own lazy conclusions. It only defaults to true because it is possible to surround yourself with sufficient similarly lazy minded people. For those people their peception does form a self-deluded reality.

If I met someone who took longer than the minimum time to acheive their goal the first thing I would seek to find out was what makes them determined to overcome obstacles and persevere.

I certainly don't diminish their achievments out of some desire to inflate my own ego.

I would imagine there is no ego involved.  Most hiring manager will not compare his/her own achievement to that of a college new hire.  That would be lowering himself/herself to that of a "new born" in the world of business.

Most hiring manager would seek "why" when something unexpected happens.  A candidate taking more than the expected time is by definition slower than expected.  There may be a good reason, or not.  It will be a dereliction of duty if one doesn't look into it at all.

Some kids have to pause to refill their money supply, or for medical reasons, or for a variety of other non-job-performance related reasons.  Same with GPA.  A student with a full time job while attending full time college will likely have a lower GPA as compared to one who merely attends full time college.  Lower GPA may be, but earned extra consideration for aggressiveness towards goal-achievement.

But, if the candidate is, shall we say, just taking it easy; that is a predictive indicator.  The same student who doesn't care about his/her academic performance will not care about his/her job performance.  People do change, one has to put that into consideration.  But, by-and-large, I would expect his/her job performance to be like his academic performance.

Ultimately, the hiring manager's job is to identify the best candidate to hire.  Everything he/she does send signals.  The guy who pulled into the parking lot cussing at the pedestrian in his/her way will cuss at his co-workers in his way.

Completing a 4 year degree in 6 years is a huge signal.  I would say one with that signal emitter should equip himself/herself with a ready-to-go reply.

[ajb]

If you look at one of the linked sources, the percentage of full-time first time students who complete within 4, 5, or 6 years has steadily increased for the most part since 1996, which implies that more students are probably completing degrees overall.  Looking at that and the other linked statistics (pdf), they don't claim to indicate the amount of time that students were *enrolled* towards a degree, just the amount of time between starting a degree program and attaining a degree.  So it would seem that those numbers would include people who go part time or temporarily withdraw at some point for financial/health/etc reasons.  Even so, other factors can lead to increased times to completion, such as changing majors or changing schools where not all credits transfer.  Roughly a third of bachelor's degree recipients attend two schools to get that degree, although it's not indicated how many of those started at two-year institutions with the intent of transferring, versus transferring from one four-year school to another.

[andyturk]

Completing a 4 year degree in 6 years is a huge signal.

Meh.

It's a huge signal only if you don't have anything else by which to to distinguish between candidates. GPA? Extra curricular accomplishments? Open source project history? A 6-year grad from MIT is probably more interesting than a 4-year grad from a community college.

Full disclosure: I took 6 years to finish a 4 year degree because I had to work.

[Towger]

they don't claim to indicate the amount of time that students were *enrolled* towards a degree, just the amount of time between starting a degree program and attaining a degree.

This is the problem with statistics.
A person may start a degree when they leave school. Never finish it and then start to work.  But alway at the back of their mind is the unfinished degree.  Fast forward ~45 years, they retire, have the money and time, so finish the degree.  It took them ~50 years.

[mtdoc]

At major US universities, I think finishing in 4 years is still the norm.  Averages that include the many lower tier "commuter" colleges are surely going to reflect the fact that many students attending those institutions are often still living with parents, perhaps working, and in many cases, students who are in and out of school before completing their degree - sometimes over many, many years. 

[rt]

they don't claim to indicate the amount of time that students were *enrolled* towards a degree, just the amount of time between starting a degree program and attaining a degree.

This is the problem with --> Gaussian <-- statistics.

The median or mode would be more interesting here.  Without the Brian May's (PhD I know) of this world distorting the mean.

[hans]

I think it's unfair to judge much by their education length. Get to know the person in front of you, they are not a number.

At graduate level, I have been told most students take 2.5 years to complete a nominal 2 year program. Most students from outside of EU finish it in 2 years. That is because of tuition fees height. I know a few of these students, and the stress accompanied with that is not healthy.

- Some family pride is involved when you send your child abroad for a graduate study at a good university. What does the story tell if he/she comes back without a degree?
- Tuition fees for students outside of EU are crazy high. EU member: 2k euro per year, outside EU: 12 - 15k depending on program. Then also include ~8 - 12k living costs. Taking 0.5 yr extra can cost 20k euro more easily.

And in general student life has pros and cons. Stereotypes tend to focus on the pros IMO (e.g. you can be the party animal for a few more years); but cons also include:

- Not being able to plan when you take a 1 week holiday (a course schedule is forced up on you); that is then combined with:
- The pace to keep up with university courses is not taken lightly. It's often said that highly intelligent people can struggle at university because they are not used to the fact you need to work every week to pass any course.
- Also if you're a perfectionist, you will be screwing yourself over before every exam week.
- Courses tend to have their heavy weight in the last 4 weeks (including exams). I always tell myself that I could have done more in the weeks before, but in reality course material is often hidden until the lecture, and projects only start as late as they can..
- We only have summer (2 months) and Christmas (2 weeks) breaks. Complete final exam on Friday, next week 3 new courses start. If your really lucky there are no exams in the 2nd exam week - but most profs cram so much material in their courses they do students a 'favor' by pushing exams back as far as they can.
- The summer holiday sounds great - finally so much time off! But also the sudden void that is created is a common, perhaps quite hidden, problem among some students.

And there is most to a study than just university:

- For most students, the campus or other place they stay at is the first time they live away from their parents. Home fever is a common thing under 1st year students.
- Students should be active in study associations, go to a sport club, should go to parties, have a coffee with friends, maintain their own place, cook food, work for some cash to pay the studies, and in between find time to study.
- Everyone has some health discomforts. Some are have more luck than others.

I honestly think that if we trade 1 month of the summer holiday for 1 week  break between each quartile, that the stressful situation would be far better. Unfortunately it is not, and mental health problems are common among students, also a big taboo. I doubt that a student that took 5-6 years to complete their studies because of their health will have the guts straight away to tell they have some chronic disease (like arthritis), were overworked, depressed, anxious or had a burn out. I think the waiting list for student psychologists is like 3+ months at my university.

[b_force]

I think it's unfair to judge much by their education length. Get to know the person in front of you, they are not a number.

I don't even think that, I am gonna (bluntly) change that to a actual fact.

I have seen many perfectly graduated students, but with absolutely no working experience or even any good sense at all.
It only proves that they were good in studying.

It still blows my mind that some people really believe that even a piece of paper proves anything, let alone how long it took for people to graduate.

[ajb]

they don't claim to indicate the amount of time that students were *enrolled* towards a degree, just the amount of time between starting a degree program and attaining a degree.

This is the problem with --> Gaussian <-- statistics.

The median or mode would be more interesting here.  Without the Brian May's (PhD I know) of this world distorting the mean.

Actually, if you look at that PDF, it has averages, medians, and percentage breakdowns for a number of different categories.  Table 2.8 has the "time to degree" figures.  There is a lot of interesting information in there.  The overall median time to degree is 52 months, which lines up with taking a single additional semester or summer session.  I knew several people who wound up being one class short of graduating for whatever reason, so that's not that uncommon.  Particularly if you have a prerequisite chain to get to a particular class you need to graduate it's easy to get off track if you do poorly one semester or can't get into a class you need.

The groups that have the longest time to degree are not that surprising:

• people who attain a degree at 30 or older take 184/202.9 months (median/average), which fits with leaving college and then going back to finish later. 
• people who are married with dependents take 112/142.6 months (median/average), while those who are unmarried with dependents take 82/121.4.  Obviously those are cohorts that are going to have a harder time taking a full course load, though its interesting that the unmarried group generally completes their degrees more quickly. 
• people who get their degrees from for-profit 4-year programs (versus public or private non-profit) take 103/145.8 months, which makes sense since most for-profit programs are aimed at people getting their degrees later in life. 
• people who start at 2-year institutions take 63/95.5 months--this is consistent with not being able to transfer all credits at the shorter end, or taking partial course loads or intermittent breaks while working at the longer end
• people with parents with higher educational attainment have shorter times to degree, which makes sense since those families probably have better financial situations and will better know what they're getting into
• There's a breakdown for employment in that table, but it's employment the year after attaining a degree, so that's not helpful in looking at causal factors.

[tszaboo]

- Tuition fees for students outside of EU are crazy high. EU member: 2k euro per year, outside EU: 12 - 15k depending on program. Then also include ~8 - 12k living costs. Taking 0.5 yr extra can cost 20k euro more easily.

It isnt crazy high. It is just not subsidized, meaning they pay the full cost of education. Considering they dont pay taxes here, and we are not a charity, it is a good deal.

Before the Bologna Process, it was rare for a student to fail any exam. Tests were easier, and if you failed one, you had to repeat the year. After, students are failing left and right. I was on exams, where 75% was the failure rate. Sure, everyone is an idiot... Because if you fail on one, you just repeat that one subject next semester. Or they can charge you for an extra test. And since the results are smaller, they dont really care if it doesnt suit your life plan to spend there more time. There was this one subject, "Electromagnetic fields", which was the collector of all the students. At some point so many EEs were (re) taking it, we didn't fit into the largest auditorium of the university.
Then suddenly they started letting us pass, because "the industry" told the university that they are expecting more engineers so they were forced to make the test easier. Suddenly integrating e and h field in a Hertz dipole close field wasnt required to be an engineer.

[Rick Law]

Completing a 4 year degree in 6 years is a huge signal.

Meh.

It's a huge signal only if you don't have anything else by which to to distinguish between candidates. GPA? Extra curricular accomplishments? Open source project history? A 6-year grad from MIT is probably more interesting than a 4-year grad from a community college.

Full disclosure: I took 6 years to finish a 4 year degree because I had to work.

Open source projects only apply to some fields.  If your major is Accounting, there isn't a lot.  In the old days (I am retired), I did found a lot of cross over between Accounting and Info-tech.

My own disclosure, I needed extra time too!

I had a full time job (at times, plus a part time job) to paid my way.  I finished in 4 but the jobs had an impact on my GPA.  I didn't crash during undergraduate.  I crashed big time immediately after graduation.  My first year of graduate school was an absolute lost.  Basically, I was lucky to have a second chance and re-did it.  I did finish my master degree - with an extra year!

So, I am very much aware, even very motivated/promising candidate could run into problems -- and very keenly aware, a good explanation/reason for the extra time is probably a good thing.

I think it's unfair to judge much by their education length. Get to know the person in front of you, they are not a number.
...

We are in different countries so the way we work is probably different.  The MO of college recruitment is probably different today then the last time I did it (over a decade and a half ago).  So someone with more recent experience please give us an update.

Getting the first job is somewhat like the famous (infamous?) 10-seconds sales pitch of/for yourself.

Then, major corporations used to go to colleges or hotels where recruitment fairs are held.  Besides posted jobs (ie: real openings), we are there to hunt for what would be good raw material for the company - we make room for those whom we may find a fit, somewhere, some how.

HR typically are not the ones going.  Mostly, the organization will drafted some project/departmental managers to go.

Like everything else in life, it is probably not fair.  Anyone can stop by and have a few seconds.  The candidate has a huge opportunity to extend that to minutes or tens of minutes.  That brief summary we (those at the desk) wrote can be of great help.  If you are picked to be called in that way, you have a guided tour into the company, and choice of assignment.  Otherwise, you would be on the outside looking for a way in.

I did that kind of things at least once for two different companies I worked for, and knew many hired that way when they finished college.  So it was a rather common practice back then.

So, the thing is, you don't want to get stuck in negative conversations.  No red flags and only huge green lights.  There isn't enough time to "know each other" yet.  For the candidate, there is just barely enough time to "keep the conversation going".  The "know each other" part comes later.

[rstofer]

I don't know how many semester units are required these days but when I did my undergrad it was about 132 units.  So, divide by 4 (years) and you have to take 33 units per year.  Divide by two semesters per year (taking summers off) and you need to take about 17 units per semester.  That may be easy if your major is Art Appreciation but combining 4 heavy duty 4 unit classes with a 1 unit lab is darn difficult.  Physics (4), Chemistry (4), Differential Equations (4) and some 4  unit engineering course plus a lab (lots of hours, only 1 unit) is going to be overwhelming.

It's better if you can take a 3 or 4 unit General Education class each summer so maybe you would only have to take 15 units per semester but arithmetic is not your friend.  It's going to be 13 or 17 with little opportunity for anything in the middle (once the Gen Eds are out of the way).  The downside is that during the regular semesters, all the courses are difficult.

There is also the problem of prerequisites and the way they stack up.  For a lower division course in Computer Engineering at the local junior college, there are 5 sequential CS courses, none of which are offered in the Summer so right there you are in for 2-1/2 years just at the lower division (assuming heading for an ASEE before transferring to a college or university for the last 2 or 3 years).

I would expect the current programs to require more units and I wouldn't be the least bit concerned about 5 years and 6 wouldn't be a surprise.

In a perfect world, the schools would drop the requirement for 'Navel Gazing' and get on with math and science.

Then there is the University of the Pacific where they have a 4 year guarantee.  In fact, elsewhere on their site, they have a 4+1 guarantee for a Master's degree.

http://www.pacific.edu/Admission/Undergraduate/Pacific-At-A-Glance/4-Year-Graduation-Guarantee.html

[Rick Law]

I don't know how many semester units are required these days but when I did my undergrad it was about 132 units.  So, divide by 4 (years) and you have to take 33 units per year.  Divide by two semesters per year (taking summers off) and you need to take about 17 units per semester.  That may be easy if your major is Art Appreciation but combining 4 heavy duty 4 unit classes with a 1 unit lab is darn difficult.  Physics (4), Chemistry (4), Differential Equations (4) and some 4  unit engineering course plus a lab (lots of hours, only 1 unit) is going to be overwhelming.

It's better if you can take a 3 or 4 unit General Education class each summer so maybe you would only have to take 15 units per semester but arithmetic is not your friend.  It's going to be 13 or 17 with little opportunity for anything in the middle (once the Gen Eds are out of the way).  The downside is that during the regular semesters, all the courses are difficult.

There is also the problem of prerequisites and the way they stack up.  For a lower division course in Computer Engineering at the local junior college, there are 5 sequential CS courses, none of which are offered in the Summer so right there you are in for 2-1/2 years just at the lower division (assuming heading for an ASEE before transferring to a college or university for the last 2 or 3 years).

I would expect the current programs to require more units and I wouldn't be the least bit concerned about 5 years and 6 wouldn't be a surprise.

In a perfect world, the schools would drop the requirement for 'Navel Gazing' and get on with math and science.

Then there is the University of the Pacific where they have a 4 year guarantee.  In fact, elsewhere on their site, they have a 4+1 guarantee for a Master's degree.

http://www.pacific.edu/Admission/Undergraduate/Pacific-At-A-Glance/4-Year-Graduation-Guarantee.html

According to our local State U's web site (Rutgers), for the school of Arts and Sciences:

120 degree-credits (some courses are not degree courses) to graduate.  Two main semesters, plus winter courses and summer courses.  One must take at least 12 credits each semester to be considered full time student.

36 - 72 in your major
18 - 22 in your minor
24 - 42 in "core"
0 - 12 in electives
Min GPA 2.0 (out of 4.0 max)

Their "core" is something they expect from all students regardless of major.  It consists of some science, some arts and humanity, some computer basics, so forth.  I suppose if you are (for example) a Computer Science major, they probably would not expect you to take "introduction to working with a mouse" but instead expects you to take other courses to make the 24 credit minimum.  I think you would probably found a lot of "something-study" tug under core requirement as well.

Then depending on major, some departments may have their own additional requirements.  For example, if you are a math major, you are expected that within your credits at least 3 terms of Calculus, linear algebra, Differential Equations, so on, so on...

Many departments have Honor track with additional GPA and course requirements.  Some students are with certain organizations (for example, Rutgers' own Honors College, or something like ROTC which is national) each has their own additional requirements.

Oh, for the non-USA folks, ROTC is the US Military Reserved Officers Training Corp.  If you qualify, they pay your tuition and pay you a salary.  While you are at college, they are training you to be a military officer as well.  You are expected to serve for a certain duration upon graduation.