Don't Worry. Practically No One Is Graduating On Time

When I arrived at college almost four years ago, I expected to follow a very specific trajectory. I would take enough hours per semester to graduate by May 2015 (my then-projected graduation date) while juggling extracurriculars, a social life and the occasional night of drunken revelry. But life is not a university brochure and, sure enough, I found myself switching majors (twice) by my junior year of college, setting me back considerably. I imagine many of you share the same story and, if you're anything like me, it is probably a source of hair-pulling (or, in my case, hair-losing) stress. But don't worry, according to a recent study done by Complete College America, we're apparently in the majority.

Indeed, it would appear that a country notorious for shitty high school education is also notorious for being shitty at higher education. With many universities (mine included) urging a "Finish in Four" attitude, it can be disconcerting to find yourself looking at your fifth year of college. And why shouldn't it be? College is expensive as shit, forcing many to pay off loans well into their working years. But that doesn't change the fact that it's nearly impossible to achieve the mythical goal of graduating on time. First, some numbers to mull over:

Only 5% (!!!) of people seeking a two-year associate's degree finish on time. As for a four-year Bachelor's degree, between 19% (non-flagship schools) and 36% (flagship/high research schools) of the students graduate by their projected date.

These numbers fucking suck. To put the whole thing in the perspective of the larger picture, a paltry 50 of the 580 public four-year institutions in the country "report that at least half of their first-time, full-time students graduate on time."

That means almost no one is graduating as promised. The big question here is why?

Well, according to the research, it's because many colleges have excessive degree requirements. Excessive here being defined as over 120 hours for a four-year degree, 60 hours for a two-year degree and 30 hours for a certificate. From personal experience, I can attest to this excessive course load. My degree currently requires 122 hours over the course of 4 years (that's 8 semesters) amounting to a whopping 15.25 hours a semester. 

Now, to a seasoned college student, this hardly seems like a daunting number, but factoring in that there is an average one adviser per 400 students (leading to uninformed choices), 60% of bachelor's degree recipients transfer colleges and are screwed over by shoddy transfer policies and 33% of students have been fucked by not securing a class that they needed to take, it's easy to see why 15.25 hours a semester might start to look like a bleak and fading legend of old.

I won't vomit the entire study here on this page. I've provided a link above so that you may peruse it at your leisure. The point I'd like you to take away from this is that the college four-year system is broken and overpriced. People that can barely afford four years in the first place are getting shafted due to broken policies and cumbersome course loads (mainly stemming from the outmoded idea of "general education"). The stress that should be reserved for taking final exams and completing complex projects is now being added on to by unrealistic expectations of finishing college by a particular timeline.

Though, I suppose there is one positive takeaway from all this: We're all being screwed together.