Most College Students Don't Graduate On Time

The vast majority of college students aren't completing their degrees on time, largely due to a lack of guidance and too many choices.

A new report from the nonprofit Complete College America argues two-year and four-year degrees are "little more than modern myths" considering how few students actually finish their degrees in that amount of time.

"The reality is that our system of higher education costs too much, takes too long and graduates too few," the report says. 

For federal reporting purposes, colleges measure graduation at 150 percent of the time it should take to complete a degree – typically six years for a bachelor's degree and three years for an associate degree. Graduation rates at the institutional level also could be inaccurate because only first-time, full-time students are counted; transfer students, part-time students and those who are returning to college after time off aren't included. The National Student Clearinghouse – which tracks more than just first-time, full-time students – found the six-year graduation rate for students who started in the fall of 2006 was 60.5 percent at public four-year colleges, and 62.5 percent at private nonprofit colleges. Meanwhile, the Department of Education reports that 59 percent of students who started at any four-year institution in the fall of 2006 graduated by 2012.

Setting later cutoffs for graduation benchmarks may help improve outcomes because it captures students who take longer to complete, but it also "signals an acceptance of the status quo and alleviates the pressure to change," the report says.

Just 5 percent of students complete their associate degrees in two years, the report found. At non-flagship public universities, just 19 percent of students finish in four years, and just 36 percent do so at flagship or research universities. 

"We recognize that not every student can or will graduate on time," the reports's authors write. "However, something is clearly wrong when the overwhelming majority of public colleges graduate less than 50 percent of their full-time students in four years." 

Many students take longer to graduate because they run into obstacles while transferring between colleges – such as losing course credits in the process – or because they make poor choices about their majors, can't get the courses they need on time or have trouble making it out of a remediation pipeline.

And spending an extra year or two in school can significantly increase the financial burden on students and their families. The authors of the report estimate an additional year at a two-year college for a student would come with a price tag of $15,933 in cost of attendance (tuition and fees, room and board, books, transportation and other costs), and amount to $22,826 at a four-year college. Students also would lose out on wages they could have earned if they graduated on time: about $35,000 for associate degree students and $45,327 for bachelor's degree students. 

The cost of college also has outpaced the median family income during the last 30 years, and the growth in average grant aid per student has slowed in recent years, according to the College Board. For many students, paying for college now means taking out student loans. Data compiled by Temple University and the University of Texas-Austin show two extra years on their campuses can increase debt for a student by nearly 70 percent. 

Part of the problem, the report's authors argue, is that many colleges don't have a clear enough pathway for students to earn their degrees on time and without accumulating unnecessary course credits that also cost time and money. Providing a more structured pathway to graduation by ensuring students take at least 15 credits per semester, better aligning majors to certain courses and tracking students within those majors could help improve graduation rates, the report says. Complete College America refers to such a model as Guided Pathways to Success, or GPS.

Florida State University began using degree maps and other strategies in 2004, and increased its on-time graduation rate by 17 percentage points, from 44 percent to 61 percent.