By Lauren Kamm
The Daily Iowan
IOWA CITY, Iowa (U-WIRE) - Most students are familiar with the term "super senior," but with an increased number of students taking longer than four years to earn a bachelor's degree, the term may have to be amended for students who need more - as many as six or seven years - to graduate.
The National Center for Education released preliminary statistics based on a study of one million students, showing that, nationwide, 33.1 percent of students who started college full-time in fall 1996 graduated in four years. The study also indicated that 16.5 percent graduated in five years and 5.1 percent finished in six years. The remaining students took longer to earn a degree or never finished at all.
"At least half of all students who have entered a four-year institution have failed to realize their dreams and aspirations that led them there in the first place," Watson Scott Swail, the president of the Educational Policy Institute, wrote in the January issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.
But while institutions create a picture of slacker students and overloaded classes, Lola Lopes, the University of Iowa associate provost for undergraduate education, said she thinks otherwise.
The UI has undertaken two key approaches to raising the graduation rate, Lopes said. In 1995, the university implemented a four-year graduation contract in which the school promises that a student will graduate in four years without being delayed by the unavailability of classes.
"That is a major commitment from the university to make sure no one gets slowed down because of our fault," she said.
For UI students who enrolled before the plan was established, 33 percent graduated in four years from 1991 to 1994. From 1995 to the present, the percentage has remained steady at approximately 37 percent, according to a university report.
Aaron Lagneaux, a UI sophomore and pre-journalism major, doesn't anticipate earning a bachelor's degree in four years. He entered his freshman year fall semester as a pre-business major and plans to change again to pre-law.
"Between switching majors and all the different course requirements, it is hard to graduate in four years," he said.
But he expressed no regrets and said he loves college.
"Graduating in four years is like leaving a party at 9 o'clock," he said.
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