---
FEATURE
★
dent's grades and work, but when she failed her second review she had to pick a new major. So she dropped graphic design and went back to her first choice: journalism.
Kueffer thinks it's difficult for students to graduate on time if they are uncertain about their track, especially if they choose a professional school.
Tony Rosenthal, associate professor of history, has closely advised dozens of students and understands Kueffer's situation. He says that professional school requirements can be difficult, and once students find out they can't get in they have to start over. Kueffer, for example, has a year of design credits that can't be applied toward any other majors. Rosenthal also believes there are too many general education requirements in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, which don't leave much room for students to explore different majors.
Parental and institutional pressures often push students to follow a certain path, Rosenthal says. But it usually takes some time for students to find out what they really want. "My view in general is that one size does not fit all. People reach intellectual maturity at different times," he says.
Rosenthal doesn't think students who take longer to graduate should be perceived as failures. Sometimes taking some extra time might be a good idea. Students who have done poorly their first couple of semesters might want to raise their GPA to make them more competitive for graduate school.
DOUBLE-MAJOR ... OVERTIME
Even though Kueffer is already taking six and a half years to graduate with a journalism degree, she still thinks about extending her undergraduate career for another semester. Doing so would allow her to get a photomedia degree, which was recently created by the department of design. She picked up a passion for photography while taking design classes.
But staying an extra semester would have its price, and she would be paying it.
Barbara Newbold, Kueffer's mother, would like her to get some actual work experience before going back to school. Newbold understands
that when students are unsure of what they want to do, as is the case with her daughter, it takes him or her some time to get on track. But there's a limit. "After six and a half years she probably, hopefully, figured out what she wants to do," she says.
It's possible that Kueffer has some fear of moving on beyond college, Newbold says. Kueffer acknowledges that fear. "I've gone to school full-time all of my life; ever since I left high school six and a half years ago. I never took a break from college and I just don't know anything different from it."
RAISING THE GRADUATION RATES
The University has made some progress in increasing the number of students who graduate in four years. Less than a quarter of the 1990 freshman class graduated in four years; for the 2004 class the proportion increased to 32 percent.
But efforts are still underway. Roney says the University made some changes after a task force issued a report in 2005 analyzing why students
Photo illustration by Jerry Wang
Photo illustration by Jerry Wang
Overload breakdown: When work, assignments, tests, extracurricular commitments, social commitments ... et cetera become just too much to handle, some students choose to take fewer classes per semester and take more time to graduate, a less-conventional but increasingly common route that many professors say can be a good alternative to the senior-year burnout.
were taking longer to graduate. The task force reported that part of the problem was that the University's messages and actions were not consistent with the ideal of graduating in four years. As an example, public relations materials often showed a typical courseload of 12 hours, when the truth is that if a student comes in without any college credits he or she has to take an average of 15.5 credit hours per semester to graduate in four years.
While the University is trying to adopt a consistent message, it has not implemented some of the other recommendations. For example, the task force recommended setting "a minimum enrollment of 15 hours for full-time students" and limiting "the number of drops/withdrawals over a student's career." These measures have not been adopted.
continued on page 14
FAMOUS PERPETUAL STUDENTS
The stereotype may not conform to the reality of most college students, but famous perpetual students have usually been people who refuse to graduate so that they can keep enjoying college life. Here are some examples of these "I Love College" types:
Johnny Lechner
Played by Ryan Reynolds, this popular student's credo was, "Don't be a fool. Stay in school." But even though Wilder got his fair dose of partying, he also contributed to society, hosting a fund-raising party for the swim team and helping unpopular fraternity brothers get laid.
One of the pack leaders, John Belushi's character in the 1978 movie Animal House set the standard of living up college life in drunken debauchery. In the movie, Bluto was in his seventh year of college and had a 0.0 GPA. But he went on to become a U.S. Senator, showing everyone that even if you take forever to graduate you can still do great things in life.
John "Bluto" Blutarski
Van Wilder
A real-life perpetual student — to the extreme. Lechner has been going to school in Wisconsin since 1994. He uses his fame and marketing deals to rake in some money for tuition, which for him is more expensive than normal. In 2004 the Wisconsin Board of Regents doubled the price of tuition for students who have more than 165 credit hours — it is popularly known as the "Johnny Lechner Rule."
13
10
01
09