In College, Off-Track
Ever since childhood, Rikki Eriven has felt certain of the career that would fit her best: working with animals. Specifically, large animals. The soft-spoken freshman smiles as she recalls the episode of Animal Planet that kindled this interest, the one about zoo specialists who treat rhinos, hippos, and giraffes. So when Ms. Eriven arrived at Arizona State last fall, she put her plan in motion by picking biological sciences as her major.
But things didn’t go according to plan. She felt overwhelmed. She dropped a class. She did poorly in biology (after experiencing problems, she says, with the clicker device used to answer multiple-choice questions in class). Ms. Eriven began seeing ominous alerts in her e-mail inbox and online student portal. “Off-track,” they warned. “It told me that I had to seek eAdvising,” she says. “And I was, like, eAdvising?”
About 31 percent of students at public universities graduate from college within four years. A majority—56 percent—graduate in six years, mostly because a lot of students go to college thinking they’re going to major in one thing, and then decide to major in something completely different. Arizona State has a system in place that alerts students when they are getting off-track by not taking the right classes to fulfill their major’s requirements, or by failing to do well in a course. If a student goes off-track two semesters in a row, they may be asked to change their major.
I’ll admit that I was on track to be a lawyer for the first three years of college, and then I took a single journalism class during my senior year, which basically changed my life. And thank god for that!
Mike Dang, did you end up staying in school longer because of it? Or were you able to segue your earlier chosen major into your grad school focus?
@selenana Oh, I graduated in four years with a double major in English and Film, and a minor in Political Science. I immediately graduated and moved to Washington D.C. to cover politics for talk radio. The transition was pretty seamless.
@Mike Dang You were able to shuffle your pre-law credits over to English and Film? Good on ya! Though I guess law has no definite prereqs, and you can get away with a lot of different stuff right? One lawyer friend did philosophy undergrad; another did poli-sci.
I had no idea so few students actually finished in 4 years. My school prided itself on its cooperative education program, so many students finished in 5 years as the standard – 8 months of class, 4 months of work, and then alternating 4 month terms of class and work. But my understanding was that if you didn’t take that route, you’d be in and out in 4 years.
Anyone aware of similar stats from Canada and/or Europe? I’m really interested in how they compare.
@EmmaG
I’m going to be graduation this spring which will be five years after starting and it’s because I took of three semesters to do internships. My school doesn’t have any co op program but I just take leave of absences.
Oh man. Trying to keep students on track is my Whole. Goddamn. Job.
I graduated in 4 years with a double major in Drama and English Lit from a small liberal arts college (which I loved), and I do feel like it was worth it and I got a lot out of it, but not in a ‘getting me a job’ sort of way, more a ‘teaching me how to figure stuff out in life’ way. Also, for reference, I went abroad for the first half of my junior year, which was supposed to be the whole year but because of the difference in systems, I decided to come back a semester early so I’d be able to get all the classes in I needed for my double major.
But this article touches on something I struggle with a lot. I too, love the idea of working with animals. I also love a lot of other things that are either science or tech related that would require specific schooling to get into. And since I graduated, I’ve discovered so many things that I didn’t even know WERE things that I know I’d love doing (art conservation! archaeozoology!)
It’s not really directly anyone’s fault I didn’t know about these things, but I did feel that I was pushing towards a certain arts-based direction before I even graduated high school, and I wish I had known more about all the crazy and interesting things that you can do that are just as creative as arts-based stuff but in science, technology, or engineering-based fields. I don’t even know how I’d begin to find out about that stuff as a high schooler, but at this point in my life, and with all the education debt I already have, it’s so hard to just say, yup, I should go back to school and do that instead!
After some deep unhappiness I communicated my math major to a minor and graduated in four years with an English degree. Going to a flexible college with an intentionally diverse graduation requirement made this way, way easier. The amount of mutual judgment between English and math, though, did not.
@aetataureate that’s a great combination of major and minor. I love the liberal arts approach, but it needs more math. It’s insane that I was able to get a good score on the stats AP and then never take a math class over the course of a four year degree. Depends on the school, of course.
@probs Well, so, let’s explore that a bit — why did you decide not to take a math class, when it sounds like you were strong at math in high school?
ETA there are also a lot of gender issues relating to math and if it matters I am a woman.
@aetataureate oh trust me, I’m as much to blame as anyone. I could’ve taken math classes, but didn’t since I didn’t have to. I thought I was bad at math, so I didn’t want to pursue it. I definitely fell for the idea of there being an either/or between history/English/etc. and math. Since I more easily excelled at the former than the latter, I thought of myself as “not a math person,” and avoided it as soon as I could.
@probs This was part of my problem too!
“Not a math person” is one of the phrases I hate most, no offense to you, since you’re also using it with scare quotes. I understand how people end up thinking that, but I hate how it’s considered okay in any way. Illiteracy isn’t socially acceptable! We institutionally value that above math and science, and then the doomsayers are all about how the U.S. is last in the developed world for math and science. Dur.
@aetataureate Yes, agreed.
@aetataureate I agree too. There’s some math I struggle with, but I’m generally pretty good at it, I think I just got a little bored. I think this was down to the teachers I had. I had some awesome math and science teachers in middle school, but not really in high school. I always kind of liked those subjects, but I guess it was hard to be motivated when my math teachers weren’t as motivated or excited about their subject as some of my English and art teachers were. Great teachers are SO important!
You went to UCI, right? May I ask who taught the class that made you change your mind?
I was sort of the opposite. Knew I wanted to major in journalism going in, but by the end of my senior year, I didn’t want to try to get a job in journalism. I loved the classes though. And I’m using writing in my job now, so it all worked out.
@alpacasloth Barry Siegel—he had won a Pulitzer, and he said he thought I would be good at it. He also gave me good advice about working in the field for a while before applying to grad school where I could hone my skills.
@Mike Dang I wish I could’ve taken more classes with him. I only took one. One of my journalism professors told me I would make a great lawyer. Boy am I happy I didn’t follow that one through.
I changed majors in second year, but luckily I only had to take two courses one summer to catch up! Plus I kept my former major as my minor. I am starting to regret I didn’t take journalism though, because I could have gotten in, and I think more places would want to hire me. But I am not known for my foresight.
I do have a friend who is only in her last year of undergrad now, though it has a lot to do with personal and health problems that took her out of school twice. But I am so happy she’s going to finish! I also know someone who as far as I know doesn’t have his degree because he was too burned out to finish his final project.
I changed majors (from linguistics to chemistry) in my second year, and it was really tough to get out in four years, but I did it (albeit without some chemistry electives that are requirements at other schools, which made me less attractive to grad schools/employers, most likely). I was able to do this in part because I was a silly overachiever in high school and took a lot of AP classes, none of which were anything nearly as valuable as what I would have gotten from taking that number of credits in college instead.
My school also had a curriculum designed at a time when financial aid wasn’t such a big thing, and was intended to take five years with three courses at a time, all of which had enough work to make 3 classes a strong full-time loan. Instead, most people had to take 4 at a time, which was a big deal with the intensity of the courses (5 was an overload, and you had to ask for a special exemption to do it, which was rarely granted).
@ThatJenn UGH linguistics. I took linguistics for a year so I could get out of taking real math, but linguistics was just as painful.
Also your avatar right under Megano!’s is funny to me. I have big glasses and now I want to get in on this glasses half face action too but I don’t want the internet to see my face.
@alpacasloth I liked linguistics, but I liked [classroom] chemistry just as much, and I decided I’d be more employable in chemistry, so I switched. (Plus the professors were better.) Turns out I hate actually working in a lab, so I’m no longer a chemist, but just having the degree has helped me land multiple unrelated jobs because “chemistry is hard” and therefore I “must be smart.”
Yay glasses! I almost never wear them anymore due to my wasteful love of daily contacts, but I still love them.
@ThatJenn Also, you have glasses. Glasses + chemistry = genius!
@alpacasloth Obviously! I have other race/class/linguistic privileges that also work in my favor unfairly, too.
Just saw this on the Sac Bee’s website: it’s a comparison of which CA colleges graduate the most students in four years. I had no idea the CSU system graduated so few students in four years!
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/07/16/4635070/see-which-california-colleges.html#storylink=omni_popular
@alpacasloth I could be wrong, but I feel like a lot of CSUs are commuter schools and so the students are more likely to be working while going to school, etc., which might translate into longer time til graduation.