Large public universities often get this criticism:
“The kids can’t get the classes they need and end up going to college for five or six years.”
What a bunch of bull.
This is an especially touchy subject for parents, as people who’ve heard this or experienced it with their own kids for some reason seem to want to believe that public universities are somehow denying kids the opportunity to get out in four years. But here’s a test.
If you dropped your college freshman off at a large state university and said, “Son, if you graduate on time four years from now, we’ll give you a million dollars,” what do you think would happen?
If he’s got any common sense at all, that kid would make sure he graduated in four years.
He’d visit his academic advisor regularly even though most other students don’t know advisors exist on his large campus. He’d register for five classes every semester expecting that 1-2 of them won’t be available, but thereby ensuring that he’s still carrying a full caseload. He might even go to summer school once just to stay on track if he needed to.
But four years later, that former college freshman would be skipping across the stage to collect his diploma (and his million dollar payday).
I went to a public university. We’ve sent hundreds of Collegewise students to public universities. Yes, public schools (especially our UCs and Cal States in California) have been hard hit by budget cuts. They’ve got large classes. They don’t have nearly as much mandated supervision and guidance as smaller private schools offer. Lots of students do end up going to school for more than four years. But is it because they absolutely had to? No. A lot of them just didn’t want to graduate on time badly enough.
Here’s a more realistic version of the million dollar test. Tell your student that you’ll pay for four years of college, no more. Set the expectation right away that college is a four year journey of learning and fun with a big fat expiration date at the end of four years. As my college roommate’s dad said to him the day they dropped him off at our dorm room and were saying their goodbyes…
“Son, you’ve got four years.” And he graduated on time.