Rethinking the pressure to finish school ‘on time’
Photo by SashaPR via Unsplash.
As a student who has taken slightly longer than what is typical to finish my bachelor of arts, I have noticed that numerous people hold the strong belief that undergraduate degrees should be completed in four years. Many undergraduate programs are laid out in a way that pressures students into this four-year timeline. While UVic considers a full-time student to be registered in four courses each term, to graduate in four years, you have to take five courses each term or take summer courses. Even prior to beginning university, there was a stigma around not finishing an undergraduate degree in four years.
In 2017, the New York Times published an article titled “6 Reasons You May Not Graduate on Time (and What to Do About It).” The points raised by Meredith Kolodner in the article are indisputable and each may impact the length of time spent doing a degree. However, it perpetuates the societal expectation to graduate in four years by focusing on how students can “tackle the problem” and get back on track. For many students, it is not feasible to work less than 25 hours a week, as Kolodner suggests.
In reality, many people spend more than four years doing their bachelor’s degrees; my own degree has taken four and a half years. Often it can be incredibly overwhelming to take five courses a semester to satisfy the required number of credits to complete an undergraduate degree in four years.
According to Statistics Canada, of the 159 426 Canadian students ages 18–24 who began an undergraduate degree in 2014-2015, only 42.6 per cent graduated within four years. But after six years, the graduation rate was 73.7 per cent. Statistics Canada also found that the average time to graduate was 4.34 years.
The statistics from the United States are similar to Canadian students. The National Center for Education Statistics stated that only 44.1 per cent of first-time bachelor’s degree recipients in 2015-2016 completed their degree in four years or less.
There are a wide variety of reasons a student may not finish their undergraduate degree in four years, from high financial needs to mental health issues. Some students have to work full time to pay their way through school, while others may have to take a reduced course load to have time for athletics or other extra-curricular activities.
Transfer students from other post-secondary institutions are faced with the risk that their transfer courses may not fulfill certain requirements. There is also no guarantee every course will have an equivalency at the other institution or be accepted at all. As a result, some transfer students must take additional classes to supplement these requirements.
Major world events can also impact a student’s time to graduation. In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the education of many students, including myself. Statistics Canada reported that in their 2020 survey of 100 000 participants, 26 per cent of students indicated that their studies were disrupted by the pandemic and 92 per cent had some or all of their courses transitioned to a virtual format. Virtual learning, however, can be challenging for some students and cause delays in their time to graduation.
After my first year, I realized that if I wanted to do well in my courses, it would not be possible to take five classes each term. While I tried to take courses in the summer to ‘make up’ the courses I’d missed, by my third year I finally accepted that my degree was going to take longer than I expected.
But this is not a bad thing. Because I’ve taken less than five courses a semester, I’ve had the opportunity to spend more time with the material for those classes and actually enjoy the things I’m studying. I’m no longer constantly worried about being behind in my courses — or my degree.
The pressure to graduate in four years can cause unnecessary stress, which can negatively impact academic success. Taking a slightly reduced course load may not be feasible for everyone, but that doesn’t mean we should feel pressured to finish a degree in four years just because that is what society widely accepts as the ‘right way’ to do it.
