Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums College It's the Student, Not the College

Thank you for sharing these difficulties, as this may help others to go into a situation with a raised awareness of what they might encounter.

Three thoughts on changes which may improve a student's ability to navigate the system:

1) Some schools are admitting record numbers of students, and have failed to plan accordingly, whether raising class size, creating more sections, or more delivery formats (evening, accelerated, online, blended, etc). They may need or benefit from upgrades to their computer forecasting and scheduling systems. Based upon declared majors and minors, schools ought to create capacity to provide the education which they essentially promised by admitting these students.

2) It is my understanding that as a part of the accreditation process, colleges may be evaluated, in part, on their recent graduate job placement statistics. A downturn in hiring may therefore result in restrictions in the number of students graduated overall, and/or in a particular program or major. Better forecasting and/or student advising may help the schools deliver on the education promised to the students they've admitted.

3) Some schools may be limited by contracts with their professors, adjuncts, and others who may teach a limited number of classes.


Great point, about an early college entrant possibly living at home to help offset costs.

I moved to the Bay area in 1996 and had a job that allowed me to meet a LOT of college students and recent graduates. Every single person who went to CSU or UC had the same story, and it was what you mentioned above: required classes offered once a year that were oversubscribed, the five-year plan, and costs. These days, the same problems are there, but as you say, they're worse. UC costs a lot more and now students talk about the six-year plan. They have to take basic classes like Chem 101 over the summer because now it's not just 300-level major classes that aren't offered frequently enough. So not only do they lose earnings because of extra time in college, they also have to increase their loan burden because they can't work full-time in the summer.

The obvious solution is to add sections of CHEM 101 and ENG 358 to meet demand. I mean, that solution is blindingly painfully obvious to an eight-year-old. So if the colleges aren't doing it, it's a deliberate choice that has nothing to do with contracts (because they could just hire another adjunct or, gasp, a tenure-track assistant professor).

According to http://opa.berkeley.edu/campus-data/berkeley-data-visualizations/undergraduate-graduation-rates, 73% of students in the 2008 and 2009 classes graduated in 4 years, up substantially from 55% for the students who entered in 1998 and 1999. Difficulty in graduating in four years may be concentrated in certain majors.

Interesting. Thanks for posting that graph. I wondered if STEM fields took longer (a final-year class in spectroscopy is more expensive than, say, a senior seminar in Russian history). And still: 27% of students not finishing on time isn't good.


I dug a bit and found this report from UCSD. STEM majors do indeed take longer. The report says that Engineering major requirements require an extra quarter or two, but this doesn't seem to be true for the other STEM fields.That said, graduation rates in 4 years are lower overall at UCSD.

I found this site. I was confused because the estimate for UCSD on this site is much higher than in the report I linked to.

Also, graduation rates are not pretty at Cal State.

The usual situation where GT kids are taking in a dozen to 3 dozen credit hours of college credit from HS into their first year of college sure helps the odds of graduating in 4 years and even if that's not a problem, helps the work load to remain reasonable so a student can not be so stressed out.

Yes, some kids are great at ferreting out opportunities and cobbling together a bunch of courses and experiences from different sources, with a unifying theme. I believe this is the type of self-development which the author is referring to in the book, It's the Student, Not the College.

This reminds me of another interesting book, Self-Directed Learning, whose author presents for the DYS parents, with several summaries of these presentations available on the Davidson Database. This book was also mentioned a few weeks ago on a related thread, Where you go is not who you'll be.

It's important to remember that average student loan debt is still "only" about 30-35K. This is rising, but 100K or even 50K is by no means the norm.

I agree about state universities and not finishing in time. This happened to a family member of mine despite his coming in with many credits. It was an issue of not being able to enroll in classes needed for his major (STEM field). This problem was completely unheard of at my small liberal arts college. I do mean unheard of--as in, I had never heard of it!

Yes, and the difference in average annual earnings between college and high school grads is close to $30K https://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/Facts_For_Education_Advocates_Sept.pdf . Even $100K of debt is no more than 4 times the average earnings differential.

Valid point, however, we're in a Gifted forum where little that involves our children is "average" with many if not most of them being in STEM fields (which we've discussed as often taking longer to complete) going to high cost private colleges, and / or going onto graduate degrees, all of which boost the probable debt amount of the average student of this forum. The average student loan is unlikely to look like the average Gifted student loan for those reasons.

STEM graduate students should be getting teaching and/or research assistantships and should not be taking on debt.