Taking longer to graduate is popular at PSU
Is this your fifth year in college? Or even sixth? Strangely enough, Portland State students take longer to graduate than the usual college student does.
Even full-time students who do not change their major tend to hang around as students for longer than four years.
There does not seem to be any one reason for this that encompasses every student who takes longer than four years to get a degree. Some may have taken time off from school or are not enrolled full time. Others faced obstacles such as classes that are only offered during spring term. Others still spent a year or two abroad.
Is it really such a bad thing that so many PSU students take a long time to get a degree and find a career?
Whether students have their own reasons or experience pressure from their parents to graduate quickly, college is becoming less of a time to learn and grow. Now, it seems like it needs to go by as quickly as possible so the students can graduate and get a job to support themselves in this failing economy.
The aim of many students is to be educated as quickly as possible by taking the minimum number of classes that they need in order to be hirable.
That said, a lot of students complain about the general education classes that are required. PSU has an abundance of requirements that even other schools in the Oregon University System do not require. Senior Capstones, Junior Clusters and Sophomore Inquiries are entirely unique to PSU.
In addition to a requirement for every term of the first three years plus the term-long Senior Capstone, Portland State has other requirements, such as a math or science class, a language requirement and even an art requirement.
Alhough some complain about having to spend their tuition on a class that has nothing to do with their major, these seemingly random requirements actually make the students more versatile and more educated overall.
The fact that a class does not provide someone with skills that they can directly apply to a job has nothing to do with how useful it is. It is better to be a generalist than a specialist, even if one only has one field of study, because there is a lot that a specialist cannot do.
Does a psychology degree teach someone how to vote wisely? Does a health-studies major educate students in how to think critically about current events? That is the role of the college experience as a whole.
Though students get their specific degrees for a reason, the college years are supposed to also provide the necessary skills that no adult should be without.
Universities in the United States provide many opportunities that others do not. One such opportunity is the freedom to change one’s mind.
In Germany, a college education costs nothing and, as such, students are free to spend as many years in college as they want to without the pressure of the money spent on tuition. However, one cannot change his or her field of study without applying again and starting his or her college education all over again, having none of the classes that he or she took previously count towards a degree in the new field of study. If one is accepted to a university as a linguistics major, one has to stay a linguistics major unless they want to start all over again.
In the United Kingdom, college education is an intensive three-year-long experience in which there are no general education requirements. Students in the U.K. study hard in order to graduate as quickly as possible and get a job, learning only what they can directly apply to the job they get when they graduate.
Students at university systems that value practical job skills more than a well-rounded education, such as the ones in Germany and the U.K., would not place any value on general education requirements. And these students will not be as well-rounded as a result.
If you are one of these “super-seniors,” rest assured. Though you are taking longer to finish your degree than the traditional undergraduate does, you are actually graduating with more knowledge under your belt and should be thankful for the extra experience that you have had.
Your friends who graduated in four years flat may find fault in your status as a student, but you should not.
The general education classes that ate up your first and second years of school were not a waste of time. Though you may not realize it in some cases, those classes have provided you with valuable knowledge that you may end up using, whether as marketable skills or to impress your friends.
one can also become a specialist in a certain area, after they get some experience under their belt “learning the ropes” in the world of work, and learn what they truly want to specialize in. I used to only think of my field of study, but then I was forced slightly more outward and somewhat glad I did.
the fact that many students take 4-6 years to graduate means they are more reflective and cautious, which may make them less likely regret their educational decisions, and they may also be more reponsible about paying for it if they are attending less than full-time.