College degrees taking longer

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

What traditionally has been called a four-year degree just isn't anymore.

Senior Kristin Yoshimoto said UH has a reputation "for taking forever."

"I don't know why, but people just take longer," said Yoshimoto, 21. "I see a lot of people older than me who should be out of here, but they're still on campus."

The latest 2002 UH-Manoa Institutional Effectiveness Report shows that 54 percent of the students graduate within six years, with 11 percent still enrolled. That is considerably lower than the 65 percent graduation rate within six years at peer institutions, with 3 percent still enrolled. The remaining students drop out, or take even longer.

There are many reasons for Manoa's traditionally longer time to graduation, including the high number of working students, course availability in tough economic times, uncertainty about choosing a major, and the limited job market, according to Colleen Sathre, UH vice president for Planning and Policy.

Tuition increases tend to speed things up a bit for brief periods, she said.

In a survey, taken among graduating seniors last spring, nearly half of the students — 46 percent — blamed one of three factors for their taking more than four years to finish their degrees: changing their majors; unavailability of courses, and jobs.

At Manoa, going to school and working are a way of life. No less than 89 percent of full-time students also hold a job, with the largest proportion (35 percent) working an average of 16 to 20 hours a week during their last two years of school.

"I've had to balance my whole life differently," said Yoshimoto, who hopes to graduate in four years, though she has 16 credits still to take next semester. That may mean adding an extra summer of classes because of her work schedule.

This is the first semester she has worked, and it has taken time to adjust to the 12 hours weekly she spends on her feet as a hostess in a Waikiki restaurant. She works two nights a week. On top of that she has an on-campus tutoring job helping a Japanese student with her English.

"I'm going to try to get done, but with working, it's harder. I think that's why people take so long. I don't think I could have finished if I had been working (the whole way through.) My friends who are working are behind."

"It's hard to balance everything," said Yoshimoto. "I can't do my homework those nights I work. I have to either try and get it done before, or wake up early the next morning. In my free time I sleep."

While Congress has mandated that public institutions report "years to graduation" to chart their effectiveness, and determine some federal financing levels, Sathre said the statistics may be missing many levels of complexity.

"There's the assumption that a high graduation rate is automatically a good thing," she said. "It may be true in the aggregate, but it's not necessarily true for every student. For some it's important that they get their career figured out. That may be more important for them."

Scott Stensrud, associate vice president for Enrollment Management at Hawai'i Pacific University, agreed.

"Sometimes students are worried about getting off to a good start and they may just take four courses," he said. Or they're uncertain of direction. At HPU students are prone to change direction, just as UH students do, and then need to go back and pick up a new set of prerequisites.

Sachi Nakashima, a 22-year-old from Japan, is an example of a student still making choices. Even though she's pushing herself to finish her degree in psychology this year — which would put her under four years — she's having trouble deciding which area of the profession to focus on. It may take two more years of graduate school to narrow her interest, she said.

"I hope to get a work visa for a year and then go to graduate school," she said.

Gerald Lau, acting interim director of Career Counseling Services at UH-Manoa, said the availability of courses, especially in technical areas for the juniors and seniors he counsels, plays a big role in keeping them in school longer.

"If they're really interested in a particular area, I've seen them stay a semester more just to take a course," said Lau. "Sometimes the courses they want to take aren't offered every semester."

That's one of the strengths of a private university, said Stensrud of HPU, where the overall time to graduation for incoming freshmen is 4.5 years.

"If there's a demand, the academic dean can make sure another section of that course opens up," said Stensrud. "At a private school we've got more flexibility."

Lau feels that with the state in recession for much of the 1990s, the economy has played a big role in longer graduation times. In tough economic times, students often return to school to finish a degree they may have started earlier, go back to grad school, or stay in school longer to increase their specialization.

That's true for Sharise Ku, a 30-year-old UH graduate and airline employee who is pondering returning to grad school next year for a master's degree in business because of the economy. But again, she'll need to work, too, just as she did seven years ago when she got her undergraduate degree.

"In my first two years I went to Leeward Community College and worked two part-time jobs, one on campus between classes, and the other at Pearlridge after school and on weekends," she said.

Still, with her job looking rocky, she doesn't mind the extra length of time getting additional training. It means, she says, that when she does finally get out again, she'll have a chance at an even better job.