When Jack Fox first enrolled at the University of Mississippi, he expected, like most other students, to follow the traditional undergraduate path, graduating in four years. However, four years later, Fox is preparing for another semester as a fifth-year “super” senior, along with about half of his class.
More commonly than ever, college students are taking five or six years to acquire their bachelor’s degrees. According to a 2013 article from Forbes by Chris Denhart, only about 49% of students graduate on time, if at all.
“More and more students are taking five years to complete what have historically been four-year programs,” Denhart writes. And the University of Mississippi is no different.
Students like Fox are taking longer to complete their degree requirements for a multitude of reasons. For Fox, he believes his holdup lies in poor academic advising for the first few years of his college career.
Fox changed his major a number of times during his freshman year before finally landing on sport and recreation administration. He found the way the courses were planned especially helpful. However, only a semester after he changed into the major, it was entirely restructured.
“They changed things up and made it so there was an internship class that you had to take before you could have an accredited internship,” Fox said. “As a result, no matter what, we couldn’t really graduate on time because that class was during the spring of our senior year,”
Throughout this confusing time, Fox tried to figure out which classes to take without help from his advisors. Instead, he had to navigate the redesigned major on his own.
“When I was a freshman and sophomore, the advisors didn’t even know that this major was going to be a thing across all the departments,” Fox said. “Somehow I knew more about it than they did, which was really surprising to me.”
Terrius Harris echoed Fox’s sentiments. The triple major student lacked a cross-departmental advisor to steer him in the right direction, so he will begin his fifth year in August to complete his final degree.
“[It] was not possible in four due to a lack of a cross-departmental academic advisor that would advise me on classes to take to complete all of my degrees instead of only one,” he said. “If there was a cross-departmental advisor that could help those double and triple majoring, I believe I would have been able to graduate in four, with knowledge of the courses needed and summer and intercession resources.”
Harris suggested that the university hire a dual major specialist advisor to assist others in similar predicaments, provide more opportunities for students to be able to take and afford intercession courses, and track current advisors through evaluations to ensure that they are doing their job effectively.
Ronnie “R.J.” Morgan, professor at the Meek School of Journalism and New Media and Mississippi Scholastic Press Association director, is an academic advisor for journalism students and said that students sometimes don’t understand the basic math involved with graduating in four years.
Nearly every bachelor’s degree at the University of Mississippi consists of 124 credit hours. Assuming that a student does not change his or her major, if a student were to take a 15-hour course load each semester, he or she would still not be at enough hours to graduate with a degree at the conclusion of four years. To graduate in four years, he or she would have to take 18 hours for a couple of semesters or take one or two intercession courses.
When students changing their majors is taken into account as well as failing courses, it is easy to see how many students don’t graduate in four years, Morgan said.
“I don’t think people understand that 15 times 8 doesn’t equal 124,” he said. “Finishing in five years is not uncommon at all.”
In order to combat the high five or six-year graduation rate, Morgan suggested a more streamlined degree process, but that has its cons as well.
“We could make the degree process less complicated, but it’s a ‘catch 22’ situation,” he said. “When you make the process more streamlined, you would be eliminating pathways to get that degree.”
Morgan said that students ultimately should be more proactive in their own learning path. Many who see him for advising don’t know what they want to minor in or what classes they want to take.
“It’s your life, and you’re going to have to make those decisions eventually,” he said.
Kody Archer, who will also begin his fifth year in the fall, admitted that he didn’t take full advantage of advising while at Ole Miss, but he also claims that his fifth-year “victory lap” is partially due to the expense of intercession courses.
“I didn’t declare until sophomore year, but then I changed my major twice,” he said. “I have enough credits to graduate, but it doesn’t line up the way it needs to, and summer classes are too expensive for me to take. I’m glad my parents were on board with a fifth year.”
IMC student Garland Patterson took a semester off and as a result, will be at the university for another year to make sure she is taking all of the classes she needs to acquire her degree. Anthropology student Harrison Williams, on the other hand, needs to take a specific class for graduate school that is only offered at certain times of the year, so he is staying for “another semester or two.”
Jennifer Simmons, Assistant Dean for Student Services in the Meek School of Journalism and New Media, has been advising students for three years, most of whom are freshmen, and she said many students, instead of prioritizing classes they have to take in order to graduate, select their schedule based on professors and class times. Students also are affected by holds on their account and other factors that delay them when creating their schedule.
“The student and the advisor could have mapped out the perfect plan, but if the class is full or if there is a hold on the student’s account, there’s not a whole lot we can do,” she said. “But the university is working on it.”
Simmons serves on the Graduation and Degree Completion Group subsection of the Academic Policy Review Committee, which looks at potential issues that create barriers for students to finish their degrees. She said that the committee has noted that as more and more students enroll at Ole Miss, the university is struggling to keep up with them.
“At the rate the university has grown, we’ve attempted to increase the number of individual course section, but in some departments, the university has even outpaced those,” she said. “In some departments, the growth of the university and student population, in general, has outpaced the faculty in the ability to teach these courses.”
Ole Miss isn’t alone in its struggles to provide the resources to graduate students in four years. Among the 14 Southeastern Conference universities, Ole Miss ranked 12 out of 14 in four-year graduation rates in 2015, succeeded by the University of Kentucky and Mississippi State University. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, only 30.9 percent of students graduate from Mississippi State University in four years, while 61 percent graduate in five years.
However low its ranking among SEC universities is, Ole Miss’ four-year graduation rate is on the rise. Statistics from the UM Office of Institutional Research, Effectiveness, and Planning show that since 2010, four-year graduation rates have been steadily increasing.
Associate Provost Donna Strum suggested that this positive trend was due to exceptional programs and process that facilitate academic success among students.
“Our dedicated faculty and staff genuinely care about our students and work to engage and empower them,” she said. “Our ultimate goal is for our students to achieve their goals and pursue their passions and career interests. We hope our students leave Ole Miss feeling like they have grown both personally and professionally so they will make meaningful contributions to their communities.”
As he prepares to begin his final year at the university, Fox wishes that the university would consider the stress that comes along with the tumultuous nature of college when setting expectations for students. He thinks that more effort could be put towards student success, and perhaps if the university provides proper resources for their students, four-year graduation rate will increase exponentially.
“Taking 15 hours a semester is kind of a lot because most students are working and doing other stuff,” Fox said. “The school doesn’t take into account the other extracurricular stuff that [students] do. College is kind of the time that you’re trying to grow as a human being. You grow in so many other aspects than just going to class. I feel like they just need to think about that.”
Devna Bose - Journalism 377 