Kaela Stilson had every intention of graduating from Wayne State in four years.

But after receiving poor guidance from a university adviser, who placed her in the wrong math program, this was no longer possible.

“It set me back about three semesters,” she said. “It will be about six years before I graduate.”

Poor advising is one reason WSU students aren’t graduating on time, but the trend is more overarching.

The frequency of students completing bachelor’s degrees in four years has decreased to a point that some WSU advisors aren’t even expecting this of students.

WSU Academic Advisor Linda Robertson said the goal to graduate in four years is not as prevalent partly because students see it as unrealistic.
“Some students say, ‘I’d rather be behind so that I can make some good grades,’” she said.

She believes WSU’s large part-time student community is mostly responsible for the lack of students graduating in four years.
“We are part of the city where people go home, they have family responsibilities … they can’t just completely immerse themselves in the academic life,” Robertson said. “It’s really hard to say ‘I want to graduate in four years, I’m going to do that,’ because so many things can come up in four years.”

A lot came up for sophomore Cornelius Porter, who started taking classes at WSU in 2000.

“I stayed for one year, left for the Army for like five years, came back for a semester, then ended up going to a film school,” Porter said.
After graduating from film school, Porter is back at WSU to study Pre-Law but says he isn’t sure when he’ll graduate.

“Right now I’m just trying to overload myself with classes so I can do it as quick as possible,” he said.

Howard Shapiro, associate vice president for undergraduate programs and general education, suspects that tuition costs and remedial no-credit courses are keeping students from graduating in four years.

The 120-credit program, however, is the standard four-year system everywhere in the country, Shapiro said.

“The fact that people don’t graduate in four years is based upon many different reasons,” he said. “But it’s not because the program isn’t a four-year program.”

Some students manage to achieve the four-year goal.
Senior Sarah Gammouh will have completed her degree in four years, pending graduation in May.

“It’s really hard to graduate in four,” she said. “You have to rush through.”

The Pre-Med major said taking courses over the summer is the key to finishing on time.

Aisha Darnell, who is also scheduled to graduate after four years majoring in Communication Sciences and Disorders, said she never took a summer off.

“My plan was: I’m going to be done in four years,” she said.

Shapiro said the university recognizes prolonged graduation as a problem at WSU and is working to help students graduate on time.

“We have been working on changing our financial aid policies to increase grant-based aid for students,” he said. This will allow students to take more credits at once.

The university is also adding a planning tool to the online degree audit and is working to coordinate general advisors with the department advisors.

Student registration reminders posted around campus are also part of the effort to encourage students to finish sooner.

“We’re trying to make people think more about the end, not just ‘oh, I’m here and eventually I’ll graduate,’” Shapiro said.

The six- and eight-year graduation rates aren’t acceptable, he said, because the longer it takes students to finish, the more likely they are to not finish at all.

“Maybe we’ve been too accepting of this in the past, and we’re doing everything we can now to try to reframe it for people and help them make different decisions,” he said.