Is five for you?

Imagine: you are in the last semester of your undergraduate degree. You studied hard. You worked two jobs in the summer. You are tens of thousands of dollars in debt. You can’t wait to finally pick up that degree and begin the next stage of your life. But when you turn in your application for graduation, you are—surprise!—missing one course and will have to come back next year.

It’s every senior student’s nightmare, and it’s more common than you might think. Sometimes by accident and sometimes by design, an increasing number of students are taking longer than four years to finish four-year degrees. Statistics Canada reports that half of all 22-year-olds were still in school in 2001, compared to a quarter in 1971. Many students are choosing to take longer to work, take time off, or simply avoid going crazy from a full course load; but even for those who want to get out in four, there are many pitfalls to dodge.

Ann Tierney, vice-provost for students at the University of Calgary, says that the key to staying on the four-year track is academic advising: you’ve got to get an adviser as soon as you get to university. “For some students,” says Tierney, “the first time they see an adviser is in a reactive way, when they’re going into their last year.” General arts and science students are most affected by the problem because they have so much choice. No matter how conscientious the student, the university system is difficult to navigate and making a small mistake that can add a semester can happen to anyone. “Sometimes students feel they do not need any help and then realize late in their program that they should have sought the advice of an adviser earlier,” says Tierney.

The nasty fourth-year surprise that happens to many would-be graduates is precisely the reason Calgary last year created its “graduation guarantee” program. Tierney says the program, which promises to pick up the tab for any courses a student is forced to take after the four-year mark, was conceived in response to undergraduates and advisers who complained that course scheduling conflicts sometimes prevented students from graduating in four years. Advisers, says Tierney, “were reporting how frustrating it is meeting with a student going into their last year and having that student realize they hadn’t taken the prerequisite needed to take the fourth-year course that was only offered in the first semester.”

One of the most common reasons students stretch out their undergraduate degrees is indecision. Olwen Cowan, who is set to graduate in spring 2010 with an education degree from the University of British Columbia, entered university as an English major, then switched to political science, then to sociology before going back to English and, finally, education. She spent five years earning her bachelor’s degree, but when she left high school, Cowan didn’t know what interested her or what she excelled at. “It wasn’t until I went to college,” she says, “that I discovered so many different ideas and beautiful writers. It was mind-blowing.”