Hi, there. Someday Wise here again, continuing her crusade to help minimize student loan debt while securing college educations.
If you’ve browsed around looking at college websites, you may notice that many of them offer something called a “degree completion” program. This is a course track designed to capture business from people who started college but did not finish. It’s usually a bachelor’s degree program.
These programs are pure gold for the colleges that offer them, because there is a rich field of potential customers in need of such a service, people who completed 30, 60, 90, or some other amount of college credit, without completing a degree. There are many websites that give statistics on the percentage of people who begin a four-year degree program but do not finish.
The numbers don’t look all that great. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, only about 60% of students who begin a traditional college program finish their bachelor’s degree within six years of enrollment. YES, you read that right. Even given an extra two years to finish four year degrees, 40% don’t do it.
Of course there are reasons people drop out of college. They hate it. They picked the wrong college, or the wrong major. They are not good at it. They can’t afford it (hello!!). They encounter life experiences that make it difficult to continue.
Imagine paying, oh, say, $20,000 per year to go to college, for, oh, say, three years, at a four year college or university – one that does not grant associate’s degrees. Imagine that something in life hijacks your ability to continue past that third year. Maybe you just burn out on school, come down with an illness, a family situation calls you back home to help out, perhaps a baby comes along, or an unexpected opportunity like a job or volunteer gig that requires you relocate, whatever. The reason does not really matter for this exercise.
After diligently devoting three years of your life to earning 90 hours of college credit, what do you have to put on your resume? An incomplete degree. Which, unfortunately to an employer, does not look very enticing. It may even make you look like a quitter. This looks even less impressive if it’s obvious from the resume that you are no longer working toward finishing that program.
I really think that four year colleges should be required to grant associate’s degrees, even if it’s just in something non-specific like “general studies” upon completion of sixty hours of class work. I think they should require first and second year students to follow more of a structure to justify this. There are a few four year colleges doing this, but they all should.
But they don’t. It’s not their model. Their goal is to keep you until you finish a bachelor’s degree, and as you can see from the stat above, they have enough trouble doing so even dangling that reward in front of you for four, five, six, or more, years. They are missing a lot of opportunity to attract students. They should shout from the rooftops that while the goal is for their students to complete the bachelor’s program, they guarantee an associates after completion of two years of coursework. I think parents and students would appreciate that.
I would call it the “Two Degrees for the Price of One” program, and it would be all over my recruitment advertising. It’s not as good as two degrees for less than the price of one, whch is what you get if you go to community college the first two years, but it’s better than what they offer now. It would only cost the college the additional administration work.
Imagine if you earned an associate’s at the end of two years, decided the whole enterprise is for the birds, and walked away from it – having earned SOMETHING – a completed credential. Even if you stay for the third year. . . even if you stay until you have only one class left between you and your bachelor’s degree, you have earned SOMETHING. Currently such students walk away having invested time and money with very little to show for it.
Let’s go further. The basic college classes that typically satisfy requirements for an associate’s degree have fairly low overhead. English, history, and math, just require an instructor in a room, rather than a lot of labs and workshops as might be needed for the hands-on work that is expected during junior and senior year. And those early classes are more likely to be taught by graduate students or adjunct instructors, who earn a lot less money than professors. So, what if the cost were significantly less to attend college those first two years than the last two?
“Hold on a second, there, Someday. You’re making the first two years of college sound an awful lot like community college.” Yes, yes I am. The first two years in fact ARE a lot like community college, without the bargain price tag. By going directly to a four year school, you are paying more – about double for a state university, and many times that for a private school – for roughly the same product you could get at community college.
In prior posts, I’ve noted that a few people get “full ride” scholarships designed to cover just about all of the financial costs: tuition, fees, room and board, maybe even textbooks. Those people probably don’t need to find more money-saving strategies for college, though there are always more ways to save money. Many private shools give merit scholarships so that the most academically talented students can attend without incurring any costs, or at a substantially reduced cost.
There are other ways people can get full rides or at least tuition waivers. Children of people who work for a college sometimes qualify for such a waiver. Certain faith-based institutions offer similar benefits for children of members or their clergy. The U.S. Military academies are well-known as being tuition-free and providing an outstanding education. There are athletic scholarships that cover all costs. These are only a few examples of ways people dodge tuition and college debt!
These options are not available to everyone, however. You have to be really, really, exceptional academically to get a merit scholarship that covers all costs, even at a small college you never heard of, and there are lots of other such people competing for a handful of offers. The military academies are not easy to get into, or to actually experience. They are very rigorous and you have to prove, beginning early in high school, that you have the chops for the physical and academic demands, among other hoops that must be jumped through, none of which are a sure thing. Attending college as a full scholarship athlete has ups and downs. In short, it’s difficult to keep up with your studies while devoting the time to practice and physical conditioning necessary to perform well enough to keep the school paying your bills.
For the vast majority of potential students who do not have some kind of special “in” with a college to get the family waiver, exceptional brilliance, talent, or other marketable fabulousness, community college is a great equalizer. It’s typically open to anyone for the same low price. In two years you can complete a degree, and after that, if circumstances don’t support continuing, YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO SHOW FOR IT!
If you want to continue at the fancy college of your dreams, you can do so, and your bachelor’s degree will still have the name of that school on it. An associate’s degree in no way diminishes your bachelor’s degree. You simply end up with two degrees for less than the price of one.
Stay tuned for the next post on this riveting topic. Have a nice day!
Someday Wise 