Is Six the New Four-Year Plan?
Andrea Thompson was sitting in her public relations writing course at the University of Houston when it occurred to her that the subject matter was very familiar. She had taken an almost identical class at Florida A&M University, where she began her journey toward a bachelor’s degree in 2000. But the course at FAMU was called “Newswriting and Reporting.”
“PR writing was the same as ‘Newswriting and Reporting.’ It was like writing a news story and putting it in a press release,” says the 24-year-old Thompson. “People were asking questions I knew the answers to. And I just laughed.”
But she wasn’t laughing when she initially transferred from FAMU to UH. Her “Newswriting and Reporting” class and two other courses translated into only one credit in UH’s public relations program. She says that pattern held true for all of her courses, meaning that three semester’s worth of journalism courses at FAMU were only worth one semester’s worth of credit at UH. When UH’s spring semester began in January 2006, Thompson was two semesters shy of graduation, exactly where she had been in August of 2003 at FAMU.
Thompson, like most students, entered college with the intent of graduating in four years. But she now finds herself among a growing number of students who are taking six years to don the cap and gown.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, the average college student is taking almost five and a half years to graduate. There are any number of reasons why that is so, say students and educators.
“I think it’s the circumstances before them,” says Diane Hall, the director of high school and community college relations at FAMU’s School of Journalism and Graphic Communication.
