From someone who works in higher education and having spent a number of years dealing with student systems, I can tell you that there is an advantage at a school like The Citadel that has a very tight course catalog and graduation requirements designed around a specific 4-year program. It certainly helps to reduce the opportunities for needing extra terms.
That being said, the fear of not graduating on time is greatly exaggerated from many public institutions. There are schools where it is almost impossible to graduate in 4 years, but with a little research (most schools put the graduation requirements online), you can weed many of these out. Here is my list of reasons that students take more than 4 years to graduate:
1) Schools that require more than 120 credit hours (semester system) to graduate. Some of these are major specific (architecture is the most common followed by engineering), but often this is a sign of a university where the concept of a "broad" education means every school/department gets to justify their existence by requiring you to take one of their classes.
2) Students who come to a school unprepared in one or more academic areas. Yes, even top public schools admit students who have academic deficiencies! Often these are lopsided students (math/science geeks who can't write well or liberal arts students who need some help with math). Add in a couple more courses of remedial math/writing to add a semester to the graduation path...
3) Students who change their minds about their major - especially ones who change their minds a couple years into their studies! Half or more of students at many public schools come in with an "undeclared major" They take core courses for a couple of semesters trying out a class here or there until they find something they can identify with. Some students take 6 or 7 semesters to figure this out!
4) Students who wash out of their intended major. The old joke about those who can't cut engineering switch to business and those who can't cut business switch to political science is still in effect. The pre-med bio major who washes out in O-chem in their sophomore year and switches to psych generally has wasted a year plus on math and bio and chem that hasn't satisfied their new major requirements.
5) Students who take less than 15 credit hours. They obviously flunked the math requirement that says 8 terms times 12 credit hours does not equal the 120 hours necessary to graduate. Yeah, they started with 15, but dropped a course when they found out that the professor expected too many papers or discovered that 8 AM is too early for class.
6) Students who don't understand/pay attention to their degree audit. For those of you unfamiliar with a degree audit, it is a report you can run any time to find out what your progress towards your declared degree is and what is outstanding as far as requirements. If you meet with your adviser once a term to get a sign-off on your courses for next term and then blame him/her for being stuck in a corner when you can't schedule in your requirements in your last couple of terms, you aren't taking control of your life. Read your Degree Audit. Look through the course catalog and find out when ALL of the possible courses that satisfy the requirements are offered (not every course is offered every semester and many have a chain of prerequisites). Work on the longest chains and most infrequently scheduled courses as soon a possible. Save a few requirements that have many options for later in your college career to fill in between those upper-division required classes that are only offered in one time slot once a year.
Now that I've got that off my chest, Jcleppe and I have a similar outlook on undergrad vs. grad school these days. In the old days, (when dinosaurs like us roamed campuses), an undergraduate degree was all that was necessary, especially if you went to a better school. Even engineers these days are starting to need advanced degrees to be competitive at better employers.
That being said, I've always felt that graduate school is the responsibility of the student. If you set him up with a first class undergrad education, I'm not going to hold that against you. He will be smart enough to figure out how to afford grad school.
And I get the idea of the Citadel being more than about the coursework. I sent my daughter to a boarding school and realized that it was more than the coursework in that experience. That structured boarding experience definitely set her up to be successful in the public university where she is now. And 4 years of that now would cost more than the Citadel.
And she will have no problem graduating in 4 years because she averages more than 15 credit hours per term, and has not fallen into any of the above problems. Her bigger problem will be what to take with the extra hours her last semester after she has satisfied her graduation requirements. All this despite her ROTC credits not counting towards any degree requirements other than the 120 necessary to graduate. And no she didn't come in with a ton of requirements fulfilled by AP tests. In fact, only 1 requirement was satisfied by her AP testing.
That being said, the fear of not graduating on time is greatly exaggerated from many public institutions. There are schools where it is almost impossible to graduate in 4 years, but with a little research (most schools put the graduation requirements online), you can weed many of these out. Here is my list of reasons that students take more than 4 years to graduate:
1) Schools that require more than 120 credit hours (semester system) to graduate. Some of these are major specific (architecture is the most common followed by engineering), but often this is a sign of a university where the concept of a "broad" education means every school/department gets to justify their existence by requiring you to take one of their classes.
2) Students who come to a school unprepared in one or more academic areas. Yes, even top public schools admit students who have academic deficiencies! Often these are lopsided students (math/science geeks who can't write well or liberal arts students who need some help with math). Add in a couple more courses of remedial math/writing to add a semester to the graduation path...
3) Students who change their minds about their major - especially ones who change their minds a couple years into their studies! Half or more of students at many public schools come in with an "undeclared major" They take core courses for a couple of semesters trying out a class here or there until they find something they can identify with. Some students take 6 or 7 semesters to figure this out!
4) Students who wash out of their intended major. The old joke about those who can't cut engineering switch to business and those who can't cut business switch to political science is still in effect. The pre-med bio major who washes out in O-chem in their sophomore year and switches to psych generally has wasted a year plus on math and bio and chem that hasn't satisfied their new major requirements.
5) Students who take less than 15 credit hours. They obviously flunked the math requirement that says 8 terms times 12 credit hours does not equal the 120 hours necessary to graduate. Yeah, they started with 15, but dropped a course when they found out that the professor expected too many papers or discovered that 8 AM is too early for class.
6) Students who don't understand/pay attention to their degree audit. For those of you unfamiliar with a degree audit, it is a report you can run any time to find out what your progress towards your declared degree is and what is outstanding as far as requirements. If you meet with your adviser once a term to get a sign-off on your courses for next term and then blame him/her for being stuck in a corner when you can't schedule in your requirements in your last couple of terms, you aren't taking control of your life. Read your Degree Audit. Look through the course catalog and find out when ALL of the possible courses that satisfy the requirements are offered (not every course is offered every semester and many have a chain of prerequisites). Work on the longest chains and most infrequently scheduled courses as soon a possible. Save a few requirements that have many options for later in your college career to fill in between those upper-division required classes that are only offered in one time slot once a year.
Now that I've got that off my chest, Jcleppe and I have a similar outlook on undergrad vs. grad school these days. In the old days, (when dinosaurs like us roamed campuses), an undergraduate degree was all that was necessary, especially if you went to a better school. Even engineers these days are starting to need advanced degrees to be competitive at better employers.
That being said, I've always felt that graduate school is the responsibility of the student. If you set him up with a first class undergrad education, I'm not going to hold that against you. He will be smart enough to figure out how to afford grad school.
And I get the idea of the Citadel being more than about the coursework. I sent my daughter to a boarding school and realized that it was more than the coursework in that experience. That structured boarding experience definitely set her up to be successful in the public university where she is now. And 4 years of that now would cost more than the Citadel.
And she will have no problem graduating in 4 years because she averages more than 15 credit hours per term, and has not fallen into any of the above problems. Her bigger problem will be what to take with the extra hours her last semester after she has satisfied her graduation requirements. All this despite her ROTC credits not counting towards any degree requirements other than the 120 necessary to graduate. And no she didn't come in with a ton of requirements fulfilled by AP tests. In fact, only 1 requirement was satisfied by her AP testing.
). Is it for everyone? no. If you aren't committed to it - you will hate every minute of what is a 24/7, all encompassing existence. Should you go broke to get that experience? Probably not. But if you really want to share that experience and you can swing it financially, then I will tell you that I truly love the guys who I shared those experiences with, would drop everything for them if they needed, have had them drop everything to come help me in a crisis, and am closer to them 37 years after my Rat line, than I am with people with whom I have worked continuously for 10 years in the Civilian world. So there's my testimony- Others may differ !