When money is tight, some students are willing to sacrifice part of their four-year college experience, paring it down to fewer than the usual 12 quarters.
Some do it simply because they can. Others do it to save money. But as the economy enters a recession, graduating early can also just replace one concern with another, trading tuition worries for job-related anxiety.
Allister Wenzel, who says he will probably use a free quarter next year to graduate early, thinks he’s lucky to have the option.
Now a SESP junior, Wenzel transferred from UCLA, another school on the quarter system, so his credits counted on his Northwestern transcript. Switching from Weinberg to SESP didn’t require that he take many new courses, he said.
He acknowledged the financial advantage of graduating early, but said he’s uncertain that he will find a job.
“I’m happy I have the flexibility that I can graduate early, but at the same time I know if I graduate early there is a very good chance I might end up just sitting around,” Wenzel said. “I need a break before going straight from undergraduate into a job, so it’s kind of a double-edged sword.”
Wenzel and Alicia Lobeiras, a Weinberg junior who plans on leaving after Fall Quarter of her senior year, both said they feel like the only people at NU who are graduating early.
This may be because the number of early graduates has decreased since 2001, said Michael Mills, associate provost for university enrollment.
“If the rate of early graduates with fewer than 12 quarters is slowing, you can argue that in a bad labor market, people want to stay in school longer,” Mills said.
Policy changes on high school credit, restricting use of Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate test scores to just two distribution requirements, has also affected whether students are able to graduate early, he said.
The rate of early graduates decreased from around 21 percent in 2001 to 16 percent in 2007.
Mills said he had worried in the past that early graduates were deprived of opportunities for special programs, including studying abroad. This turned out not to be the case.
“We looked at rates of study abroad, independent study, magna cum laude (degrees), and saw that early graduates by and large were not shortchanging themselves,” Mills said. “We also looked at where early graduates enrolled at graduate schools and saw a lot of our graduates were in really prestigious programs.”
Lobeiras decided to graduate two quarters early after she met with her degree auditor in January 2008 and determined she would have enough credits to study abroad and graduate early. After introducing the idea to her parents, who are still paying off loans from her freshman year, it was a done deal.
“Staying in school isn’t really saving me money … I did a really good internship last summer, and though it’s not guaranteed, they were pretty positive about having me work there permanently,” said Lobeiras, adding that she eventually wants to go to law school. “I’m worried about the economy, but I don’t think it will benefit me to stay in school longer.”
Even though some say the recession is in full swing, students like Wenzel are optimistic that graduating early won’t have too much of an effect on their job search.
“I’m definitely going to give it a shot,” he said. “Certainly I’ve lost some confidence because of the current economic situation, but I’m fairly certain that this time next year will be better than it is right now.”
