The Fourth-Year Experience: Impediments to Degree Completion

Undergraduates who persevere to the fourth year of their academic careers have invested a great deal of time, effort, and financial resources in their education. In spite of the effort, many do not succeed in graduating. Students from an entering class of first-time, full time freshmen from a large urban university were tracked through their undergraduate careers in an ex post facto study in search of correlates to degree completion. Stopping out, taking developmental classes, receiving an F, dropping to part time, and withdrawing from classes were all associated with failing to complete for students still enrolled in their fourth year.