Why so many students are stuck on campus past the standard four years

By Jessie Gambrell

Opinion Editor

If you aren’t  a “Super Senior” yourself, I am sure you know one. For those of you who may not know, a Super Senior is someone who reached senior status one, two or maybe three years ago but has not graduated because they have not completed their requirements.

You may think, well one year is not too bad, some people just take a lighter course load than others.  However, what if the lighter load isn’t the reason for making Super Seniors.

Perhaps the main reason is the various unit caps put in place? University unit caps restrict student to a specific amount of units a student can hold, therefore limiting the amount of classes they can take. Of course universities have fair reasoning behind these limits, the reason being allowing all of the students to have the chance to sign-up for classes, but the fact of the matter is that when you limit the amount of units a student can sign up for, it can greatly delay their college career.

For at least the last three years, CSUSM has put a 13-unit cap on all incoming freshmen.  Do you know what this is doing to this entire generation of incoming freshmen? As my academic advisor instructed myself and fellow freshmen on orientation day, you must take five classes a semester in order to graduate on time. But if the school is only restricting you to roughly four classes a semester in your first year, how are you suppose to accomplish this? Beats me.

So what do we do now? Well my own personal plan is to take summer courses to make up for the lost time. If I take two summer classes a year at either CSUSM or a local community college, then even if I take four classes during the regular semester, I can still be able to catch up and graduate on time. Otherwise, it looks like our only other options are to become Super Seniors and be perpetual students with the rest of the youngins until it has been finished.