COLUMN ONE : Vanishing Four-Year Degrees : More students are taking their time getting a college education. High costs, family obligations and crowded classes make them ask, why rush?

It’s been nearly eight years since Adrienne DeVine began working on her bachelor’s degree. As the mother of four children, the Cal State Long Beach art and journalism student has had plenty of cause to take light course loads and time off. But she expects to finally receive her diploma in the spring.

“I didn’t want to take this long and there were some times when I thought I wouldn’t make it,” says DeVine, who is 35 and describes the juggling of school and family as exhausting even with much support from her husband. “You need friends and colleagues to boost you up and tell you it will be worth it in the long run,” she adds.

DeVine is certainly not alone in her marathon schooling. For increasing numbers of American students, a college education is more than just a four-year struggle with English literature, dormitory roommates and tuition bills. More frequently, it is a five-, six- or even 10-year experience.

Recent studies in California and across the nation show a significant drop-off in the percentage of entering college freshmen who earn their baccalaureate degrees in four years. In fact, only a quarter of public university students do it within four and a half years.

“Certainly the day of the actual four-year degree is gone,” explains Dale Heckman, an analyst with the California Postsecondary Education Commission.

All sorts of causes are cited by statisticians, administrators and students. Among those are the increased need to hold jobs to cope with higher school costs and cuts in financial aid, larger numbers of older students with families, difficulties in enrolling in required and crowded classes, more time off for travel and internships, frequent switching of majors, transferring to different colleges, and a slower pace in hopes of getting better grades.

Plus, there is the traditional undergraduate neurosis: fear of entering the unpleasant outside world because they’re having too much fun. “Why rush?” asked a UCLA junior who expects to be on the Westwood campus for six years.

Some state legislators and education experts have an answer for that young man. Moving students more quickly to graduation is simply more efficient and, at public institutions, saves tax dollars, they assert. If more students finished in four years, the University of California and California State University systems might feel less of a need to build additional--and very expensive--campuses.

On the other hand, some educators say there is nothing magical about finishing in four years. A slower pace, they stress, encourages a wider range of studies, more extracurricular activities and more maturity. Besides, part-time students tend to be more serious.

The trend of longer college careers is particularly noticeable in the Cal State system, with its increasing rolls of returning and part-time students. According to a new study, the percentage of Cal State students who earn a degree within five years has dropped from about 30% for those who entered as freshmen in 1973 to about 25% for the freshmen of 1983. However, the report’s good news is that those who continue for longer than five years and are considered likely to graduate has risen from 15% to 27% during the same time.

That study, titled “Those Who Stay,” suggests that educators should start looking at graduation rates during 10 years rather than four or five. Jerry Vargas, a broadcast studies major at Cal State Los Angeles, agrees. Now in his sixth year at the school, he expects to graduate in the spring. “Hardly anybody gets out in four years,” said Vargas, who was slowed down by jobs and switching majors several times.

A recent U.S. Department of Education study compared freshmen across the nation who entered four-year colleges directly out of high school in 1972 to those who began in 1980. At public institutions, only 25% of the 1980 group earned their degrees within four and a half years, down from 40% for the 1972 freshmen. At private schools the share dropped to 46% from 50%. At the same time, however, there were rises in the percentages of non-graduates still enrolled.

One example of that trend is UC Santa Barbara student Chris Lowe. Adding a second major of fine arts to the near completion of a business degree is lengthening his university education to possibly six years. “I’m glad I’m discovering this interest now,” said Lowe, who was at UC Riverside for two years and is now in his second year at UC Santa Barbara. “I still have a good deal of time to make up my mind on what I will do with the rest of my life.” He works part time now at an accounting firm and is considering a career in advertising.

Lowe, 21, said he notices that many UC students take 12 units a quarter instead of the maximum 16 units in hopes of getting better grades for graduate school applications. Others, he added, “just like to take their time because they are not really ready to get out in the real world.”

John Sarvey, UCLA’s undergraduate student body president, enrolled at the Westwood campus in the fall of 1984 and expects to graduate this spring. He took two quarters off to earn money and was also slowed down by a switch from a premedical curriculum to a self-designed major called organizational studies, which combines sociology, political science, psychology and economics. And, of course, being a student leader takes time away from classes.

“Almost everybody I know takes at least five years, especially if they choose to take advantage of being involved in any of the many opportunities there are at UCLA,” Sarvey said. He recalled that one friend managed to graduate within the traditional four years and later regretted it, especially since he couldn’t find a job for four months.

Indeed, the fifth year has become standard in the UC system. Of the UC students who enrolled as freshmen in 1982, only 31% finished in four years, but that jumped up to 59% within an additional year, according to UC officials. Unlike Cal State, UC discourages part-time students.

A survey of UC Davis and UC Riverside graduates found that the most important reason for needing more than four years was taking extra courses for personal interest. Ranked next was the need to earn money, followed by changing majors. Also mentioned were lack of counseling, stress, trouble getting registered in required courses, family problems, athletics and time off to travel.

California’s public higher education systems--with their many accessible campuses, relatively low costs, and ease of transferring--have an atmosphere that encourages a slow pace to graduation, according to Prof. Alexander Astin, director of UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute. “Dropping out and coming back is much more acceptable and more of an established practice in California than other places in the country,” he said.

The much higher cost of attending private colleges and universities forces their students through faster, Astin said. But a more important reason why students at independent schools finish faster, he added, is that private schools tend to give more attention to counseling and allow more personal contact with professors than the enormous public institutions do.

Yet even the National Institute of Independent Colleges and Universities looks at graduation rates over six years. “Even when you have the proper counseling, you can’t account for changing majors,” explained Oscar Porter, the institute’s assistant executive director in Washington. “You’ve got to remember, we are talking about people under age 25. Planning every moment of their lives over the next week, never mind the next few years, is not something they do often. None of us at that age did.”

UC analyst John Sewart says that public universities are working to improve counseling and making sure that seniors get the classes they need to graduate. But the idea of a four-year college education may have been something of a myth, he said, because delays and changes always have been the very nature of intellectual pursuit and self-discovery.

“What can we do if students thought they were interested in literature and now find they are interested in science? We have to be supportive of that,” Sewart said.

Allowing such freedom and accommodating older, part-time students make it difficult to reverse the trend toward longer educations, state Sen. Becky Morgan (R-Los Altos Hills) discovered. She authored legislation that led to a study of the issue by the post-secondary education commission last year.

Increases in financial aid might help students get through faster, as would better counseling, CPEC found. But Morgan’s legislative consultant, Margie Chisholm, said big boosts in scholarships are not likely to emerge from a tight budget in Sacramento. And other legislative efforts to hurry students to bachelor degrees probably would not accomplish much, Chisolm said.

The issue may arise again when legislators start to debate spending billions of dollars on 22 proposed community colleges, five new Cal State and three more UC campuses. Meanwhile, Chisolm says, the causes of the five- and six-year degree “sounds to me like forces beyond our control.”

The biggest of those forces is the increasing numbers of what educators call “non-traditional students”--those who are older than 25 or attend school part time. Between 1977 and 1987, the national share of such students among all undergraduates jumped from 40% to 48% and will soon be more than 50%, according to the Pew Higher Education Research Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

DeVine, the Cal State Long Beach senior, exemplifies that. After a false start at another school and a technical degree in printmaking, she began a university preparatory program at Pasadena City College in 1981 and then transferred to the Long Beach campus.

She urges other older students not to give up. “Don’t let one failure or one false start prevent you from continuing even if you can only take one class at a time,” said DeVine, who will be looking for a job in publishing or journalism after receiving her elusive degree in the spring.

“I think it will all be worthwhile,” she said of her studies. “Or at least ask me in a couple of years.”