Graduation in 4 Years Now Rare at CSUN : Education: Counselors advise students to plan on 5 1/2 years to complete degrees. Funding cuts have made it tougher for many to get the classes they need.

Dan Ben-Ari, 24, enrolled at Cal State Northridge in the fall of 1985 and won’t graduate till 1992.

Blake Ramsey, 23, will finish in May, at the end of his sixth year.

In the past, Ben-Ari and Ramsey would be considered failures. Every school had them--the unfocused drifters never coping with the system, condemned to staying behind as their contemporaries moved on into the real world.

But now Ben-Ari and Ramsey are the norm.

“Very few students graduate in four years anymore,” said Stephen Hull, a CSUN research analyst for the Office of Academic Services. “It’s almost impossible.”

Added Margaret June Brown, director of educational equity services for the School of Communication, Health & Human Services, who often counsels incoming freshmen: “When I have an orientation with students and their parents, I don’t even tell them it’s four years anymore. I tell them to be prepared for 5 1/2 years. I get a big gasp.”

Two reasons for the extended campus stay pop up most frequently in conversations with students and in the findings of a campus survey conducted in 1988:

Due to reduced class sizes and fewer selections because of budgetary cutbacks, students often have trouble registering for classes in their majors. And, to afford school, many must work.

“A lot of students work 20 to 25 hours a week,” Brown said. “That’s a half-time job, and school is a full-time job.”

The CSUN survey, which reflects similar showings at other California state universities, found that only 16% of freshmen who entered the school in 1983 graduated within five years, compared with 19% five years earlier, Hull said. As budgetary cutbacks in higher education continue, resulting in less financial aid, Brown said, the rate may drop even lower.

“Although I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing,” she added. “Education is open to more people these days, and so you get a lot of variety. There’s a lot of competition for classes.”

Tell that to Ramsey, a marketing major who was shut out of an economics class he wanted a few years ago. He was forced to take a drawing course instead.

“I had to take a few classes that weren’t exactly pertinent to my major,” he said. “There was an educational value to them. Just not to me.”

Ramsey said he knows many other classmates who are also forced to scramble for classes they don’t want just to fill up their schedules and get credit. “What you do,” he added, “is basically get your total up so you can take the classes you really want.” Students with more credit get priority in class selection.

At CSUN, students need 124 credits to graduate. Students averaging 15 credits per semester, which is considered a substantial load by students and administrators, over four years would still be four units shy of the requirement to graduate. Most students take about 12 credits per semester, graduating in about 5 1/2 years. Certain degrees require more units--ranging from 132 to 175--making graduation within four years even more difficult.

Normally, to compensate for reduced course loads during the fall and winter terms, students take classes during the summer. But, according to CSUN Student Body President Michelle Cooper, that option isn’t utilized as much anymore.

“It’s very common to walk the stage during graduation,” Cooper said, “and then come back and finish in the summer or even the following September. But a lot of students can’t afford to go to summer school. That’s when they have to work full-time.” Cooper added that summer tuition--$99 per unit--is higher than the cost for the other semesters--$321 for up to six units, and $486 for seven units or more.

Brown attributes the higher summer school costs to fewer subsidies from the state. “It’s a problem that the politicians and the taxpayers are going to have to address,” she said. Brown said students can transfer credit from less expensive community colleges for lower division classes, but not for more advanced ones.

She suggested that CSUN freshmen do a more thorough job of planning their academic careers.

“They need to read their catalogues before they come here, which might facilitate things so that they know which courses to take immediately toward their major. They may still not graduate in four years, but it might take less time,” Brown said.

Sheryl Binstein, 20, made certain that she planned ahead before entering CSUN. A junior, Binstein is on schedule to graduate in May, 1992, finishing in four years. She came to college with 17 units transferred from high school. To afford school, she’s been working in the school’s humanities department since she started in 1988. “When I didn’t get the classes I wanted,” Binstein said, “I had doubts I’d be able to finish in four years, but after adding others, I knew I could do it.”

Cooper is another of the rare four-year students. “I eat, sleep and live CSUN,” she said. “That’s how I do it.”

Ben-Ari never held any illusions of finishing in four years.

He said he did not used to feel pressured to graduate, but when his high school classmates finished last summer, he began to realize that it was time to go. Now he hangs out with friends from high school who entered CSUN after him.

Ramsey, who hopes to land a job in advertising after graduating in May, partially blames himself for the delay. “I probably didn’t take as many classes as I should have,” he said. “It took me awhile to find out that school really was for me.”

Ben-Ari may leave CSUN next year, but his academic career has only begun. He hopes to attend veterinarian school, if he can get a scholarship.

“That’s another four years,” he said. “But that would be more structured. I would have to do it.”