Survey says: Most "full time" students aren't.

[dfrecore]

My first Homeschooling for College Credit public presentation was in 2013, and the data I used for that Power Point already listed the average 4 year degree taking 6 years. When I updated my numbers last year, it was higher, 6-something. Just under 7.

Colleges tell students to take 12. It's in almost every document you'll ever read- it's "considered" full time by almost every measure, academic and financial. Technically speaking, you don't have to take 15 to graduate in 4 years, but if you don't, you have to take a summer session.
So, really there are 2 options:
15+15+0
or
12+12+6

I think where students mess up is doing 12+12+0 which means 120 credits will take 5 years if executed perfectly (no changes, no extras, no fails, courses are all available when needed).

EDIT to add: some students use their summer for internships, travel, volunteer work, etc. so it's not "wrong" but I think students underestimate just HOW LONG 5-6 years is. My favorite line from Tommy Boy "a lot of people go to college for 7 years.....yeah, they're called DOCTORS!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOsQ2epsI2M

I am definitely not shocked to hear that it's more than 4 years.

One of the things that happened here in CA was that the CSU system became impacted. Which meant that many students, especially freshman & sophomores, couldn't get the classes they needed to graduate in 4 years (assuming that they wanted to take 15cr). The classes were just full all the time. Although it took a while for them to catch up, CSU started accepting CLEP, then later started accepting DSST. Again, it was a long time problem and they only in the last few years came up with a CSU system-wide acceptance policy, but at least they came up with it. Each college can choose to take the recommendations or not, but I think almost every CSU school takes some of the CLEP/DSST exams.