Students should stay four years at UCLA to get full value of an undergraduate education

Two years is the amount of time to spend getting an associate’s degree or maybe working at an entry-level job, but it’s not enough time to spend getting a bachelor’s degree at UCLA. Yet in recent years, the four-year graduation rate has gone up nearly 10 percent, and an increasing number of students are graduating even earlier.

What seems like good news may not be so great. Although the decreased time to graduation could be partly the result of better counseling, improved access to student loans or more determined students, it’s hard to ignore the fact that degree programs have simply become less rigorous.

Given that GE and major requirements have been slashed and more than 30 majors have been trimmed down to around 45 units, it should come as no surprise that students are in and out of UCLA faster than ever before.

To combat the ailing degree, students who have the financial means ought to strongly consider staying at UCLA for a full four years and either double major or minor. This is more ideal than taking a random mix of classes to complete the required 60 upper-division units because it offers a structured way to support your studies and shows a clear focus to employers.

Challenge 45, which set a mere 45 units as a campus-wide target for major requirements, was intended to reduce instructional costs, but also to give students the flexibility of taking classes of their own interest. Students are still required to graduate with at least 60 upper-division units, but they often look for easy classes rather than those that will give them personal enrichment.

Unfortunately, this thoughtful intention seems to have had the opposite effect ­­­”“ now that students have fewer classes to take, they can simply graduate in less time.

And with the unprecedented increase in fees, who wouldn’t want to graduate ASAP? Yet we cannot lower major standards and expect the value of the UCLA degree to remain the same.

The burden has now fallen upon students to tailor their degrees in ways that will continue to make them competitive in the job market. Employers will notice how many classes a student has taken in college, and will likely not look as favorably upon one who has only met the bare minimum requirements.

Some majors have cut essential training like labs (biology) and work with allied department courses (political science) that will undoubtedly make students less attractive to employers and graduate schools.

However, there are ways to take an assortment of classes with a common thread. For example, if you take classes in sociology, psychology, English, statistics and even genetics, you could argue that they fit your interests in anthropology.

There are loftier reasons than just employment to stay in school longer: college is where you broaden your perspective, increase your critical thinking skills and forge connections. These basic tenets of higher education should not be forgotten in the midst of painful budget cuts and fee increases.

The value of a college degree has already plummeted since 1973, when only 47 percent of high school graduates went on to college. With 70 percent of them now going on to college, the number of people with college degrees outweighs the number of job positions. The record 10.6 percent unemployment rate for college grads attests to this, making it more important than ever for students to take charge of their degrees.

Even students who are trying to graduate early so they can pursue higher degrees ought to reconsider rushing through college for the sake of spending less time in school. Saving one or two years, in the long run, isn’t as beneficial as having the undergraduate preparation for those pursuits in the first place.

An undergraduate education isn’t something you can repeat, so make the most of it while you can.