Last month, Southern Illinois University was highlighted by Complete College America, a national nonprofit organization, for being a leader in the push for on time graduations by promoting the ‘15 to Finish’ campaign.

Chancellor Rita Cheng said ‘15 to Finish’ is an awareness program that advises students to take 15 credit hours per semester, or 30 each year, in order to graduate within four years.

“If there’s a semester where you choose to have less than 15, you may need to think about how you are going to make that up,” she said. “It’s just too easy to drop a course and go to 12 and then, sometime in the future, regret it.”

Cheng said in the case of dropping courses, she suggests students either take summer school or 18 credits in their junior or senior years.

While it takes 15 credit hours per semester to graduate in four years, students taking 12 are still considered full time students.

“Not everybody wants to take 15 really difficult credits all at one time, but at the same time this awareness just says ‘over the next four years, try to average out fifteen so that you can graduate on time,’” Cheng said. “And if you don’t, make sure that you thought about it so that that extra semester of tuition cost isn’t a surprise to you.”

Associate Director of Communications at Complete College America Blake Johnson said ‘15 to Finish’ is just one of several “game changers” the organization advocates for universities as a way to promote on time graduation. ‘15 to Finish’ began at the University of Hawaii in 2012 and has been promoted nationally since.

While promotion is growing, on time graduations are still somewhat a myth.

“Unfortunately when it comes to graduation day, not nearly as many students are graduating and when it comes to on time completion those numbers are very low,” Johnson said. “Only about half of students who start college actually graduate on time.”

According to the 2012-2013 SIU Fact Book, 24.4 percent of students graduated within four years in 2008, and according to the Chronicle of Higher Education College Completion, 26.1 percent of all 2,477 counted students at SIU graduated within four years in 2010.

Cheng said our graduation rates are very similar to the institutions that have the same profiles, but there is always room for improvement.

“I’m not satisfied with it,” she said. “I’d like to see it increase in the work that we’re doing on campus on retention is intended to increase graduation rates down the road.”

Along with ‘15 to Finish’, the mathematics and English faculty are working to increase student success. The university has mapped each degree program so students know which courses they must take to graduate on time.

“We’ve also taken almost all of our degree programs through a complete review and they are now at 120 credits,” she said. “So that’s also the university’s part in saying we can design a degree program for you to graduate in four years.”

Lamar Johnson, an alumnus in health care management from Chicago, said while many students do graduate within four years, he thinks it takes more time.

“I believe (more than) 50 percent of the students that actually graduate take more than four years. I believe it takes about five years.” he said. “There are a lot of students who don’t know exactly what they want to do or they end up changing their mind and it pushes them back at least a semester or two.”

This was the case with Johnson, as he wanted to major in business management in his first two years and then changed to health care management.

Johnson said while changing majors was a factor, he was also slacking off quite a bit.

“I was taking 15 (credit hours) and dropping a class every semester besides my last two years,” he said.

Johnson said if students keep with the ‘15 to Finish’ track, they can graduate on time and will get the career they’ve always wanted.

“As long as you have your mind focused and got something to keep you motivated, I believe you will finish around the four, five year range,” he said. “If you stick to fifteen credit hours, it’s definitely possible.”

Luke Nozicka can be reached at [email protected], on Twitter at @LukeNozicka or at 536-3311 ext. 268.