As colleges reopen for the fall, new research has pinpointed a problem keeping students from graduating on time: Classes required for their majors aren’t taught during the semesters they need them, or fill up so quickly that no seats are left.
Colleges and universities manage only about 15% of the time to provide required courses when their students need to take them, according to research by Ad Astra, which provides scheduling software to 550 universities. It’s among the major reasons fewer than half of students graduate on time, raising the cost of a degree in time and money.
Now, with widespread layoffs, budget cuts and enrollment declines on many campuses — including in California — the problem is expected to get worse.
“What is more foundational to what we do as colleges and universities than offering courses to students so they can graduate?” asked Tom Shaver, founder and chief executive of Ad Astra.
Fifty-seven percent of students at all levels of higher education spend more time and money on college because their campuses don’t offer required courses when they need them, Ad Astra found in an earlier study last year.
Independent scholars and university administrators generally confirm the finding.
“We’re forcing students to literally decelerate their progress to degrees, by telling them to do something they can’t actually do,” Shaver said.
Scheduling university and college courses is complex. Yet rather than use advanced technology to do it, many institutions still rely on methods that include producing hard-copy spreadsheets, according to some administrators.
Difficulties at California State University
The cash-strapped California State University system has eliminated 1,430 course sections this year across seven of its 23 campuses, or 7% of the total at those campuses, a spokeswoman, Amy Bentley-Smith, confirmed. These include sections of required courses.
At Cal State Los Angeles, for example, the number of sections of a required Introduction to American Government course has been reduced from 14 to nine.
Emilee Xie, a senior geology major, said required upper-division courses fill up quickly. It’s common to apply for a class needed to graduate, end up on a wait list — and have to apply again next semester.
“It is what it is,” said Xie, of San Gabriel. Her parents ask her whether she plans to graduate soon and her advisors tell her she’s on track to graduate in spring 2026. But she’s not so sure.
Those geology classes, due to the small size of her department, aren’t offered during the summer, when most students try to take classes they’ve missed during the academic year.
“The more courses that aren’t offered as often, like my geology courses, the more expensive your degree will be,” she said.
Professors at the beginning of the semester warned juniors Victoria Quiran and a friend, Gabriela Tapia, both biology majors, about how hard it would be to register for classes in upcoming semesters during the first days of class.
Tapia and Quiran have struggled to get into required courses because there aren’t enough seats, they said. They’ve seen wait lists grow to as many as 40 students. Although the school provides advisors, the help can often feel impersonal, Tapia and Quiran said.
“A bunch of us are first-[generation students] who don’t have anyone to guide us,” Quiran said.
Consequences mount
In addition to taking longer and spending more to graduate, students who are shut out of required courses often change their majors or drop out, according to research by Kevin Mumford, director of the Purdue University Research Center in Economics.
Together with economists at Brigham Young University, Mumford found that when first-year students at Purdue couldn’t get into a required course, they were 35 percentage points less likely to ever take it and 25 percentage points less likely to enroll in any other course in the same subject.
Students at U.S. colleges and universities already spend more time and money getting their degrees than they expect to. According to a 2019 national survey by a research institute at UCLA, 90% of freshmen say they plan to finish a bachelor’s degree within four years or less. But federal data show that fewer than half of them do. More than a third still haven’t graduated after six years.
At community colleges nationwide, students who can’t get into courses they need are up to 28% more likely to take no classes at all that term, contributing to graduation delays, a 2021 study by UC Santa Cruz and the nonprofit Mathematica said.
An increase in students with double majors, minors and concentrations has further complicated the process. So do the challenges confronted by part-time and older students, who typically don’t live on campus and juggle families and jobs; such students are expected to account for a growing proportion of enrollment as the number of 18- to 24-year-olds declines.
“There are so many obstacles students face, from transportation to work schedules to child care. Some can only take classes in the afternoon or on the weekends,” said Matt Jamison, associate vice president of academic success at Front Range Community College in Colorado.
Meanwhile, “we have instructors that have [outside] jobs and aren’t always available. And faculty can teach only so many courses.”
Several colleges and universities are turning to more online courses. In California’s rural Central Valley, for example, community college students struggled to get into the advanced mathematics courses needed for STEM degrees.
In response, UC Merced launched a pilot program during the summer to offer these required classes online.
Improving the scheduling of required courses seems a comparatively simple way for universities to raise student success rates, Mumford said.
“This seems like a much cheaper thing to solve than many of the other interventions they’re considering,” he said.
Marcus is a reporter for the Hechinger Report, which produced this story and is a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. McDonald is a Times staff writer.
