By Esther Hoffman

When Ryan Royle started college in 2005, he assumed he would graduate in four years. But after transferring to Friends University from Dodge City Community College and changing his major twice, he discovered he would need to stay another year.

Royle became another statistic in the growing phenomenon of super seniors.

Simply put, super seniors are college students with senior status who stay in college more than four years.

How common is this? According to the University’s institutional research and assessment department, super seniors totaled 50 out of 292 seniors in fall 2008 and 45 out of 282 seniors in fall 2009.

That’s 17 percent for 2008 and 16 percent for 2009. Compare this with a 2006 study by the National Center for Education Statistics, which found that fewer than 35 percent of students from four-year colleges finished in four years or less.

Carole Obermeyer, vice president of Student Affairs, has noticed an increase of super seniors in recent years.

She’s not surprised at the number of super seniors now, but she said she would have been 10 years ago.

Obermeyer sees several reasons why more students are spending more than four years in college:
 An increase in students transferring from school to school
 An increase in the number of degrees to choose from
 An increase in students with double majors
 Parents don’t seem to mind paying for their child’s education for a semester or two more
 An increased emphasis on international education, which involves spending a semester abroad

Obermeyer thinks super seniors are a symptom of a larger problem: an increased gap between childhood and adulthood. Recent laws like the Kansas teenage-driving law and the healthcare bill have increased the legal age that young adults gain responsibility for certain things.

“They’ve changed the age of adulthood over the last few years, so now it’s clear up to 26,” Obermeyer said. “I think this is just another example of us extending … what I call PAPAS: pre-adult, post-adolescent.”

Paul Kirkpatrick, religion and philosophy major, holds a similar sentiment.

“I’ve kind of been stuck mentally … in this place of undergraduate-ship when I could have been moving on,” said Kirkpatrick.

But Royle, a music major with a minor in religion and philosophy, thinks that people attach too much stigma to the super senior title.

Getting a degree in four years is “so not the right way to judge yourself,” he said.

Royle, who graduates this May, started as a music education major at Dodge, switched to trumpet performance at Friends and then rediscovered a desire for ministry after taking professor Jim Smith’s developing a devotional life class.

“They say that in order to figure out what you’re going to do you have to figure out who you are first, and so I was still in the process of doing that,” Royle said. “I feel like I have a better grasp on who I am so I can aim for what I’m going to do after graduating.”

Royle’s plan is to get into music ministry, using both his music major and his religion and philosophy minor.

Kirkpatrick has taken 5 1/2 years worth of classes at Friends over a seven-year period and will graduate May 2011.

Kirkpatrick said many students like him are raised with the idea that they have to go to college to be successful, so many students go without knowing what they want to do.

“At some point, they stop being carried by this unnamed drive to be successful, and they have to figure out what they actually want to do and why they’re actually at college,” Kirkpatrick said.

This happened to him when he started a chemistry degree, planning to finish it and later go to seminary. He wanted to avoid taking classes too similar to what he would learn in seminary.

“I was really unmotivated in chemistry, because I was like ‘I’m never going to use this stuff,’” Kirkpatrick said.

Then he switched to a math major. But after failing all his classes in spring 2007, he took a year off, returning in 2009 with a newly declared major of religion and philosophy.

“If you’re going to get a degree that you’ll never use … you’re just setting yourself up for failure,” Kirkpatrick said. “You have to consider things from where you’re at now … not where you were three years ago.”

But even students who know what they want can spend more than four years in college.

Darci Blevins is graduating in May after going to college for eight years.

Blevins knew in high school that she wanted to major in music business, so she started working full-time in 2000 to pay for school.

She wasn’t able to receive financial aid when she started college, because her father works at Spirit Aerosystems.

When Blevins went to Butler Community College in 2003 to complete her general education requirements, she was still working full-time as a part-time student.

“I was so busy I was doing my homework during my lunch hour,” Blevins said.

When she transferred to Friends five years later, she transitioned to full-time student and held as many as four part-time jobs at once while taking out loans.

Blevins will be the first person in her immediate family to graduate from college.

Blevins said her family has a legacy of jobs in retail and the aircraft industry, and they are all used to working a long time to make a living.

When Blevins started college, no one in her family supported her decision.

“My grandpa told me I was stupid and that I needed to drop out and that I needed to work for my brother,” she said.

She said they’re more positive about it now, but the only financial support her parents have given is letting her stay with them.

There are many reasons that more students are spending more than four years in college: Grades, incomplete transfers and financial concerns are just a few of the growing reasons.

But super seniors at Friends are just glad to graduate.

Royle is going to miss the structure of the classroom, but he is ready to move on.

“I’m ready to figure out who I am outside … the shadow of the clock tower.”