WINONA Minn. – Winona State students on average graduate in four years, give or take a course or two, the university said in a new student profile. Eri Fujieda, institutional research director, said freshmen complete their bachelor’s degree in 8.08 semesters. Fujieda said the 8.08 figure excludes summer classes, which some students, although not many, take. Students of color average nine semesters-plus – 8.6 to be precise.
Earlier: WSU exec: Campus “electric” despite enrollment slump
The erstwhile four-year guarantee
It was 1996. Denny Nielsen at Winona State was irked. On radio station KWNO he heard an advertisement from Saint Mary’s University across town that SMU freshmen were guaranteed to graduate in four years. Fearing a Saint Mary’s coup to recruit freshmen, Nielsen went to work as Winona State’s academic vice president to match the Saint Mary’s deal. Soon Winona State was on the air with its own four-year guarantee, –although to pass legal muster with the state college system lawyers, the guarantee was so loop-holed with exceptions as to be near meaningless. It was mostly empty rhetoric with a Madison Avenue twist. Even so, it came across as attractive a recruiting tool as Saint Mary’s. But what was guaranteed? No tuition refund, just free tuition for classes behind the standard eight semesters. No changes of major allowed. No semesters off. Not even one failed course even in a bad semester. When Nielsen retired in 1998, the Winona State guarantee was quietly retired too – a failed embarrassment for academic institution otherwise committed to openness and truthfulness, not smoke and mirrors. There had been virtually no one qualifying.
Nielsen. Retired 1998 academic vice president.