The 2025 refers to the year he'll graduate - it's fairly common for US college students to classify themselves this way - and this is a college publication he's being profiled on.
Interesting, I didn't know that. There seems to be a built in assumption that you will graduate, which I find a bit odd. But then again, I'm Dutch and we have a proverb here that roughly translates to 'don't celebrate until you've crossed the bridge' so this may be a cultural heritage thing.
In US universities, much more of the selection seems to happen before your first semester than in Europe.
In Germany or Austria, it would also be considered absurd to prematurely declare yourself a “future graduate of (today + 3-6 years)”.
One reason for that is people dropping out: Changing your major is not really a thing so you need to start over or you at least only get partial credit and need to add some semesters if you do. There’s also very little preselection of applicants, so many only realize that they don’t like their major or don’t have the skill set/motivation/grit to still finish it halfway through or later.
And for those that do graduate, there is very little incentive to actually graduate on time: Tuition is free, and many people trade speed for work experience while studying (or just to support themselves at a nicer lifestyle than just a students budget; taking on student loans is not that common either).
That was the national average, I suspect there are differences between the institutions themselves as well as between the disciplines. But there definitely is no implied assumption that if you start university that you will graduate.
Ah, fair. The US national average for “completion within 8 years” is not far off, about 60%.
At US “elite” schools there is definitely an expectation of completion in 4 years, though not much stigma if you take longer—and students go through in cohorts with target graduation dates (“class of ‘25” or whatever).
- You decide to divorce your partner based on circumstances you weren't expecting.
- Your partner decides to divorce you.
In the analogy, those would correspond to you leaving the school, or the school expelling you.
But the element of "circumstances you weren't expecting" has been completely lost. There's nothing more predictable than the university experience.
Are 30% of Dutch undergraduates leaving because they stumbled into better opportunities? Are they leaving because they're surprised that "school, but more of it" feels like more school? Are they leaving because their schools find that they perform below what their credentials suggested? (And if it's that last one... thirty percent?)
The 30% figure is not all that strange internationally.
That divorce question was a shorthand way of saying that not everything that you plan to do ends up running to completion. In general I think the answer is 'life happens' and not everything you start gets finished. People get disillusioned, they might see the future of the field they started to study in as imperiled or they might simply find that they do not see an advantage to completing the study. They might not have the self discipline to complete the run or they might have other needs or changing circumstances. They might simply get ill. They may find an opportunity that short-circuits the need for a degree.
Lots of people do graduate but to assume up front that over a period of four years of someone's life things are so stable that you will always be able to graduate is to ignore the reality of the circumstances of a large number of people.
Some people might realize that the degree they started is not what they expected, or it is way too difficult for them, so they will either move to another degree, or drop out of university and go to a trade school or similar.
