UC Berkeley undergraduates want their degrees and they want them fast. Latest numbers show 47.5 percent of students who entered UC Berkeley as freshmen had graduated four years later. This compares to only 29.3 percent of undergraduates who graduated this quickly less than a decade ago. The trend is both steady and dramatic, according to Thomson.
Explanations vary discipline to discipline.
However, many student advisors cite contributing factors as a booming job market, the increase in UC fees and the improvement in student support and technology services on campus. It's industry as much as anything that's driving this. Another contributing factor may be the mindset of today's students, according to Margaret DiStasi, director of undergraduate advising for the College of Letters and Science, the largest college on campus. If you're looking ahead to a PhD or graduate school of any kind, you know you've got to move along. However, there is no move toward trying to graduate in three years from UC Berkeley, as is the trend at some other colleges in the nation.