Earlier this week, The Daily Eastern News ran an article about the fabled and dreaded “super senior,” which many students, try as they might, have succumbed to the title more so in recent years.

The theory is, students should graduate from their universities in four years, ideally spending two years studying general education courses and then the remainder of the college experience in whatever major chosen.

However, the reality is only 19 percent of students in public universities nationwide are able to do this, according to an article in The New York Times.

Students are actually taking five or even six years, so what’s the hold up?

Many things are. Some classes are only offered in a certain semester.

People change majors at the last minute and the age-old story of human error—advisers at times have overshot graduation dates causing students to stay longer because they forgot about a specific requirement.

One such reason could be the requirements for a degree have changed and the university may have added an additional course or two, which could mean the difference between just an extra class or another semester.

Many of the students reported in the story they were staying an extra semester or even year at Eastern because of one of the reasons previously mentioned.

The graduation system seems a little suspicious, because in order to actually finish in four years, students would have to take 15 credit hours a semester, which is five classes, not fail a single one and be sure to be following their degree layout to a T.

To be blunt, that costs more money, but it is even more expensive to stay an extra year or semester so some students go as far as taking the maximum amount of 18 credits hours, or six classes to get out on time.

All studying and no partying leaves a student very dry and borderline psychotic.

Eastern should work a little harder at getting students out into the real world and let them commit to the four-year graduation promise that is now a myth.

Eastern needs to re-brand; not many universities can actually graduate their students in four years, but that doesn’t mean our school should be on that list.