BATON ROUGE, La. - The LSU Board of Supervisors passed a resolution that would reduce the number of credit hours most students would need to take in order to receive a bachelor's degree in what they say is an effort to make it easier to graduate.
Currently, LSU campuses including the University of New Orleans require between 120 and 130 credit hours of courses to graduate, depending on a student's major.
The board would like to standardize the number to 120 hours or an average of 5 classes per semester for four years.
University spokesman Mike Rivault says UNO is already ahead of the curve.
"We have the vast majority of our bachelor programs are already 120 hours," said Rivault. "The only ones that really don't comply with that are engineering, accounting, education, those programs that are professional and require an additional certification on top of your degree."
Rivault says by dropping the number of credit hours, students would not be bogged down with needless classes and some may be able to graduate a semester early.
The resolution also requires LSU schools to implement a student tracking and degree audit program.
"Electronically, we will be notified if they didn't take this class or they failed this class or what have you, so we can immediately have an advising situation where we talk to them and find out what's going on and hopefully put them back on the right track," said Rivault.
Students give the tracking system mixed reviews.
"I wouldn't want someone telling me you have to take this class, you have to take that class," said student Lauren Boudreaux. "I'd feel like I was in high school again."
"The monitoring system can really help out the student by staying organized," said student Eric Doran. "When you're here on campus, you know college life is a lot different."
Governor Bobby Jindal is encouraging schools to boost graduation rates.
"Only 38 percent of our students are graduating in six years in these four year degree programs," said Jindal. "That's unacceptable. If we had the second worst football team in the south, we'd get rid of the coach, we'd reconstitute the program. It makes no sense for the majority of our students to drop out."
Governor Jindal says if universities can raise their graduation rates, in exchange, they will get more autonomy to raise tuition and academic entrance requirements.
"We're encouraging every school system to look at what they can do to help their students stay in school, graduate from school," said Jindal.
Both measures could be in place by next fall.
The resolutions would not effect TOPS, the state scholarship program for Louisiana students.
