VWH Campbell Jr, Post-Gazette
	Matt Cravitz, who will finish a double major in four years, during his lunch break outside the student union building on the main campus of Penn State University. He is one of a growing number of students that are completing college in four years, instead of at a leisurely pace. MORE COVERAGE Online Graphic: The Four Year College Degree

At Penn State University, where Matt Cravitz is on target to finish a double major in four years, the slow, meandering march to a college degree seems suddenly out of vogue.

Fifty-six percent of students entering Penn State's main campus graduate in four years, the highest rate in at least a decade and a share that is 14 percentage points higher than two years ago.

Included are students who studied abroad, tackled multiple majors and faced all the other stresses that caused most of their predecessors in the 1990s to switch to five-, six- or even seven-year plans.

And it's not just Penn State.

Across Pennsylvania's public university system -- and on a number of large state campuses nationwide -- more students are reaching the finish line in four years.

Fifty-two percent do so at the University of Pittsburgh, up from 38 percent five years ago. The rate is also rising at Temple University and at 13 of the 14 universities in the State System of Higher Education.

"A lot of people seem more driven," said Cravitz, 22, a Penn State senior from Selinsgrove, Snyder County, who is studying political science and psychology. "They don't want to be here longer than they have to. They say, 'If you can get a degree in four years, why take five?' "

Schools say a surge in applicants over the last decade enabled them to admit students better prepared to succeed, including freshmen arriving with college credits earned in high school. Once enrolled, those students benefited from revamped academic support and advising as well as moves by some schools to rein in the upward creep of credits required for some degrees.

But some college officials acknowledge something else -- that there's nothing like skyrocketing tuition bills to nudge a student along. And on Pennsylvania public campuses, those prices are the second highest in the nation.

"I really think that cost is the big factor," said John Romano, vice president for Penn State's commonwealth campuses. "We're not inexpensive, even for our own Pennsylvanians, and I think that's motivating some students to be conscious of the time it takes them to finish their degree."

Even if the trend is partly driven by sticker shock, the speed-up would seem welcome. After all, what student wouldn't want to stop forking over tuition and move more quickly into a career? What college president doesn't relish the chance to tell state legislators that his campus is using taxpayer money more efficiently by speeding students through the system?

Campus officials say universities are not assembly lines and plenty of legitimate reasons exist for extending one's campus stay.

Nevertheless, public campuses in various states have taken a hard look at obstacles to timely graduation, sometimes at the prodding of state legislators.

And some schools say they are starting to see results, including campuses in Pennsylvania, where the upswing in four-year graduation rates touches both higher-priced research campuses and less costly state system schools from Slippery Rock and California universities in the west to Kutztown in the east.

"We're doing a better job of getting students on with their lives," said Peter Garland, vice chancellor for academic and student affairs with the state system, where the four-year systemwide rate has inched upward in five years from 23 percent to 29 percent.

Temple provost Ira Schwartz said the trend, if sustained, should accelerate the flow of available workers. "It helps the region economically," he said.

Still, not everyone is euphoric.

Tom Mortenson, a higher education policy analyst, argues the upswing should surprise no one. He says students who take longer -- usually the poor -- are being pushed toward community colleges and proprietary schools as many four-year campuses hungry for prestige target better prepared applicants, who tend to come from wealthier backgrounds.

He said the trend is apparent on elite public campuses that boast each year about ever-rising freshmen SAT scores and the share of new arrivals ranked near the top of their high school class.

"They're cherry-picking," he said. "They've become state-financed gated communities."

Mortenson, senior scholar at the Washington D.C.-based Pell Institute, points to the federal Pell Grant, targeted to low income students. The share receiving Pell Grants who attend public and private four- year campuses has declined since the 1970s from 60 percent to under 45 percent.

"If you take out the people who take longer to graduate, maybe it looks like those who are left are graduating sooner," he said.

Nationwide data on the subject is several years old, but the increase being reported by major public campuses contacted in 10 states runs counter to a decades-long pattern.

The share of students graduating in four years across the country had fallen from 47 percent in the late 1960s to 36 percent by the class entering in fall 1994, UCLA researchers reported. On some Pennsylvania campuses, the rate was in the single digits.

Experts cited reasons from increasing numbers of disadvantaged students who enrolled during those years to emerging interest in pursuing multiple majors and degrees.

A shift in federal aid from grants to loans drove students deeper into debt, they said. And it quickened a shift in the typical college student, away from the 18-year-old determined to finish in four years to someone more likely to take fewer credits to accommodate work schedules and avoid mounting debt.

Perhaps not surprisingly, colleges and even the federal government now consider six-year graduation rates to be a more viable measure.

But the latest numbers from schools in Pennsylvania and elsewhere suggest that students entering in fall 2000, the latest for which data is available, were more likely to finish in four years than predecessors who enrolled in fall 1995.

The rates still lag those on private campuses, but the gains in some cases are sizable.

For instance, 57 percent of entering freshmen finish in four years at UCLA, up from 44 percent back in 1995; 70 percent do so at the University of Michigan, up from 61 percent; and 39 percent finish in four years at Ohio State University, up from 23 percent.

The four-year rate is rising, too, at Arizona State University, the University of Wisconsin and other campuses from New York to Kentucky to Washington State.

Some students are so motivated that they choose to forgo part of their summer break so they can cram in extra credits by taking courses at their hometown community college.

"They have higher expectations of themselves," said Donna Hamilton, dean for undergraduate studies at the University of Maryland, where the four-year rate has climbed since 1995 from 38 percent to 55 percent. "They were resume building from the time they were in junior high."

At Penn State, senior Sarah Bucovetsky, 21, of Lower Merion, Montgomery County, seems to have plenty of drive. She works part-time and studied a semester in London. But she still maintains a 3.84 grade average that is keeping her on course to finish in four years with a political science degree and a double minor in history and English.

The seven college credits she earned while still in high school helped, and rising costs were a motivator, she said.

But so was a sense among her peers that, these days, an undergraduate degree is just a step toward graduate studies. Like them, she didn't want to delay her own law school plans. "You want to get it done."