President Powers sent out an email last Thursday to UT Austin students discussing the university’s efficiency compared to other schools, stating that while our six-year graduation rate of 81 percent is 13th out of 120 American public research universities, “there is room for improvement.”

“Our four-year graduation rate of 53% is not good enough,” he wrote. “Michigan and Berkeley graduate about 70% of their undergraduates in four years. We must identify and remove the obstacles to timely graduation at UT Austin.”

Shortly after, students made quips such as, “How about lowering tuition rates?” or “Let’s get rid of foreign language requirements!” on Facebook and Twitter, and hey, I’m all for education being cheaper, and quite frankly taking Spanish at UT sucks. But let’s take a look at the bigger picture here:

I don’t think taking Spanish, or current tuition rates, are the reason why 47 percent of our students aren’t graduating within four years. Yeah, okay, it might be for some of us, and it definitely makes school more challenging, but there are great options for financial aid, work-study jobs, and taking certain classes at community colleges to help you out in that department.

So if not tuition, and if not our classes, what’s the problem? The problem, I think, is indecisive and unprepared students.

According to the Center for Strategic Advising here at UT, the number of incoming first-year students who begin as “Undeclared” are between 1300 and 1500. Additionally, more than 65 percent of students have, or will, change their major at least once – and I can understand why. Choosing your major is a pretty big deal and can affect the rest of your life, but this is all the more reason to not just waltz on into a university as highly competitive (and expensive) as UT thinking, “Oh hey! I’m just gonna take a bunch of random classes at X amount of dollars per semester until I figure my life out.”

Okay, sure. Just take up spaces in classes that some of us seriously need to get out of the way to graduate, and lessen chances for prospective students to be admitted to the university because we have way too many students enrolled at UT.

College is definitely a time to “open up new doors” and “expand your horizons.” However, I think students need to take state colleges such as ours more seriously while in high school, and I think high schools need to do a better job of helping their students prepare for college. More high schools need to be offering classes and resources that help students start figuring out what they want to do in life if they want to be attending these competitive universities. Our high schools, our parents, and we ourselves, cannot have low expectations and a nonchalant attitude about college if we’re going to attend a school with some of the highest expectations around.

And I’m not saying that because you have no clue what you want to do with your life you’re suddenly not good enough for UT. Not at all. I just think that students who have the potential and want to be students here and at other top-notch institutions need to start exploring in high school, or maybe take a few courses at a community college or at a less competitive university until they figure out what they want. UT-Austin’s number of enrolled students is huge. This doesn’t leave room for students to graduate in five and six years if we want to be efficient with our resources and with our ability to offer prospective students the chance to attend here.

So overall, people need to take our institution more seriously and high schools need to offer better opportunities for students to explore their futures. These days it’s no longer an amazing feat just to have attended college. However, I’d like to think that because my degree comes from the University of Texas at Austin, that I might have a glimmer of extra credibility because….well, you know, we’re UT, and we’re awesome. So let’s up the ante here people and make some decisions. We aren’t A&M after all.

(Kidding!...Or am I?)