For better or worse, UND has approved a new policy — taking effect Fall 2015 — that will require students to declare a major as soon as they complete 45 credits. The hope is students will be forced to figure out a plan course-wise and graduate on time.

Administrators made it clear that students can change their major at any point after being forced to declare — it’s just to get people motivated to start making decisions.

But if you look at UND’s graduation rates, it does seem something is a little wonky.

Information provided on UND’s website says that of the incoming freshmen in 2008, only 23 percent graduated in four years and only 47 percent in five years.

To put that in perspective a bit, a Star Tribune article said the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities campus had a 59.1 percent graduation rate in four years as of 2013.

When I was a senior in high school, I was chatting about college with a guy I worked with at the Sioux Shop. He was a fifth-year communication major at UND with at least another year to go, and when I asked him why he was studying what he was, he said, “I don’t know. It’s easy.”

That took me aback, but I assumed he was a special case.

Now that I’ve been on campus awhile myself, I see the attitude of not thinking about why we’re here is more pervasive than I thought — though not at all the majority.

Let’s agree: Of course there’s nothing at all wrong with not graduating in four years. The reason that number is in our heads anyway is as antiquated and irrelevant as thinking it’ll be a good idea to get your roommate’s MSN Messenger username— maybe that’s what seemed more normal to more people at some point in the past, but there’s no reason it’s how things have to be today.

What I’d like to see are some statistics showing the percent of students who actually realize what they’ve gotten themselves into.

Take a glance around right now and find the lamest group of typical party-going freshmen. Do you really think each one of them knows what they’re doing with their lives? It’s not that they’re idiots if they don’t; we’ve all been there.

But it seriously seems there’s a gap in the education somewhere — whether from parents, high school counselors or ridiculous depictions of college in movies — if even one student finds themselves responding to, “Why are you here?” with, “I don’t know.”

Making policies like UND’s new idea are a great way to remind people they should want to be here, and it’s the best we can do at this point.

A better solution, I think, would be to recommend a gap year between high school and college to actually give kids a chance to come up with some inspiration on their own, before they find themselves two years deep in loans and forced to declare a major at a college they maybe didn’t want to come to in the first place.

Will Beaton is the Editor-in-Chief of The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected].