Updated: 12:53 PM EST For One Student, College Career Becomes a Career By SAM DILLON, The New York Times Ryan BerkaJohnny Lechner, 29, is a 12th-year senior at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater. He has 242 credits. WHITEWATER, Wis. (Nov. 10) - Nearly every college has some screwball who never seems to graduate, lingering year after year as classmates move on. And then there is Johnny Lechner. In his 12th year of college here, Mr. Lechner has parlayed life as perpetual student into a lucrative personal brand. His genius for self-promotion might have earned him Phi Beta Kappa - if only it had been applied to his studies. He has appeared on "Late Show" with David Letterman, "Good Morning America" and other shows, describing a boisterous campus lifestyle of beer and merrymaking. National Lampoon is promising to pay his tuition, and the makers of Monster Energy Drink deliver 30 cases a week, along with advertising posters and condoms, to the house where Mr. Lechner lives and parties, in exchange for his endorsement of Monster as "the official energy drink" of his 12th college year. He has signed with the William Morris Agency, which is marketing a reality television series based on his life at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater. And in recent days he has referred to interviews with The New York Times on his personal Web site, anticipating new publicity from this article. The dizzying whirl of sudden celebrity has not been easy, Mr. Lechner said. "I'm really stressed out," he said. "All the money, the book deals, the agents. It's just crazy." The marketing hoopla whipping up around Mr. Lechner, 29, is making it difficult to separate fact from fable about his college career. He has compiled a 2.9 grade-point average and in one semester got straight A's. But in the topsy-turvy logic of the entertainment world, a record of debauchery has become central to his success, and friends say he has taken to exaggerating his Animal House credentials. Mr. Lechner is not entirely unique. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said recently that she had found a student who had been enrolled in college for 17 years. Still, in an era of national anxiety over global academic competition, some state officials are indignant that Mr. Lechner's record is attracting a spotlight. "The guy's been a student for 12 years, and he's bragging about it?" said State Representative Robin G. Kreibich, chairman of the Assembly's Committee on Colleges and Universities. "I wonder how many kids can't get in because he's staying on so long." University officials denied that Mr. Lechner's lengthy enrollment had prevented even one qualified student from gaining admission. But he was the beneficiary of a tuition subsidy given to all in-state students - until the last school year, when the Wisconsin Board of Regents imposed a surcharge virtually doubling tuition for students who exceed 165 credits. (Mr. Lechner has 242.) Wisconsinites call it the Johnny Lechner rule. This year his tuition is about $9,800. Martha Saunders, the Whitewater chancellor, said that some faculty considered Mr. Lechner a bit of an embarrassment, while others believed that "we're a community of scholars, and he just loves to learn." But Richard Brooks, a silver-haired philosophy professor who is Mr. Lechner's most recent academic adviser, looked peeved when his student announced in a meeting between the two that he had made little recent progress toward completion of his senior thesis, in which he will reflect on his undergraduate years. "The reader should come away convinced from this thesis that you actually did learn something," Dr. Brooks said. As a liberal studies major, Mr. Lechner must complete a thesis, which can be formal and footnoted or personal and reflective, his final requirement for graduation. Mr. Lechner said it was stressful to reconcile his identity as a laid-back student with the image that his marketers now expect of him. "I'm not out getting hammered every night," he said. "People expect me to have crazy stories about being in threesomes, nights at the bar that end at sunup - but that's just people's imaginations running away with them." He paused. When Mr. Lechner enrolled in college in 1994, the Internet was practically a baby and his current girlfriend was starting fourth grade. "I don't know how much of a market there is for a guy who's merely a good student," he said. "But I want you to know me as I am, rather than as the animal they're making me out to be." When Mr. Lechner enrolled in college in 1994, the Internet was practically a baby and his current girlfriend was starting fourth grade. He has since drifted through four majors - education, communications, theater, women's studies - and watched hundreds of friends graduate, get jobs and marry. Mr. Lechner has stayed on, pursuing a coffeehouse career as a singer-songwriter and accumulating more than twice the 120 credits required for graduation. His parents are divorced; his father is an engineering executive, his mother a convenience store manager. During his first two years they helped pay his tuition, but since then he has paid his own way, working part time and taking out $30,000 in student loans, he said. Mr. Lechner said he hardly noticed the semesters flying by during his fifth, sixth and seventh college years because he had found a "comfort zone." During his eighth year, he said, "I realized it's a great story, and I started thinking about my book." He resolved to go for at least 10 years "There's a big difference between saying I went to school for nine years, and saying I went for a decade." he said. "It's more amazing." A friend created a Web site, johnnylechner.com which is headlined: "There is a time and place for everything. It's called 'college.' " The site displays pictures of Mr. Lechner strolling across campus, drinking and hugging beautiful co-eds. Last spring, he e-mailed Wisconsin newspapers. The Wisconsin State Journal published a profile of him that provoked frenzy in the entertainment industry. CBS flew Mr. Lechner to New York to appear with Mr. Letterman, who asked what college was like. "People expect me to be like, 'We're going to toga parties and doing keg stands,' " Mr. Lechner responded. "Don't get me wrong - these things are happening." One person who watched the show was Orin Woinsky, a National Lampoon vice president based in Los Angeles, who saw similarities with the 2002 movie "National Lampoon's Van Wilder," about a fictional seventh-year college senior who refused to graduate. "Johnny was the real-life Van Wilder," Mr. Woinsky said. He walked the news into the office of National Lampoon's chief executive, Daniel S. Laikin, who responded, Mr. Woinsky said: "Get in touch with this guy!" Mr. Woinsky sent an e-mail message to Mr. Lechner offering to pay his tuition, sponsor his graduation party and hold a job open for him at National Lampoon. Talk radio hosts from around the country called Mr. Lechner. "I heard him do his first phone interviews," said Megan Seeboth, a 21-year-old undergraduate who was dating Mr. Lechner at the time. "He said he spent all his time playing basketball, drinking all night and at parties, and that's the complete opposite of how he lives. He just thinks that's what will sell. "He's going out once a week and he's going to class." Ms. Seeboth, who broke up with Mr. Lechner in September, said that part of his reputation was deserved. "It was very difficult being in a relationship with a guy who girls were throwing themselves at," she said. Adam Steinman, a senior producer at Lion Television, a British company that had a camera crew follow Mr. Lechner in September, said: "People love him. He brings people together." But some students find Mr. Lechner annoying, said Brian Wolfe, a political science major who defeated Mr. Lechner by a vote of 511 to 281 last spring in an election for student body president. "Johnny has his little core of buddies," Mr. Wolfe said, "but a lot of people think, 'Why doesn't he just grow up?' " Mary Martin, a Los Angeles producer who knows Mr. Lechner, said that hard-working students across the nation might share that view. "But," Ms. Martin added, "it's also every 40-year-old guy's dream to do what he's doing."
hilarious.......dude has nearly enough credits to have two degrees. but what the hell college is fun, i'm not going to graduate in 4 years, more like 5.
Sounds like a plan to me. I feel like I've been in college (or school of some sort) all my life, and intend to stay that way. Even growing up, my dad taught at a college and I spent a lot of time there. Then: got my bachelor's, worked for a little while in the same neighborhood with a lot of friends and activities still at the college, went to grad school through the Ph.D. and told myself this was it, I was never going to be a college student again. So I got a college teaching job and attempted to do the grown-up thing. Problem is... I found myself wishing I could be one of the students, perhaps pursuing a different field. I gradually made it my plan to head back in that direction and found myself getting involved in a lot of the college activities (band, choir, aerobics, etc.), announcing plans not to teach full-time forever, and making friends with more and more students. (especially if they weren't my students anyway) I may well go back to school. Which puts me dangerously close to Van Wilder territory, except for the getting actual degrees, teaching classes, and brief periods of attempting to grow up now and then. I had seen examples; when I first got to know "Ferdinand" (long story if you don't know it), he was in his early 30's and hanging around with undergrads plus going to grad school. I was 18 and thought he was cool. Well, now I'm 30 (and hopefully everyone thinks it's more like 25) and deciding I just need to do a bunch of stuff over again... and hanging around with younger and younger people. Even 18-year-old freshmen. I am pathetic and do not deserve to live.
First off, You are NOT Pathetic. I enjoy your posts on here. It breaks up the Macho Jock talk that permeates this site. Second, I wish I was 30 again. I work with lots of younger people and I feel oh so old
Well, it depends on your financial situation and whether or not you need a job while at school. I'm in my 3rd year now, and expected to graduate in exactly four years...but I haven't really worked during the year. All it takes is one full summer of classes (9-12) hours, or spread that out over a few summers. I've taken 16 or 17 hours every spring/fall semester so far...and I have 9 hours outside of the total from typical fall/spring semesters...6 came from dual credit high school courses, 3 from a summer class. Of course if you are in an extremely difficult major it may take longer, or if you want to double major or something like that. I've been working during summer/Christmas, but I'm still going to owe an a$$load of money from finanical aid when I get out.
it's really tough, because i just can't take more than 13 hours or so a semester because my grades slip significantly. i take some summer courses but i'm just so concerned that if i take a heavy course load, i'll burn out and drop out. i do not want to do that. so i take about 12 or 13 hours a semester and about 6 during the summer. plus, i've had to drop classes over my 3+ years now. right now i'm on pace to graduate in 5 years, which isn't bad, but i wish i didn't have to take so many damn minor and core classes. to me they are a waste of time. we have to take 60 hours of general education and then forgein language and literature. it's ridiculous. it took me 2 1/2 years to get to classes in my major field.
I hope you didn't take what I said personally. The first 2 years of under-grad college are some of the best and easiest. But to repeat the same thing 4 or 5 times is a different story. Unless he's training to be some professional game show champion, that is pathetic. What disgusts me the most is that businesses are lining up because they see him as the lowest common denominator to push products into my generation.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3453229 Graduation rates concern UT regents Associated Press AUSTIN — The University of Texas System regents voiced serious concern today about graduation rates and directed leaders of each campus to develop an ambitious series of benchmarks for improvement. At five of the system's nine undergraduate campuses, less than 37 percent of full-time freshmen who started college in the fall of 1997 had received a bachelor's degree from the school within six years. The statewide six-year graduation rate is 52 percent, while the national rate is about 55 percent. The UT System's four-year graduation rates are even worse. Just 4.5 percent of UT-El Paso students who entered as freshmen in the fall of 1999 graduated on time. UT-San Antonio's four-year graduation rate was 6.1 percent for that period, while UT-Pan American's was 8.4 percent. "We have to do better and we will do better," regents chairman James Huffines said. "It's plain and simple." Board members were concerned with both the four- and six-year rates, saying people who take longer than four years to graduate leave less room on campus for new students. That means the universities either have to turn away applicants or construct new buildings at taxpayer expense. Students who remain in college for a fifth or sixth year also have to spend more money while missing out on income they could be earning on the job, Huffines said. Teresa Sullivan, executive vice chancellor for the UT System, said several uncontrollable factors contribute to low graduation rates. Some students, she said, have to work to support their spouses and children and can't take enough classes to graduate within six years. Others are delayed by illness or poor preparation for college course work. But administrative problems get in the way too, she said, such as confusing or overly lengthy curriculums, poor retention and advising programs and restrictive policies concerning transfer credits. Sullivan said she plans to meet with leaders from each university over the next few months to set long term goals and identify changes the schools can make immediately. For example, she said, professors could review how they teach "gateway courses" such as calculus or introductory chemistry. Those courses often have high failure rates, preventing students from moving on in their majors. While regent Robert Rowling said he feared creating a "college lite" atmosphere, Sullivan said courses would remain challenging and grades would not be inflated. "It's not a matter of not teaching the same material," she said. "It's a matter of teaching the same material better." While Sullivan warned against expecting immediate results, the regents said they expect to hear detailed reports about each campus' plans and goals at their February meeting and to receive updates on improvements several times each year. "I don't buy into we need to wait six years to see if this is working," regents vice chairwoman Cyndi Taylor Krier said. "There are students there right now for whom some programs would impact on their graduating sooner."
Bah that's nothing! Try to visit the Philippines, now THAT'S a place where people study waaaaaaaay too much (four or five college degrees are nothing out of the norm).
Most people, when they don't want to leave school and join the real world, just go to grad school. That'd probably have been the better plan for him.
OK Texas residents, don't get your hopes up of repeating this unless you want to pay through the nose. § 54.068. TUITION FOR EXCESSIVE UNDERGRADUATE HOURS. (a) An institution of higher education may charge a resident undergraduate student tuition at a higher rate than the rate charged to other resident undergraduate students, not to exceed the rate charged to nonresident undergraduate students, if before the semester or other academic session begins the student has previously attempted a number of semester credit hours for courses taken at any institution of higher education while classified as a resident student for tuition purposes that exceeds by at least 45 hours the number of semester credit hours required for completion of the degree program in which the student is enrolled. For purposes of this subsection, an undergraduate student who is not enrolled in a degree program is considered to be enrolled in a degree program requiring a minimum of 120 semester credit hours. That means that if your degree requires 120 hrs, and you ATTEMPT 45 Hours more than that, you get charged out of state tuition from then on. Attempted means if you are still in the class after the date to drop with a refund, usually the 12th class day, it counts as attempted. There is also a rule that is being enforced soon at most public Texas schools that the THIRD time you attempt a course and after, you pay out of state tuition for that class. So no more taking Organic Chemistry 5 times, dropping with a W four times then finally getting a grade on the fifth attempt.
Darn it... does this apply to people who go to school, finish, and then decide they honestly want to get a degree in something else, like a second bachelor's? I was wanting to go back but it may not be possible now. Guess I'll have to spend the rest of my life telling cautionary tales to others about how not to make the choices I did.
