I'm on my seventh of an eight year plan. I started in fall of 1999, and my current projected graduation is May of 2007. Don't worry too much about being nontraditional ... companies hiring you don't usually care how long it took you to get your degree, as long as you got there.

Oh, and today I realized that apple's success as a company is largely predicated on their removal of choice from their product lines. This somewhat corresponds with Barry Schwartz's "The Paradox of Choice" -- the principle that too many choices about unimportant things swamp our decision making ability and unnecessarily stress us in our endless pursuit of the best things.

Oh yeah, on degrees, I've known people who've made BS/BA degrees in as few as 3 years. A full time grad student in a master's program will typically complete the program in 2 years, but many master's students also work, and pursue their MS/MA in their spare time, via night classes or continuing education programs. That can draw it out a bit ... my mom took almost 7 years from the time she committed to pursuing her MS in education until she completed the coursework ... and she _still_ hasn't completed her master's thesis to actually get the degree (she's been putting off writing the final draft for like a year now).

PhD programs are varied. The PhD program in my university's CS department basically takes people straight from undergrad, and from grad school as well -- so you can enter the program the semester after you get your BS, pursuing your PhD. Most people complete the program, including the thesis, in roughly 4 years. But our CS department doesn't have a master's program (which is generally a continuation of undergrad work at a slightly higher level). Rather, you get admitted as a PhD student, and if you complete the coursework but find yourself incapable of mustering a thesis of any value to the real world, you can exit the program with what's called a "Terminal Master's". Basically it's the disgraceful way of exiting the PhD program ... you just sort of say "I can't take it anymore, academia isn't for me", don't write the thesis, get a master's degree, and go pursue your fortune in industry instead.

In the school of management, you generally have to have a master's (either a MS in management, or an MBA, or a MS in economics or math) to enter the PhD program. PhD students seem to last about 3 years, and then get their degrees.

The takeaway is that you can't really characterize how much work or time it takes in a specific program, there's a LOT of leeway in the different paths you can take to get to whereever you're going.