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.

"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.