Inside Crimson Education: Our Global Offices and Team
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One of the drawing factors for the UK over the US has always been the shorter time to earn a degree. Now this might be a possibility in the US as well. Academics met at Georgetown University and proposed the creation of a three-year bachelor’s program equivalent to a four-year college degree, Inside Higher Ed has reported. It was part of a larger plan to address two of the most persistent challenges in higher education: improving student outcomes and lowering the cost of a bachelor’s degree.
Unlike the other three-year options that exist on the market, their proposal isn’t focused on accelerating bachelor’s degree programs but rather redesigning them to fit within three years. That means cutting off chunks of credits and building a tightly packaged curriculum with all the essentials. While the standard bachelor’s program is 120 credit hours, their proposals require 90 to 100 credits. “The four-year degree isn’t working for a lot of people,” said Lori Carrell, the chancellor of the University of Minnesota at Rochester, noting higher education’s high cost and low degree attainment, which has “squandered human potential at times.”
The institutions with pilot programs are the American Public University system, Brigham Young University Idaho, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, Merrimack College, New England College, Northwood University, Portland State University, the University of Minnesota at Morris, the University of Minnesota at Rochester, the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh and Utica University. All 12 pilot programs are in different stages of progress. Some institutions, like Georgetown, are only beginning to explore the idea. Others, like Merrimack College and BYU Idaho, have developed ready-to-launch proposals that they hope their respective accreditors will approve. And other institutions have dropped out along the way, shrinking the pilot pool from 14 to 12.
The colleges involved are exploring different pathways to the idea. Merrimack College started exploring the idea during the Covid pandemic. Indiana University of Pennsylvania decided to explore three-year degrees due to the loss of faculty members to retrenchments and retirements. The American Public University system, which enrolls a large population of adult learners, is proposing a 90-credit-hour bachelor’s of science in cybersecurity that would eliminate 30 hours of electives while retaining general education courses. At BYU Idaho, which also enrolls a high number of adult learners, the focus is on building a “nested certificate structure,” which would offer three certificates plus general education courses that would add up to a total of 90 credit hours for a bachelor’s degree.
There is a long way to go before any of these programs get approved and start enrolling students. But as the cost of college rises to astronomical levels, many students will definitely be interested in pursuing a shorter university degree.