A growing consortium of colleges that traditionally require four years to earn a bachelor’s degree is piloting three-year baccalaureate programs to alleviate soaring costs and flagging enrollment numbers.
A national initiative to design, implement and assess three-year degrees has increased from 10 universities three years ago to 20, said administrators who launched the College-in-3 Exchange this month to steer their conversations. The group aims to expand that count to 100 schools next year and 500 by 2027.
Some campuses participating in the pilots have reduced required coursework from 120 credit hours to as few as 90. They include private Brigham Young University-Idaho and the private American Public University System. Both have eliminated requirements that students take electives.
Electives are personal-interest classes that schools require students to take in any subject. Popular topics include yoga, creative writing and finance.
The public University of Minnesota Rochester and the University of Minnesota Morris require three-year students to complete 120 credits. Such schools eliminate the fourth year by requiring year-round classes without summer breaks, accepting more dual-enrollment high school credits, counting “critical thinking skills” toward graduation, reducing course options and offering paid internships for credit.
State university branch campuses and small liberal arts schools make up the bulk of colleges in the exchange. Applications have declined and costs have risen since the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered campuses in March 2020.
Janet Schrunk Ericksen, chancellor of UMN Morris, said the school launched its pilot after noticing a surge over the past two decades in the number of freshmen arriving with transfer credits, from an average of 15 hours from 2002 to 2006 to 23 since 2017. The number of students who found ways to graduate in three years grew from an annual average of 19 from 2002 to 2010 to 25 starting in 2011.
“We know from market research that the three-year option is attractive to prospective students, and we will continue to track uptake on the option now that we have clarified it as a path for students,” Ms. Ericksen told The Washington Times. “Students can choose four, or they can choose three.”
In February, the liberal arts school launched formal “pathways” for students to complete any of its 34 liberal arts and sciences majors in three years. The pathways cut the number of electives, reduce double-majoring and offer online summer classes.
Each student who signs up can save an average of $20,000 in college expenses, such as room and board, according to an analysis by the UMN Morris financial aid staff.
The College-in-3 Exchange arrives as higher education struggles with rising costs, declining enrollments and budget cuts that inflation has aggravated over the past four years.
Advocates say first-generation college students, Pell Grant recipients and underrepresented minorities can benefit the most from three-year degrees. They make up the majority of college dropouts with student loan debt.
Robert Zemsky, a University of Pennsylvania education professor who helped launch the exchange, said three-year degrees improve retention. Half of all colleges report that a quarter or more undergraduates drop out in the first year. He said the pilot programs reduce student costs 25% by cutting out a full year of tuition, supplies and room and board expenses.
“We’ve made a mess of undergraduate education,” Mr. Zemsky said. “This gets rid of the taboo that you can’t change anything. It turns out you can change everything.”
Others remain skeptical.
“There is a whiff of desperation in three-year baccalaureate degree programs,” said Peter Wood, president of the conservative National Association of Scholars. “They are a late acknowledgment that colleges have priced themselves out of reach of many students, even with the hefty discounts students receive in the form of scholarships.”
Mr. Wood, a former associate provost at Boston University, said three-year degrees sacrifice students’ freedom to “explore and recover from curricular mistakes,” mature within their disciplines and pursue extracurriculars.
‘A blank canvas’
Ten students are on track to earn three-year degrees in December from UMN Rochester’s health sciences program. The program requires students to agree to fewer class options, fewer classes at a time, shorter semesters, substantial summer classes, paid internships at the Mayo Clinic and thematically interconnected coursework.
“We’re not approaching it as what are we going to cut, but as a blank canvas to create interdisciplinary and experiential degrees that are more about the learning than the number of credits,” said Lori Carrell, chancellor of the University of Minnesota Rochester and a co-leader of the exchange.
Some pilots have zeroed in on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) degrees associated with better-paying jobs.
The American Public University System, a private for-profit network in West Virginia, announced in December that it would work with the College-in-3 Exchange to launch a three-year bachelor of science in cybersecurity. The proposal awaits the approval of an accrediting agency.
“Under the accelerated program, students will take the same required cybersecurity courses as they would in a traditional program, with the same program outcomes,” APUS said in an email. “Only electives have been eliminated from the three-year, 90-credit program.”
Seeking approval
Most schools participating in the exchange said they were still evaluating three-year degrees, assessing what majors they might accelerate or seeking approval from accreditors.
Officials at Merrimack College, a Catholic school in Massachusetts, introduced the idea of a three-year degree after COVID-19 shutdowns hurt enrollment and finances. The school has since struggled to gain approval from its accrediting agency.
At Northwood University, a private business school in Michigan, Provost and Academic Vice President Kristin Stehouwer said administrators have considered abbreviated degrees for STEM majors relevant to high-demand business careers.
“Students will benefit from increased access and decreased time to degree completion, which means they can start or upgrade their careers earlier,” Ms. Stehouwer said. “The three-year degree initiative has the potential to help us address labor market needs more efficiently.”
A spokesperson at public Utah Tech University said state policymakers just recently approved 90-credit degrees.
The spokesperson said Utah Tech would work with state education officials and accreditors to design “academically rigorous” bachelor of applied science programs tailored to students and potential employers.
Portland State University ended a pilot program in November 2022, but spokesperson Christina Williams said the public campus was still tracking the “attractive” idea of three-year degrees for students seeking “social mobility” and affordability.
Officials at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, which announced staff cuts last year, said the school has participated in the exchange only as an “interested partner.”
Fall head count at the public University of Wisconsin system’s campuses fell from 182,090 students in 2010 to 160,782 in 2022 before rising slightly by 540 students at the start of the current academic year.
“The university continues to concentrate on accelerating time-to-degree through ongoing reviews of and improvements to our general education program and our large and successful dual enrollment program for high school learners,” said Alex Hummel, chief of staff in the UW-Oshkosh chancellor’s office. “This is all in keeping with the College-in-3 aims and just a small sample of UWO’s related efforts.”
Federal funding
A press release from UMN Rochester said the exchange takes advantage of federal legislation enacted in March that encourages the Department of Education to support “accelerated, cost-effective, 3-year bachelor’s degree programs.”
“It remains to be seen how the Department of Education will respond to that legislation and if it will make funding available,” Ms. Carrell told The Times. “I would estimate about $10,000 would be sufficient for many schools to develop the program.”
Reached for comment, an Education Department spokesperson directed questions about the legislation to UMN Rochester.
The spokesperson said federal regulations “permit an institution of higher education to establish bachelor’s degree programs less than four years in length if the institution is authorized to do so by its accreditor and state higher education authorizing agency.”