How To Save The Degree
Make It Shorter? It's Happening.
What if a bachelor’s degree could last three years instead of four? And you could earn that diploma with 25% fewer credits, for less time and money. Would it push more students to take the plunge? And help more people finish?
It’s starting to happen. This fall, a trickle of reduced credit programs are opening their doors and more are finalizing applications to their accreditors, now that those gatekeepers have signaled: “game on.”
For years, accreditors kept their fingers in the dam, plugging small leaks to hold back the pressure. But this school year the dam will be broken. The proverbial toothpaste is out of the tube. There is no going back to the rationale that 120 credits is the only magic formula for a full degree.
BYU-Idaho, an offshoot of Brigham Young University, was given approval in 2023 to eliminate electives for online programs in business management, applied health and others. They demonstrated that their graduates were finishing the competency-based learning requirements that served working adults online well before graduation.
Boyd Baggett, BYU’s head of institutional effectiveness told Inside Higher Ed at the time, “We found ourselves in this awkward situation of saying, ‘All right, you’ve completed everything that’s required for the degree, except you need another 30 credits roughly of whatever classes you want.’ And it seems so disingenuous, I think, to say that to this working father or working mother that’s trying to take care of their families and put food on the table.”
The first in person version of the reduced credit degree is open for business this fall at Johnson and Wales University. Many applications are awaiting approval across the country. The nation’s largest accreditor, Higher Learning Commission, is reviewing nearly two dozen applications. President Barbara Gellman-Danley told me via email, “ A reduced credit degree is a market-driven trend that we found worthy of exploring, aligned with our focus on students and innovation."
Why now? Perhaps foremost is that the field is better learning how to translate to credit the significant experience that working students often bring to college or acquire in their day jobs while studying. Perhaps also, and this is speculation on my part, there is a recognition that short term certificates are beginning to compete with degrees. Finally, more fuel got added to the engine in this summer’s massive legislation by Congress. Colleges face new requirements to start assessing each program’s value based on the individual student’s return on investment. (The less expensive a degree, the less debt incurred, the better it will score.)
Make sure you read the fine print, as these programs proliferate, if you are shopping. Not all three years degrees are “reduced credit.” A small number of colleges have been offering a condensed bachelor’s for years. Wesleyan University President Michael Roth introduced a degree where you cram it all into three years, maybe sacrifice the study abroad, save some money, but it’s still 120 credits. He was interviewed on Freakonomics last year and expressed surprise that less than 1% of his students were opting for the three year crunch value package. It makes sense to me. While 40% of his students are on need-based financial aid, they’ve chosen an Ivy League-adjacent school for a reason. Enviable faculty/student ratio, high end study abroad programs. They are coming for all the bells and whistles. You can’t cram that into 30 months.
I am most excited about reduced credit degrees because of the innovation they can spur. Take Alex, my British nephew. He grew up in a country where most degrees have always been three years. (No general education courses or electives, so no majors. You go to college to study one thing.) For more vocationally-oriented courses of study, some universities have added meaningful work experience. Alex earned a “Bachelor of Engineering with Year in Industry” at Sheffield University (yes, the job experience is actually baked into the name of the degree). With apprenticeships gaining some ground in the UK, some colleges have had the truly bright idea to add a fourth year by sandwiching a long work stint inside a three-year degree, in fact, the programs are affectionately referred to as “sandwich degrees.” I was a mentor of Alex’s at the time he was doing his degree. Now, several years later, I asked him to reflect on the value of that year at a Chinese car company (SAIC) in England.
Alex’s email response: “I found it very difficult being in a different city on my own while all my “uni” friends were having fun in their final year. It was however one of the best decisions I made and probably the most transformative year of the four. It helped in three different ways:
1. I had a new found appreciation for all that university offered when coming back - my final year was one of the happiest periods of my life after struggling the previous years at uni and during the year in industry.
2. My work ethic was completely different and I knew how to structure my days to balance work and play. I was averaging a 2:2 [mid level grades] after second year and went on to get a first-class honours and was awarded the final year best project award. I have no doubt that was because of the year in industry.
3. I realised engineering was not for me, and more importantly realised that I wanted to go more into a business/finance type of role.”
Alex went to work at EY as a strategy consultant and has built a successful career, now in the green energy sector.
I will talk in a future piece about the rise of Apprenticeship Degrees. I had the privilege to join the first International Conference on Apprenticeship Degrees in Oxford, England last month when I was visiting Alex’s family.
But let’s reserve this blog to think of the design possibilities for reduced credit degrees, all the ways that we can solve for things like cost, relevance and flexibility that have kept New Majority Learners from earning degrees or other credentials of meaning. I’m most excited because shorter degrees give working professionals credit for what they are already doing at work, and younger students like Alex time for the college to add in workforce opportunities.
However, the elephant in the room is “electives.” As these programs proliferate, which types of colleges and college students will get to opt out of electives (to shave off 25-30 credits)? Will we hold the line to preserve general education (those courses that often are required of all students to ensure a well-rounded academic experience)? Will we still all have to take World History, Mathematics and English Composition?
Work experience is a key design criteria to highlight as we make college shorter, but, alas, in the age of AI and civic unrest, we know we can’t throw the general education baby out with the bathwater. Wait, is general education the baby or the bathwater? The other key design criteria is how to take a more focused, contextual approach to the remaining courses outside the major. That’s a blog for another day.
Hats off to the College-In-3 Exchange which has championed the reduced credit movement in the US. And to the nation’s accreditors who are helping colleges design these programs with guardrails.