Education | Universities try 3-year degrees to save students time, money

Elaine S. Povich | (TNS) Stateline.org

With college costs rising and some students and families questioning the return on investment of a four-year degree, a few pioneering state universities are exploring programs that would grant certain bachelor’s degrees in three years.

The programs, which also are being tried at some private schools, would require 90 credits instead of the traditional 120 for a bachelor’s degree, and wouldn’t require summer classes or studying over breaks. In some cases, the degrees would be designed to fit industry needs.

Indiana recently enacted legislation calling for all state universities there to offer by next year at least one bachelor’s degree program that could be completed in three years, and to look into whether more could be implemented. The Utah System of Higher Education has tasked state universities with developing three-year programs under a new Bachelor of Applied Studies degree, which would still need approval by accreditation boards.

More than a dozen public and private universities are participating in a pilot collaboration called the College-in-3 Exchange, to begin considering how they could offer three-year programs. The public universities include the College of New Jersey, Portland State University, Southern Utah University, the Universities of Minnesota at Rochester and at Morris, the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and Utah Tech University.

Proponents of the three-year degree programs say they save students money and set them on a faster track to their working life. But detractors, including some faculty, say they shortchange students, particularly if they later change their minds on what career path they want to follow.

The Utah Board of Higher Education in March approved the new three-year degree category. Various areas of study would be tied to specific industry needs, with fewer electives required. These degrees are broader than two-year associate degrees, but narrower than a full four-year bachelor’s.

“We told the institutions to start working on them now and developing the curriculum,” Geoff Landward, commissioner of the Utah System of Higher Education, said in an interview. “Also, we want them to find industry partners that would be willing to hire people with bachelor’s degrees of this type.”

He added: “We created a sandbox for our institutions to play in.”

Once created, individual programs would need both national accreditation and state Board of Higher Education approval.

Landward said he has taken note of criticism that the three-year programs might “cheapen” the bachelor’s degree by shortchanging students who wouldn’t receive a broad college education. But he said students could save on tuition, get a head start in the workforce and meet the needs of industries that are looking for certain skilled workers to address shortages in the state.

That includes nursing, he said, where requiring a four-year degree means taking lots of electives that have nothing to do with the career.

Utah State University’s current four-year nursing program, for example, suggests several electives along with the required anatomy, math and biology courses as prerequisites during freshman and sophomore years.

“We think if we are partnering with industry and they help us develop it, I don’t think it cheapens the degree,” Landward said. “I think it creates a very specific degree.”

Robert Zemsky, a University of Pennsylvania professor and founding director of the university’s Institute for Research on Higher Education, began proselytizing for the three-year college movement about a dozen years ago.

He said the idea has gotten traction recently because “we are wading in the deep waters of righteous anger” at colleges and universities because of the perception that four-year degrees are not worth their high costs.

A Pew Research Center survey released last week found only 1 in 4 American adults said it is extremely or very important to have a four-year college degree as a means to getting a good-paying job. Only 22% of the respondents said the cost is worth getting a four-year degree even if the student or their family has to take out loans.

Zemsky suggested that a shorter time span also would lead to higher college completion rates. More than a third of students who began seeking a bachelor’s degree in fall 2014 at a four-year school failed to complete their education at the same institution in six years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Zemsky said 27 colleges and universities have embarked on creating three-year pilot programs and predicted 100 would be doing so in another year.

Over the past 10 years, Zemsky said, schools have been ignoring the desires of students and instead creating their curricula around the preferences of faculty — which is where most of the opposition is coming from.

Last year, at a conference of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties, a bargaining unit for professors, President Kenneth Mash said the overwhelming number of college faculty nationwide “have a visceral disdain for the idea.”

In an interview with Stateline, he said three-year programs would hurt students too, creating a “two-tiered” system under which wealthy students would get a full four-year education and lower-income students a cheapened three-year degree.

“If it’s not going to be a four-year degree, they should name it something that indicates it’s not a B.A.,” said Mash, who also is a political science professor at East Stroudsburg University. “We don’t know that employers will treat them the same.

“I’m on board, as most faculty are, with the notion that people want to increase their job opportunities. But that’s not all there is to a college degree,” he said. “Degrees prepare you to be a better citizen, a better parent, and on and on.”

And he said a broad education is what makes it possible for students to change jobs and careers many times during their working lives. “It’s really that baking in liberal arts … that makes it possible for people to do different things in their lifetimes.”

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