More US colleges are offering three-year degrees — but students should know the risks

After repeatedly being passed over for jobs due to lacking a college degree, 34-year-old Giles Sims needed a quick solution. Responsible for supporting his wife and widowed mother, the laid-off web developer turned to an expanding selection of three-year degree programs.

“I can’t afford to be out of the workforce for four years. That just seems like forever, and the three-year made it seem less daunting,” said Sims, a student at Ensign College. The private Salt Lake City institution recently altered all its bachelor’s degrees to require fewer classes than a standard four-year pathway.

These accelerated options have grown rapidly in popularity. As of this spring, 26 U.S. states feature a college offering at least one reduced-credit, three-year bachelor’s, according to the nonprofit research group RAND.

Supporters argue these initiatives address the college affordability crisis and serve as a vital lifeline for non-traditional students like Sims. However, critics express concern that they may excessively narrow academic learning, confuse potential employers, restrict graduate school opportunities, and create complications in fields that require state licenses.

The American Association of University Professors believes such programs diminish the value of a higher education credential. “This is not innovation. This is just cutting corners,” said Todd Wolfson, AAUP’s president.

A new option to graduate more quickly, but with reduced credit

For many decades, higher education institutions have offered fast-track pathways that allow students to graduate early, primarily by giving up summer breaks, maximizing transfer credits, and squeezing standard semester courses into shorter, five- to 10-week terms.

However, those earlier tracks retained the traditional course requirements. The latest initiatives allow students to finish earlier by requiring as few as 90 credit hours, trimming a full year from the customary 120-hour undergraduate degree.

Three-year bachelor’s tracks are standard across several foreign nations, including the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and India. Nevertheless, they can pose obstacles for graduates applying to U.S. graduate programs, which sometimes mandate supplemental coursework.

During the colonial era, some of America’s earliest colleges were modeled after British institutions such as Oxford and Cambridge, initially conferring three-year degrees, noted John Thelin, author of “A History of American Higher Education.” The four-year structure gained dominance in the 19th century, largely because there was no unified public high school network to prepare prospective students, Thelin explained.

“The colleges would have to kind of start from scratch,” he said.

A change in accreditation opened the door to shorter degrees

The idea of bringing three-year degrees to the U.S. got attention in 2009 when Robert Zemsky, the founding director of the Institute for Research on Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, argued in a Newsweek cover story that three-year degrees could shake up a broken system.

But there was a roadblock, he recalled recently. “Accreditors said, ‘College is 120 credits, not 90 credits,’” he said.

Years passed. And in 2022, amid mounting concerns about college affordability, Zemsky helped revive the idea. The College-in-3 Exchange was born, and dozens of higher education institutions joined the network to look for ways to help students get degrees faster.

The Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities was the first accreditor to say yes in 2023, when it approved reduced-credit programs at Ensign and Brigham Young University-Idaho. Other accreditors quickly followed.

As of May, 119 reduced-credit programs had been publicly announced, according to the RAND analysis, which was conducted to help education officials in Ohio as they weigh the feasibility of reduced-credit degrees.

It comes at a time when tuition and fees averaged $11,950 for in-state students at public schools and $45,000 at private nonprofits last school year, although many students get discounts that reduce the price, according to a report from the College Board, the nonprofit that oversees the SAT.

Some degrees are easier to compress

Private nonprofit schools offer three-quarters of the reduced-credit programs, frequently online. Typically, they compress the majors by reducing electives. Business degrees in fields such as marketing and management are the most common, followed by computer and information sciences.

Other majors, such as engineering, with its extensive math requirements, have been harder to shrink. And RAND found just six reduced-credit degrees in teacher education, which involves real-world experience requirements and state licensure.

Jill Cohen, 42, lives on a ranch in rural Yoder, Colorado, and is completing her teaching degree through one such program at Indiana Wesleyan.

She quit her old job selling life insurance and turned to teaching after a farming accident nearly claimed her life. Already, she is in the classroom, teaching middle school English, as she works on the degree through a special “Grow Your Own” program designed to address staff shortages.

Because her home is busy — she has twin 12-year-olds, along with a menagerie that includes horses, goats and chickens — she appreciates the streamlined degree.

“Why do I need to take, you know, underwater basket weaving when I could just take the evolutionary structure of the English language — what I’m going to be teaching,” she said.

However, programs with state licensing requirements are one of the biggest worries for Jenna Kramer, a policy researcher at RAND.

Indiana Wesleyan, which has a growing slate of reduced-credit offerings, said its education programs are specifically designed to meet Indiana licensing requirements. Students from elsewhere will need to check if the programs meet their state requirements, said Pam Downing, the school’s director of communications, in an email.

The RAND report also found the programs are so new that there are no standard practices for admitting three-year degree recipients into graduate school.

Students acknowledge it’s a gamble

Gabriella Staten, a 20-year-old student in the reduced-credit digital marketing program at Mount Mary University, a Catholic women’s institution in Milwaukee, estimates it will save her at least $20,000. While she sometimes wonders whether employers will take her degree as seriously as a four-year degree, she decided she could prove herself.

“Even if they were to look a little bit down on the three-year pathway, I can show them otherwise with the work,” she said.

Wesley Hardy, who is three semesters into a bachelor of applied science in accounting at Ensign, also sees the pros and cons. He likes that the three-year format will get him into the workforce faster.

But he noted that the requirements to become a certified public accountant — something he has considered — vary by state. Many require 120 semester hours to sit for the exam and 150 to become licensed. Graduate school often is needed.

Bruce Kusch, president of Ensign, said he has talked to multiple college presidents and doesn’t anticipate that graduate school will be a problem. But Hardy, 22, has questions about how it would work.

“Would I have to take extra classes?” he asked. “It’s definitely something I’ve thought of.”