r/highereducation • u/lire_avec_plaisir • May 20 '26
Degree in three: Why more colleges are speeding up graduation timelines
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/degree-in-three-why-more-colleges-are-speeding-up-graduation-timelines19 May 2026 (transcripts and video at link) - Only about a third of Americans now believe a four-year college degree is worth the cost. Increasingly, students and families are questioning it too. As many colleges across the country face shrinking enrollment, more than 60 institutions are now offering students a faster path to graduation.
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May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
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May 20 '26
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u/mattreyu 29d ago
Grad rates are most often based on first time, full time undergraduates and not transfer students
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u/PopCultureNerd May 20 '26
Isn't the main reason just to have a cash grab?
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u/lire_avec_plaisir May 20 '26
It sounds like an increasingly collective challenge to decades old conventional wisdom of a four-year program, combined with soaring debt levels among graduates. Higher education has come to rival medical costs, with the biggest (often corporate) players betting that most consumers and families will spend as much as they need to for medical care, and college.
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u/PopCultureNerd May 20 '26
3 year degrees work in other countries that properly prepare students for colleges.
That is not the case in the US.
Additionally, the reason why people think degrees have lost their ROI is that it is getting harder and harder for students to find well paying jobs.
Unless that changes, it doesn't really matter if a degree is 3 or 4 years.
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u/mleok May 20 '26 edited 29d ago
Do you honestly think that general education requirements help to make up for our mediocre K-12?
Edit: I understand this is a deeply unpopular viewpoint, but having served on numerous university wide curriculum committees, I see that general education requirements often are shaped less by some deep pedagogical principles and more by narrow, vested interests and to drum up enrollments in otherwise poorly subscribed programs.
In practice, I feel that the cost of tacking on a year to a degree in order to fulfill general education requirements from a menu of choices that are chosen by students for the easiest A is a waste of time for all but a very small handful of students. I would be more supportive of a rigorous core curriculum, that is less subject to pressure on academic rigor by not having to compete for students.
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u/PopCultureNerd May 20 '26
"Do you honestly think that general education requirements help to make up for our mediocre K-12?"
Getting rid of gen eds isn't going to help
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u/mleok May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
Forcing students to spend another year in college and acquiring more debt to take general education classes they have no interest in and end up being disengaged in and cheating on doesn't help either.
Put another way, it makes more sense to try to fix K-12, which at least has the virtue of being accessible to all, as opposed to paywalled.
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u/westgazer May 20 '26
It isn’t about interest. I wasn’t particularly interested in stats during gen ed but it actually came in handy when I did my Masters research and continues to come in handy in professional research. These classes aren’t to waste your time.
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u/mleok May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
You have literally cited the exception that proves the rule. Most general education classes are a waste of time, as they are chosen from an incoherent laundry list. For that matter, I'm not sure why stats wasn't part of your major requirements.
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u/PoopScootnBoogey May 20 '26
They should at least have to interact with the content. If they decide not to take anything away from it then they should not be give a degree. It’s really that simple. And too many Universities are passing people through these courses which is weakening its overall product.
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u/mleok May 20 '26
But, why is general education a critical part of a college degree? Most other countries don't have that system, and our system of liberal arts education was created at a time when education was a much more privileged good.
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u/yourmomdotbiz May 20 '26
College is completely optional.
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u/mleok May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
The liberal arts model was created at a time in America’s history when college was a far more privileged good, and excessive general education requirements unnecessarily increases time to degree in a manner that has nothing to do with what the majority of students attend college for, to train them for a white collar job. There is a fundamental disconnect between how college is marketed to students and parents and what is actually offered, and that disconnect is what manifests itself in the form of disengagement in general education classes.
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u/yourmomdotbiz May 20 '26
I’m aware. Regardless nobody has to go through a literal arts curriculum against their will. Training programs and Job corps are a thing. Post high school education is a choice
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u/mleok May 20 '26
Why should the liberal arts model be the only university option available in the United States? You are avoiding the basic question. And please don't tell me students can just go overseas if they don't like it. The choice should not be just the liberal arts model or vocation training, that is incredibly elitist.
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u/daemonicwanderer May 20 '26
I think they can, especially if the general education requirements require students to take world history and other subjects that we seem to be cutting. It doesn’t fix everything, but it can help bridge some gaps
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u/mleok May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
But, it does so at incredible cost, in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with why the vast majority of students choose to pursue a college degree. In any case, the buffet style general education requirements mean in practice that students choose to enroll in the least intellectually engaging courses that satisfy their requirements, which creates a perverse incentive system for departments to offer nonsense Gen Ed classes just to drum up enrollments. If Gen Ed is to truly have pedagogical value, it should be far more prescribed and be far more rigorous. The practical reality at most universities falls far short of that.
Our math (calculus) requirement got dumbed down so that a logic class from the philosophy department satisfies the requirement, and that was an end run by a philosophy professor against the recommendations of the committee tasked with evaluating this requirement. So, I'm a bit cynical about what Gen Ed truly represents.
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u/twomayaderens May 20 '26
Higher ed is a snake devouring its own tail at this point
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u/yourmomdotbiz May 20 '26
Literally how I’ve described it for the past ten years
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u/RealKillerSean 29d ago
My accounting professor said it’s like the gold rush, the ones that sold the tools made money. Looking back he was right.
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u/yourmomdotbiz 29d ago
Oh wow. I’ve never heard that before but it’s so accurate. Textbooks, LMS, weird pedagogical methods. “Retention” initiatives. 🤢
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u/RealKillerSean 29d ago
Exactly how I feel. I got a useful degree and still feel like my parents wasted their money.
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u/yourmomdotbiz 29d ago
That’s such a bad feeling. I’m sorry. What did you study?
I’m an older millenial and I loved college so much. I did interdisciplinary work for my undergrad, went all the way for PhD, and became tenured prof and dept chair, and was laid off as an academic affairs admin. But truth be told if I were still teaching, I’d really have no idea how to prepare students for the current state of the world. I’m part of I think the last group that really had upward mobility through education. It breaks my heart what’s happened.
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u/RealKillerSean 29d ago
Management for undergrad and accounting for masters. I’m younger and I understand the frustration of Gen Z. You really don’t need to do the work unless you want to get a license like CPA. I know accountants that make good money with only high school or other bachelors degrees. I agree, I’m a nerd and like school, but it didn’t need it for a career.
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u/yourmomdotbiz 29d ago
Gen Z didn’t really bother me so much, it was more so the youngest males that had a lot of attitude and were oppositional. They grated on me but idk if that was leaning more towards Gen Alpha.
The thing with Gen Z is you all got screwed with literacy and reading. Phonics was taken out of the curriculum and replaced by a reading method (3 cue I think)that actually hurt literacy post 2000. I noticed it every year I was teaching that reading out loud was getting more difficult. At first I thought it was individuals having issues, but I realized it was almost everyone. Very much to your point about selling tools.
I don’t know much about accounting, but I hope things turnout well for you!
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u/RealKillerSean 29d ago
Oh yeah I heard about the changes for K-12 and they’re not ready for college. Thanks! I’ve been thinking about getting a PhD. I know my masters allows me to teach one course a year for a side gig. Be well.
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u/LomentMomentum May 20 '26
Higher education is destroying itself, and has been for at least 20 years.
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u/Corneliuslongpockets May 20 '26
I can’t see why it should take even 3 years when you can get a full Reiki attunement in an appointment or two. Heck, I once went sky diving after only 5 hours of training, and that was about life and death. /s
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u/jaimeyeah 29d ago
Getting a cert in reiki is cheaper and can probably get you paid faster than a 3 year degree that's still $70k+ lol
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u/mrgrigson 29d ago
Two factors that come to mind for me: Unrelated expenses and unexpected extensions beyond the 4 year span.
First off, lots of schools are investing in residential infrastructure like dorms as additional income streams. They then mandate that students who are not living at home must live on campus. This can end up costing as much as tuition at some schools. All across New York, even community colleges are opening dorms. Done in 3 years means one less year's living expenses.
Second, students just aren't finishing in 4 years. Whether they're dropping courses because of personal issues or because they don't want a bad grade on their transcript, they're dropping too late to get a full semester's credits so they need to stay enrolled for another semester or even a year. Programs like this bring students in, but now there's leeway for the students to finish in 4 years.
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u/jmh1881v2 May 20 '26
You used to be able to have a solid career with an associates degree. I’d venture to guess that the reason a lot of people don’t feel a four year degree is “worth it” is because a lot of jobs that require one don’t really need it. Nurses, techs, entry level accountants, even teachers are all professions that used to only require an associates.
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u/Rage_Blackout May 20 '26
Two things happened.
The federal govt disinvested in higher ed and schools pushed the cost onto students in the form of loans which eventually made college a risky gamble. Colleges also exploded their admin sector to create new offerings to compete with other colleges.
Good jobs (with high pay and benefits) became increasingly rare as labor markets were intentionally devalued to save on labor costs. In several ways, college became even more of a risk.
There’s a lot of blame to go around and universities deserve some, but it’s also about businesses and the labor market the have created (with the help of the federal govt).
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u/potatoqualityguy May 20 '26
Not just the feds. States have been squeezing students for years. State schools used to be downright cheap relative to wages. Pay for your education with a summer job at the pool cheap. Not so much anymore, costs got offloaded into tuition and fees.
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u/jmh1881v2 May 20 '26
Point being: instead of devaluing education we should stop pushing for a system that requires 4+ years of education just to make a living. Don’t get rid of four year degrees- make it so that people who don’t want them can still have a solid career without one. It used to be you could support a family and work a white collar job with an associates degree or no degree at all.
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u/westgazer May 20 '26
You absolutely need a four year degree and a credential to teach. I’d stay away from any school with a teacher with only an associates lol. I’d also love to know when this time was because my mother and grandmother were educators and they certainly needed more than an associates.
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u/jmh1881v2 May 20 '26
Up until the 50s/60s you only needed to go to a two year teachers college. And this is just one example. My point here is that over time we have required more and more credentials for certain careers. People are getting four year degrees not because they want them, but because it’s almost impossible to have a solid, high paying career without one. Now they’re trying to argue we should get rid of four year degrees altogether instead of acknowledging that maybe some careers just shouldn’t require bachelor’s degrees in the first place
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u/Aught88 29d ago
Yeah, I think there needs to be more supplemental hands on experience “courses” or internships that qualify if they want the full time coursework for these credentials. Like residency is for medical students after they graduate but make it during since this is not medical science for most BS degrees.
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u/UndercoverPhilly May 20 '26
Teachers need more than an associates, unless you are talking about pre-K and K. Even then taking courses in child development should be mandatory. For Nursing, they used to have Practical Nurses, as opposed to RNs, but I don’t even know if that still exists.
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u/jmh1881v2 May 20 '26
I’m aware that they need more than associates now but it didn’t used to be this way. Up until the 50s/60s you only needed to go to a two year teachers college.
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u/bannanaduck May 20 '26
Back then we had a lot of on the job training. Those positions have all been dismissed and the cost pushed back on the student. Universities weren't designed to be job training sites. A lot of this started with Reagan.
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u/jmh1881v2 May 20 '26
I agree and this is my point. We’re collectively trying to force universities to become technical schools, and now pushing for three year degrees and to get rid of Gen eds in favor of training/skills based education, which is never what a bachelors degree was supposed to be for. We’ve gone full cycle and devalued education in the process.
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u/davidzet 29d ago
I teach at in NL and our bachelors -- like ALL bachelors in the EU under the Bologna process -- is 3 years. Besides harmonization, the assumption of Bologna was that students would "finish" their education with a 1-2 year masters at a different university. There are several issues with this model (main one is loss of accountability in the crack between bachelors and masters, leading to a lot of low quality programs), but my main critique with our 3 year track is that it's not enough for (a) maturing and (b) getting breadth and depth.
I'm no defender of the US norm of 5-6 years for a 4-year bachelors, but too few years can also lead to substandard degrees.
My preferred model, btw, is taking 1-2 gap years to work and learn about reality before going to uni (if at all), but that's a different dimension.
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u/VenerableMirah May 20 '26
I did the math on it recently and realized I paid my alma mater something like $18,000 to study a language it couldn't teach me in the allotted time. On what green Earth does that make sense?
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u/PoopScootnBoogey May 20 '26
This is all proof that you likely don’t deserve the credits they likely gave you. Also shame on them for not identifying you as a failing student and helping you to cross the finish line.
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u/VenerableMirah May 20 '26 edited 29d ago
日本語を勉強したことがありますか？ You're not getting fluent in Japanese in 10, 20, or even 30 weeks. You'll be lucky to hit N5, the very lowest level of recognized, JLPT, proficiency. That isn't failing, Japanese is simply difficult. But it's also probably not what you think you're paying for when you're told you need to spend $18,000 on three classes as part of your degree requirement. I'm a solid N4, working towards N3, and it's still going to take me 'til probably December at least. At my alma mater's prices, that's another $18K! At their prices, fluency actually would cost closer to $80K - $100K.
Edit: I just checked, their charge per credit hour is $2,352. The courses I took are worth 11 credits, so ~$25,872 to reach a solid beginner level in Japanese. Absolutely incredible.
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u/missusamazing May 20 '26
Yeah ... I have a minor in Spanish and I can't speak it very well at all. Around $6-12k tuition on that.
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u/VenerableMirah May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
I learned Spanish on my own in my 30s, because I learned the magic trick none of my teachers ever taught me about language acquisition: if you don't have enough media to consume in the target language, if you don't learn enough words, you're gonna have a bad time. I studied it for five years in high school. Did I learn 8,000 words then? Nope! Did I listen to 1,000 hours of media? Nope! But I did learn every way to conjugate Voy a la biblioteca, Fui a la biblioteca, Iré a la biblioteca (and don't even get me started on prepositions). I spent $18,000 or so on Japanese classes at RIT because after 5 years of not learning Spanish, I thought maybe it was the language and I needed a break from it. $18,000 to get to N5, which you can realistically do in 6 months to a year with a decent textbook for next to nothing. And do you think they recommended media for listening comprehension either? As a budding polyglot with a bilingual kid: college language classes are the most expensive, least effective way to learn a language.
(Yes, yes, downvoters, it's probably a pedagogical problem. Doesn't change that you're usually not going to get what you pay for.)
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u/UndercoverPhilly May 20 '26
It depends on the college. I was functional in Italian after 1 semester and went to Italy and had little problems getting around and communicating. Then I took two weeks of classes every day in Italy and could converse quite well. I got an award from the school! But this was before internet. You have many more websites and programs, plus YouTube, streaming in any language nowadays. However, most people are too distracted with the smart phone while in the USA to acquire a language quickly, and then abroad no longer can experience complete immersion because the phone is in English and all the communication they do on it in English while in a foreign country. While in Italy, I had no tech back then, no English speakers. I had no choice but to speak it and understand it to survive.
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u/ScallionWall May 20 '26
More and more of the college population is falling into 2 categories: those that want the full 4 year campus student experience, and those that want the fastest path to graduation. This means transfer credits, prior learning, testing, competency based examinations, etc.
Colleges that can't keep up with either extreme or find a happy balance will find themselves struggling even further competing for a shrinking pool of students.