Colleges Consider 3-Year Degrees To Save Undergrads Time, Money

Colleges Consider 3-Year Degrees To Save Undergrads Time, Money

By Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 23, 2009


In an era when college students commonly take longer than four years to get a bachelor's degree, some U.S. schools are looking anew at an old idea: slicing a year off their undergraduate programs to save families time and money.

Advocates of a three-year undergraduate degree say it would work well for ambitious students who know what they want to study. Such a program could provide the course requirements for a major and some general courses that have long been the hallmark of American education.

The four-year bachelor's degree has been the model in the United States since the first universities began operating before the American Revolution. Four-year degrees were designed in large part to provide a broad-based education that teaches young people to analyze and think critically, considered vital preparation to participate in the civic life of American democracy.

The three-year degree is the common model at the University of Cambridge and Oxford University in England, and some U.S. schools have begun experimenting with the idea. To cram four years of study into three, some will require summer work, others will shave course lengths and some might cut the number of credit hours required.

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/22/AR2009052203681.html

the partying really slows during year 3. :shrug:

Now with 25% less knowledge!

less. We don't seem to teach students how to think any more. We teach them how to spew out answers to tests.

I am not sure I like this.

OTOH, my oldest daughter started her undergrad years in a five year double degree program. She changed her mind, dropped a major and graduated in four years. Part of it was cost. Part of it was a change in interests.

She now has one master's degree, and may get a second. Those master's degrees seem to mean more to her general knowledge and in the job market.

It's ALREADY possible to complete a degree in three years, if you're focused enough and work hard enough. The problem is that VERY few students can do it-- increasingly, fewer and fewer can manage it in four-- so I don't see any good way to accomplish it except by lowering standards. In the sciences, at least, that's a terrible idea.

on edit: I meant to respond to the OP. :hi:

I like the year round model with small breaks for both HS and University. Better continuity and less time for knowledge to ebb away. The latter is important when it comes to classes that build on their predecessors (math, physics etc)

Many students can't manage the courses on the quarter system. They think they received basic knowledge in high school. Some of them went to good high schools where they should have received the basics. They get to college and need remedial help, or semester long courses to give them the extra time to cover everything they need to learn.

I recall taking a biology course in summer school. I was older, and knew how to study. Learning everything in eight weeks was difficult. There was too much. I am sure the teacher did not cover everything he wanted, either.

Arts education degrees, especially, CANNOT be completed in even four years, no matter how ambitious and dedicated the students are.

...have come to view "completing the degree" as the primary goal of higher education. From there, it's only a small step to recognize that that particular goal can easily be met in less time and with less effort. Hell, the most efficient way to achieve it is to simply sell diplomas at the door.

The real objective of a university education is intellectual development and, in some fields, the acquisition of critical skills, understanding, and perspective. There should not be a time limit on that at all, frankly. Students achieve it when they achieve it, and in most cases professional development is readily apparent, as is its failure to develop. How quickly a student can accomplish that depends an awful lot on the individual student, but we should not be in the business of lowering standards to make it appear that someone has accomplished that development when they have not.

I'm a strong proponent of a liberal arts degree. I don't think the objective ought to be job training. I think the objective should be learning how to learn, how to communicate well, how to think critically. All of those very basic skills that on their own might not count as training for a particular career.

They are, instead, training for life, and for any career.

And I would also mourn the loss of that time for my child. Those were such hugely important years in my life - really shaping the person I've become in ways beyond the academic.

It's likely my child will accrue enough credits by senior year to graduate early. I don't want that for him, and believe me, the costs are killing me!

And any lowering of standards is a hugely awful idea, too. I agree completely! Lower standards, and amazingly people rise to that lower bar and no more.

I think this idea attacks the problem from the wrong side. What needs controlling is out of control tuition. My child attends the same school I did - tuition is more than 7 times as high now. Way beyond inflation, etc.

Students shouldn't enter college "knowing" what they want to study. Students should be able to go for two years before picking a specific major, and since I did that it was YEARS before I finished the major program.

I was on the 5+ year plan, and even then I wish I had been able to take a few more classes.

I think now the focus is on moving kids down the conveyor belt, instead of allowing students to learn and explore.

...to "streamline" our curricula and make them more "efficient." The legislature and the chancellor's office would be perfectly happy if we simply sold diplomas at the door, making the entire process perfectly efficient. :rofl:

you just focus on the leps?

They're pretty, and the students will be happier if there's less to learn. :eyes:

who've done well on their A Levels are already more knowledgeable AND think far more critically than most Americans at the sophomore/junior level at university.

so they're 19 when they start university?

I'm not totally clear on how the system works, but I think most British kids who go to university have thirteen years of school behind them vs. twelve in the US.

I studied in Ireland my junior year, was put in second year classes at UCD and struggled to keep up.

We could certainly switch to a three year bachelors degree if public high schools in America were preparing students for that, but they aren't.

In Germany, kids in the college tracked schools start specializing down to two or three subjects when they are fourteen.

Not sure that that's what we want to switch too. If we give up on the idea of a broad-based free excellent public education for all kids to the age of eighteen, we could certainly save a lot of money by tracking kids earlier and getting them through college in three years. But is that what we really want?

...is much more focused -- few distribution requirements. It's more like grad school.

You can't have a well-educated population for long if tuition keeps growing 5 to 10 percent above people's wages. Eventually, only the rich will go to college, but at that point, your society will resemble a new take on feudalism.

schools are forced to provide more and more "aid" in order to have any students attend.

It's a crazy system, and the prices are spiraling out of control.

And there are no jobs to be had anyway. "Turn on, tune in, and drop out".

You can never go wrong learning how to be a welder.

..is not a reason, or a good one, to go to college.

One goes to college because one wants to learn, or because it is more fun than work.

That is how the state universities here in Florida did it while I was in college in the 1970s. Most people attended three quarters a year and that with a normal course load allowed them to graduate in four years. But some people attended four quarters a year and graduated in three years.

Then some of us attended four quarters a year, went for six years and got a lot of extra credits. ;) I took time off for life crises but went all year round when I did go and ended up with a double major.

Running the universities all year round made the most use of the facilities but it was unpopular with some professors. Some liked it since their research could continue without interruption.

Florida dropped the quarter system sometime after I graduated in 1977 - I am not quite sure why. It made a lot of sense to me as a intermittent student.

(where I went to school in the early 70's)

Bard College at Simon's Rock, more commonly known as Simon's Rock and previously as Simon's Rock College of Bard (see below), is a small, residential, selective <4> four-year liberal arts college located in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The foremost of the many unusual things about Simon's Rock is that it is an "early college", designed for students to enroll immediately after completing the tenth or eleventh grade, rather than after graduating from high school. Students who attend Simon's Rock rarely earn a high school diploma, and matriculate, on average, at the age of 16.

The college's founder, Elizabeth Blodgett Hall, had formerly been a private girls' school headmistress at Concord Academy. She concluded from her experience, and that of her colleagues, that for many students the latter two years of high school are wasted on repetitious and overly constrained work. Many young students, she thought, are ready to pursue college-level academic work some time before the usual system asks it of them.

While Simon's Rock is the only accredited four-year early college to date and still the singular college or university to take this approach with all of its students, it is now one of a number of early college entrance programs that provide opportunities for students to enter college one or more years ahead of their traditional high school graduation date.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bard_College_at_Simon's_Rock

Me too - all 4 years! Did you do 2 and transfer, or the whole 4?

and when I went there, Mrs. Hall was still President of the College and it wasn't yet an accredited 4 year college. I went there in its early days. When did you go?

My senior year I lived in the Red Brick House that used to be Ms. Hall's home before they turned it into a mini-dorm. She was still around when I was there.

I think their philosophy makes a lot more sense than what's being discussed in this thread - those who are college bound often don't need the last year or two of high school. That's probably even more true with NCLB now. A lot of higher achieving students are either taking AP classes for college credit, or are being stunted in their learning while teachers focus more on kids who are struggling to pass standardized tests, so the school isn't listed as failing AYP.

cramming more in in fewer years, made a good deal of sense 40 years ago when Mrs Hall started the school, and it makes sense now.

for the full 4 years, or just for 1 year. OUCH!! Major OUCH!

yeah, major ouch is right.

I agree that the fourth year is probably a waste of time and money.

It couldn't have been done well in four, either, though many other colleges do.

http://archweb.cooper.edu/degreq.html

:patriot:

the four year degree is merely a job provider for core course instructors. two years concentrated major courses is plenty...with internships thrown in.

The GI educational benefits that they gave Viet Nam vets (of which I am one) was only good for 10 years after the date you got out. I started school late and so I only had 3 years left during which they would pay. We had nothing so the GI Benefit money was the only way in hell I was able to go to school. Oh, I was married and had one child.

So I did it in 3 years.

Finally a wonderful idea!

When a young person graduates from high school most of them dread the 4 more years of college they have ahead of them... PLUS they are brainwashed by the idea of "freedom" ~ moving out of their parent's home, living on their own, etc. It is only after the first year of college they realize how much work it is to be an "adult" going to school full time, working, paying bills, and trying to succeed!

3 years instead of 4 will most definitely entice and encourage people to keep going and continue their higher education!

In most cases, students spend their first two years in big lecture classes learning topics by rote and spending truckloads of money for the privilege. This material could be taught over the Internet at a fraction of the cost. Classes like calculus, psych, geology, etc. could be taught online in a standardized format with study groups and quiz sections forming in chatrooms. And it's way past time for some academics to get together and release e-textbooks under a GPL-style license. It's not like you have to be the world's foremost psychologist to write a Psych 101 book, after all.

In the age of the Internet, physically going to a classroom is pointless for material at the 100 and 200-level, and the traditional textbook publishing model is obsolete. Sure, it's nice to get instruction in a classroom, but for most people it's not $20,000 per year worth of nice. In-person instruction is important once you're at an upperclass or graduate level, but before that I don't see much of a point in it.

Graduated from Indiana University with a 3.89 GPA.

She took 1 summer school class each summer and that was the only "extra" it took to get it done. She's an archaeologist so the one summer school session was an extended dig that added on 6 credit hours. Saved us $22k in tuition and fees by slicing off that extra year.

I agree that motivated students who know what they want to do can easily do it. It should be an option that is discussed imo. She knew she was going on for a PhD so she's pretty cognizant of how expensive it's going to be over the long haul to completion. We "sweetened" the deal by telling her that if she finished in 3 years we'd give her a $5,000 graduation gift. It was totally worth it for us (net savings $17k) and she had a tidy bit to apply towards grad school.

I went to a private business college to learn computer programming, worked for 8 years in the field, and then I applied to the University for admission to the Masters program in computer science, passed the necessary qualifying exams and went straight for my Masters without having a bachelors. That was back in the 1960's. I don't know if they still allow people to challenge for graduate admission based on work experience like that these days. All together it took me 10 years after high school to get my masters, but I spent 8 of those years as a working programmer, earning money rather than paying it out for tuition.

What they really need is an apprenticeship for credit program where student can learn AND earn in their chosen field. Imagine going to work for a company with such a program knowing that you could make a good living getting practical experience/training while attending a few classes a week for the next 6 or 8 years and get a degree PLUS real-world experience PLUS a living wage PLUS no student loans to pay off.

What's not to love about an arrangement like that?

They're getting rid of them all over the place around here; other universities won't recognize them as real degrees for the purposes of admission to graduate programs and the like.

NOT!