More states pilot 3-year college degrees, seeking to address rising tuition

A growing number of colleges are offering three-year bachelor’s degree programs, providing students a faster and less expensive path toward graduation, but worrying critics who say the trend could devalue college education.

Instead of the typical 120 credits earned in four years, some programs now require students to complete around 90 credits. Proponents say that helps students get into — or back into — the workforce more quickly and with less debt. But some question whether the shortened degrees will be fully accepted by graduate schools, employers, and accreditors.

At least 70 U.S. schools are either already offering three-year degrees or are actively considering them, according to a report this year by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, and multiple states have required or encouraged public universities to add them.

On Wednesday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R.) took steps to join that group, directing the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to create a statewide framework for three-year-degree pathways.

“Every semester adds tuition, fees, housing, food, transportation, and other living expenses and delays students’ ability to begin their careers,” Abbott said in a news release. “Texas students deserve the option to receive a degree in a high-demand, high-wage field in less time.”

The trend is spreading in both red and blue states, as well as across many types of institutions, public and private, large and small. This summer, the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education approved applications from two schools to pilot three-year-degree programs.

In June, Grambling State University and Southern University Law Center, historically Black schools in Louisiana, announced a partnership that would allow students to accelerate their way to a law degree, with three years of undergraduate work and three years of law school.

Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors, said the three-year degree is the wrong answer to a real crisis. He said decades of public disinvestment have shifted the cost of higher education onto students and families, and schools should not respond by shrinking the degree and asking students to make do with less.

“We need to address the problem at its root,” he said. “Reinvest massively in higher education and build a free public higher-education system that gives every student access to a full, high-quality college education without taking on crushing debt.”

Robert Zemsky, professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education who has been advocating for three-year degrees for more than 15 years, said many state agencies have now encouraged their public universities to explore the idea. Zemsky said he supports that approach.

“Don’t bet the whole bundle on an instant change from three-year degrees. Start a few experimental programs,” he said, and “see what happens.”