Pennsylvania’s state universities will consider offering three-year bachelor’s degrees

Pennsylvania’s 10 state universities, facing declining enrollment, will consider offering some three-year bachelor’s degrees as a way to make college more affordable and allow students to get into the workforce more quickly.

The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education would join a growing number of colleges nationally launching accelerated bachelor’s degrees that reduce the required credits for graduation from the standard 120 to between 90 and 100.

The development comes as colleges continue to face criticism over costs and some schools try to stem declining enrollments. PASSHE has lost 30% of its enrollment since 2010, though it recorded an increase last fall for the first time in 15 years.

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For a long time, the four-year bachelor’s degree has been the norm. Some students certainly have completed their degrees more quickly, but only by taking all the required credits at an accelerated rate.

The new approach, which PASSHE’s board of governors plans to discuss in October, would reduce the number of credits needed.

“This initiative would provide more options,” said system Chancellor Christopher Fiorentino. “A three-year degree focuses on essential competencies while preserving the liberal arts core. We can reach more students who don’t fit into the traditional path.”

Three-year degrees emphasize what students should know and be able to do by the time they finish, said Madeleine F. Green, executive director of the College-in-3 Exchange, which is pushing for three-year degrees to become “a widely accepted path” to a bachelor’s.

“The benefits are reduced cost and time to degree and equal or better learning outcomes than those resulting from a four-year degree,” Green said. “... It is widely accepted in higher education that time does not equate to learning.”

But the movement already has garnered detractors. The American Association of University Professors and American Federation of Teachers have blasted the idea as more states, including Ohio, Massachusetts, Indiana, and Virginia, explore, plan for — and in some cases even mandate — three-year degrees.

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The three-year degree movement “threatens academic integrity by substituting for a comprehensive education a stripped-down curriculum that prioritizes speed over essential intellectual development,” the two groups said in a joint statement in response to new accelerated degree programs at Suffolk and Merrimack Universities in Massachusetts.

“Compressing or reducing the curriculum threatens to narrow students’ education at precisely the moment when society needs graduates with stronger critical thinking, communication skills, scientific literacy, and civic understanding,” they said.

There is no comprehensive inventory of colleges nationally that offer three-year degree programs, Green said. A June study by the Rand Corporation cited 119 programs that had been “publicly announced” as of May 2026, she said. Those programs are in fields such as business, cybersecurity, criminal justice, health administration, public health, and design, the report said.

The Higher Learning Commission, the nation’s largest college accrediting body, had approved 58 reduced-credit bachelor’s degree programs at 26 institutions, none of them in Pennsylvania or New Jersey, said Laura Janota, a spokesperson for the commission.

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The Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which accredits colleges in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey, does not require special approval for three-year degrees.

But PASSHE likely would have to get approval from the state. Green, of College-in-3, said both Pennsylvania and New Jersey have regulations that state a bachelor’s degree is 120 credits.

“We are reviewing all regulatory questions as part of this effort and will share what we learn with the board in October,” said Kevin Hensil, PASSHE spokesperson.

Robert M. Zemsky, an emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education who co-started College-in-3, said he’s aware of more than 90 colleges planning to or considering offering reduced-credit bachelor’s degrees. The idea attracted quite a bit of attention in 2009 when he first floated the idea — even a cover story in Newsweek — he said, but accrediting bodies were not on board at that time.

But now, he said, colleges are beginning to realize that their product is being rejected by students who drop out or transfer after their first year or fail to enroll at all.

“What’s different is the key people in higher education are beginning to figure out that it really is product rejection,” he said, “and they’re going to have to redesign what they do top to bottom.”

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He estimated by 2027 that there would be 200 colleges offering three-year degrees and 500 by December 2028.

“After you get to 500, it will be everywhere,” he said.

Fiorentino, the PASSHE chancellor, said he planned in the coming months to propose ways PASSHE could begin to offer a limited number of three-year degrees. PASSHE’s 10 universities are West Chester, Cheyney, Commonwealth, Indiana, Penn West, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock, Kutztown, East Stroudsburg, and Millersville.

He said adults with some college credits and no degree may be interested, or partnerships in which students attend community college for two years and then finish their bachelor’s in one-year at PASSHE.

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Four-year degrees would remain the norm, he said.

The move was harshly criticized by faculty union head Kenneth M. Mash, as providing substandard education.

“Too many students that we are admitting are underprepared for the college experience,” Mash, president of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties, said at the board of governors meeting earlier this month. “Well, if they’re underprepared coming in, and we’re telling them you only have to be here for three years, how are they ever going to be ultimately prepared for their future?”

He said the nation’s elite universities and top research universities aren’t the ones promoting three-year degrees, but rather those that serve large numbers of first-generation students and students of color.

“I can’t help but wonder why it’s OK to offer these less-than degrees to these students,” he said.

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Federal and state aid programs should be expanded to make college more affordable, according to faculty union groups.

But Cynthia Shapira, PASSHE’s board chair, said some states already are home to institutions offering or considering three-year degrees and PASSHE has an obligation to consider doing the same.

“The idea to not even consider [it] … would be to put our heads in the sand,” she said.

Fiorentino said the same kind of criticism was leveled at online programs and community colleges when they first started. Pennsylvania was slow to embrace online programs and now lots of Pennsylvania residents are enrolled in programs out of state, he said. He said he doesn’t want PASSHE to be left behind again.

“We owe it to our students,” he said. “We owe it to the commonwealth, and we owe it to our institutions to at least take a hard look at these three-year degree opportunities.”

In an interview earlier this year, Fiorentino said that eliminating 30 credits from the four-year degree would be the equivalent of removing 10 courses. Schools would have to explore what to eliminate, he said. They could choose to get rid of some general education courses, general elective courses, and electives in the major, he said.

The system, he said, will look at “how do you make adjustments to get students out more quickly and still have them prepared to perform effectively in the world.”

Zemsky, the Penn professor, said general education courses, which have been criticized by some students as a waste of time and money, could be scaled back.

Eventually, he said he thinks more students will opt for three-year degrees as opposed to four-year degrees.

How employers will react is uncertain. Three-year degree programs are too new for data on how graduates will fare in the job market or graduate school admissions.

“We’re looking at 2028, 2029 before there’s going to be any real graduation of three-year degree people,” Zemsky said.

Green said most colleges pursuing three-year degrees have had conversations with employers.

“Employers are more interested in students’ skills than in the number of credits they earned in obtaining the degree,” she said.

Moving to three-year degrees will affect university budgets, and colleges will have to adapt, Zemsky said.

“Right now, we spend a lot of money on things that the customer doesn’t want,” he said.