I have been around higher education long enough that relatively few things would jolt me fully awake at 4:45 in the morning, which is typically when I read the news before getting out of bed for my daily workout. The news in last Friday’s Inside Higher Ed about the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities approving applications from two colleges to offer bachelor’s degree programs of between 90 and 94 credits instead of the typical 120 is exactly that. This would allow full-time students to more easily complete bachelor’s degrees in three years, although I expect more part-time students to take up these programs.
After reading this news, I immediately started thinking about the implications for the higher education ecosystem. (I do some of my best thinking while exercising.) Here are my thoughts after taking some more time to digest the issue.
Other accreditors will be pressured to follow suit. With the end of regional accreditation boundaries during the Trump administration, a few colleges have voluntarily turned to accreditors that have historically not served their area. And the U.S. Department of Education just cleared the first Florida public college to start the process of moving to a different accreditor following the state’s law that public institutions change accreditors every cycle. This means that any accreditor that does not follow with a process to allow for shorter degrees runs the risk of losing institutions to an accreditor that is willing to do so, and some states are likely to pressure colleges to switch to more amenable accreditors. But…
Will the U.S. Department of Education respond? During the Biden administration’s war of words with Florida regarding accreditation, ED posted a piece putting a stake in the ground against accreditation shopping. The Department of Education could potentially issue guidance saying that degrees shorter than historical norms would place accreditors under additional scrutiny, or this issue could come up when the federal National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity reviews accreditors. If ED responds, expect lawsuits as well as a great deal of pressure to state exactly how many credits must be required for a particular credential.
This upends the intricate network of cross-subsidies in higher education. It is a well-known fact within higher education industry insiders that certain activities subsidize others. For example, lower-division courses tend to subsidize upper-division courses and humanities and social science courses tend to subsidize laboratory science courses. Shorter bachelor’s degree programs in professional fields will cut the number of general education or elective courses that disproportionately come from lower-cost fields of study. It’s not just the lost tuition dollars that will affect colleges—it’s that the average cost of instruction per credit hour will likely rise.
This will primarily affect programs and colleges serving a larger share of adult learners. I don’t think that selective liberal arts colleges and flagship public universities will be cutting bachelor’s degrees too far below 120 credit hours unless state legislatures change funding models to require it. But students who are not looking for the traditional residential experience will be clamoring for quicker and cheaper options, and colleges that serve these students will follow suit. This will place pressures on the finances of colleges that are often struggling, but they will likely choose shorter programs over losing students entirely. Another item worth watching is whether there is a push to shorten master’s degrees to fewer than 30 credits. This could play out across most universities given fierce competition in this area.
Transfer students will see fewer benefits. It may become possible for a student who starts at a particular college to finish a bachelor’s degree in 90 credits by reducing general education credits. But since the number of credits within a major is less likely to change, transfer students will not benefit as much. Transfer students already frequently see a large number of credits not transfer in a way that helps them complete, and reducing general education credits may even make this worse.
I will be keeping a close eye on how this situation develops over the next few years, as it is potentially one of the biggest changes to occur in the last decade.
Robert Kelchen 
I thought I read that these degrees were created by reducing electives credits, not general education credits. With other colleges considering a three-year degree option, the four-year degree wasn’t being eliminated in order to accommodate transfer students. For students who never transfer and know what degree they want to major in early on, a three-year degree is perfect.
Quite a few of the electives are likely to be general education, and I thought that this also came from reducing some gen ed credits. The IHE piece mentioned that at least some gen ed courses were kept, but there will be pressure to cut that.
I guess I’m used to working with transfer-friendly institutions where the general ed courses are tightly controlled so that more electives are available to slot in transfer credits. I was fortunate to attend the Georgetown meeting this year where a number of the institutions planning and piloting three year bachelor’s met. It surfaced during the discussions that most were considering eliminating “elective credits.” My assumption is that reducing the number of general education credits is perceived as more controversial and there are a number of hurdles that need to be cleared in the approval process.