Three-year bachelor’s degrees are no longer merely a thought experiment. In my home state of Massachusetts, the board of higher education announced in February that it will accept pilot proposals for these three-year degrees.
Across the country, at least one U.S. institution is now expanding formats across all of its majors, and an increasing number of graduate school admissions leaders appear open to admitting students with bachelor’s degrees requiring 90 credits rather than the traditional 120.
College in the United States keeps getting more expensive, and the three-year degree is one response to that pressure. The three-year degree could offer real savings in time and money for many students. But these degrees do not exist in a vacuum: If they gain serious traction in the U.S., they will likely be judged primarily by their acceptance by graduate admissions offices and hiring committees and their performance in other, future selection processes.
I do not predict that U.S. three-year degrees will fail outright, but there are things worth thinking through carefully. Choices made now will determine how much these credentials will deliver on their promise later.
Related: Faster, Thinner: Colleges are swiftly trimming a B.A. degree to three years
Friction between three-year degrees and four-year expectations is not new. Three-year bachelor’s degree holders from India have long experienced a wide range of outcomes in U.S. graduate admissions processes. Some Indian applicants have been admitted directly to their program of choice, while other applicants have received conditional acceptance with extra coursework requirements, perhaps through a postgraduate diploma (PGDip) — a short credential designed (in part) to bridge the gap between Indian three-year bachelor’s degrees and U.S. expectations.
PGDips are not an afterthought in the Indian higher education ecosystem. They appear as a distinct credential in federal and institutional reporting, rather than being folded into other categories such as master’s degrees or graduate certificate programs.
Meanwhile, World Education Services (an international credential evaluation service) acknowledges that some three-year Indian bachelor’s degrees may be considered equivalent to a U.S. bachelor’s degree only under specific conditions, a reminder that U.S. universities ultimately set their own admissions policies.
If India, a country that has invested heavily in its higher education system and has developed an established bridging credential, still cannot guarantee consistent global recognition of its three-year bachelor’s degrees, that should give U.S. institutions pause before proceeding.
Here’s an additional complication: While the U.S. experiments with three-year degrees, India seems to be moving the other way. India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, a sweeping federal reform intended to reshape education from early childhood through higher education, plainly endorses expanded four-year undergraduate formats. The irony in this mismatch is hard to ignore.
Global trends aside, three-year degrees in the U.S. could work well for students. But I suspect some graduates will only discover later that they need an additional credential, extra coursework or a bridge program (like the PGDip) to access the opportunities they assumed would be available. The fourth year is not eliminated in these scenarios; it is simply pushed later. At that point, why not just complete a four-year degree from the start?
Related: Momentum builds behind a way to lower the cost of college: A degree in three years
If the U.S. moves away from the four-year model that others seem actively trying to adopt, it risks reproducing the same uncertainties that international students, like those from India, have long navigated. Some considerations may include:
- The challenge of differing evaluation practices. Graduate and professional programs are currently inconsistent in how they assess three-year degrees, for example, yet three-year degrees are actively marketed as viable pathways to advanced study.
- The unlikelihood that equivalency will be resolved automatically. The reception of these three-year degrees may, in part, depend on where these programs emerge. Institutional reputation may affect perceptions of legitimacy when launching a new program.
- General education classes and electives are often omitted in abbreviated bachelor’s programs. Clarity about those academic choices and their implications for learning will help students assess the trade-offs involved.
- Since students are actively accepting uncertainty in exchange for lower costs, thorough information on graduate admissions and labor-market outcomes should be disseminated to prospective three-year-degree students as soon as it’s available.
As it stands today, in global admissions and hiring contexts, degree length still often serves as a proxy for readiness, sometimes reasonably and sometimes not.
The acceptance of three-year degrees could certainly be a meaningful step toward making U.S. higher education more affordable. To their credit, those pushing for the three-year degree seem responsibly transparent about the risks involved. But good intentions are not the same as evidence.
Until we have more evidence, the promotion of three-year degrees asks students to take on real risk in exchange for something that has not yet been proven.
John Anderson is associate director of admissions at the Fletcher School at Tufts University in Massachusetts.
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
This story about three-year degrees was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.
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