What to Know About 3-Year Bachelor’s Degree Programs

Most U.S. bachelor’s degrees require 120 credits, a century-old standard that had little to do with student needs when it was created. Now, a growing number of colleges are experimenting with shorter, three-year programs that could save students time and money and get them into the workforce sooner.

Schools are testing 90-credit bachelor’s degrees, typically completed in three years without heavier semester loads, in a bid to cut costs and better align with workforce demands.

“This is a way for institutions to make a public statement,” Madeleine Green, executive director of the College-in-3 Exchange told BestColleges. “We can innovate, we can be responsive to what we’re hearing about workforce needs, we can be responsive to the cost issues.”

See if these new degrees fit your needs to graduate sooner and with a more streamlined curriculum.

A three-year bachelor’s program is either an online or in-person program typically requiring 90-96 credits instead of 120 and reflects a broader shift toward workforce-centered programs for adult learners.

These are different from accelerated bachelor’s programs like the University of Minnesota Morris, which condenses 120 credits into three years. A three-year program is friendly to students new to higher education and doesn’t condense more learning into a more intense time-frame.

The three-year coursework still involves general education courses and material from the 30 eliminated credits, Green said. Accreditors, who keep programs accountable to student success and federal law, build in assessments within these programs to measure learning outcomes, student satisfaction, demographics, standard practice, and material mastery.

“More and more institutions are thinking about learning outcomes, competencies — all the things that I think are wonderful fallout from the focus on adult learners to try to move away from the idea that seat time equals credit hours,” Green said.

If you find that your three-year program isn’t for you, schools often let you transfer into the original four-year program or a similar four-year program to the one you’re in if there isn’t a parallel.

Advocates say the model could shave a full year of tuition and fees, thus reducing student debt, and boost persistence and retention in the first two years when dropouts are most common.

Programs often target applied fields and STEM areas such as business, computer science, health, graphic design, and criminal justice.

“If a student’s path through college is both shorter and clearer, that should help with persistence,” Green said.

She also said rethinking popular degrees is driving institutions to sync with employers.

For instance, Southeast Missouri State University consulted law enforcement organizations that hire its graduates to get advice on which courses to keep and which to cut for its criminal justice program in development, Green said. The school informally asked local law enforcement, “Does this matter to you?” And they would respond, “Not a bit. If they have a baccalaureate and a major in criminal justice, we’re happy.”

Currently the College-in-3 Exchange has 60 member schools, including these listed below. However, most are still awaiting accreditation for their three-year 90-credit programs, so you can expect to see more programs if accreditation goes well.