December 17, 2009 « The Three-Year Degree (Part I) »
This two-part Executive Briefing on the Three-year Degree was prepared for university-level senior decision-makers.
Part I of this Executive Briefing assesses the current situation. Part II continues this assessment with key points of consideration in adopting such degrees.
The frequency and the intensity of calls for three-year college degrees is growing. Recently, Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, former federal secretary of education, and former president of the University of Tennessee, warned in a Newsweek article that American universities might suffer a fate similar to that of American automakers 40 years ago.
Alexander sees the 1960's automakers and today's universities as victims of their own success, a success that reinforced their conservatism and their unwillingness to adopt new ideas.
There is another way to describe the parallel between the pre-Japanese-era auto industry and the pre-for-profit university industry. During their halcyon days, both industries became organically inefficient during, and perhaps because of, a long period in which they enjoyed the fruits of a captive market with little or no real competition.
The call for three-year degrees comes not only from socio-moral conservatives like Alexander. It comes from higher education visionaries who seek to lead us out of the thicket of organizational indirection imposed by the 19th Century guild, the vestiges of which permeate the industry's culture to this very day. The calls also come from economists who warn us of the deepening affordability crisis, and from parents who can no longer afford to subsidize four year degrees that drag on into their fifth or sixth year.
Working Adults
Perhaps the most influential group supporting the three-year degree is made up of working adult students and prospective students. While there is no organized voice for this market segment, these students are voting their preference with their feet.
With roughly 40% market share, working adult students represent the largest single subgroup in higher education’s degree-seeking population. For these students (and for working adults who want to become students), a degree that takes four to six years to complete is a deal-breaker. Such students will enroll in universities that can get them out in less than four years. Traditional higher education seems not to understand this market. Working adults are suspicious—and often rightly so—of institutions that answer every question related to efficiency with unsupportable claims about academic rigor. They are attracted to a university that makes simple and clear claims about the efficiency of the institution’s program . . . and backs them up with action. Ceterus paribus, working adults choose the shortest certain path to the degree they seek.
In a limited way, three-year baccalaureates have been possible since the time we first stuffed the baccalaureate inside a four-year box. A capable and motivated student could double up on credits where possible and, with hard work and luck, graduate in three years.
More recently, for-profit schools – understanding that time is the ruling commodity for working adults – have constructed programs making it possible to earn a degree in three years while allowing the student to retain a semblance of normalcy in family and work. A few not-for-profits have also developed three-year degrees. These schools have been successful in their markets.
Yet, despite these few for-profit and independent college programs, the true three-year degree is largely unavailable. If substantial segments of the higher education market want the three-year degree, why are they not widely available? The answer lies in the detail behind Senator Alexander’s warning.
We have all heard that higher education places dead last among major economic sectors in the rate at which it diffuses innovations. However, unlike other sectors of the economy, where corporate boards, executives, and even customers define innovation policy, higher education’s dullness lies not with its leaders but with the prevailing culture.
Most university administrators see the advantages of offering their products in various formats to different markets. The professoriate, on the other hand, rhapsodizes about an antiquated model of higher education in which professors ruled and students took copious notes. There was no substantial corpus of knowledge derived from the learning and pedagogical sciences. Only the smart and the rich attended. Efficiency was not a concern. There was little infrastructure or superstructure. The system operated in a 19th Century agrarian economy serving 2-3% of the theoretical market.
In defense of its interests and perhaps simply resisting change, organizations representing the professoriate stand against the findings of modern learning sciences, which have identified many ways to reduce time to proficiency while increasing retention and transferability. They assert that what they teach can’t be taught faster, better, or differently, and that less time in their seats, necessarily leads to inferior learning. This perspective reminds me of the scope of the guild. It has been only a few years since the language of some regional accrediting bodies asserted that quality learning could not take place more than a few miles away from the main campus. Perhaps that language remains in some of today's documents.
Robert W. Tucker is President and CEO of InterEd, Inc.
Views by leaders in higher education are welcome.
Part II continues with key points in developing three-year degrees.
Reader Comments (2)
A truly integrated 3-year degree has been available for over 10 years. This degree is not compressed. It is 120 credits in 6 semesters without summers or intersessions. It's win-win for both students (cuts 25% of college costs) and for the institution (cuts delivery costs by almost 25%). See: http://tomprofblog.mit.edu/2009/05/12/947-highly-successful-3-year-degree-program-graduate-10th-class-in-may-2009/
I recommend that readers look at the 3-year degree offered by Southern New Hampshire University and referenced above by Professor Seidman. It is a good example of one way to do it right. While Seidman indicates that the degree is not compressed, I think differences in usage are common when we speak of compression.
If executed as described in Prof. Seidman's blog, progress toward this degree is measured by outcomes and not seat-time. Thus, in principle, time-to-degree could be as compressed as much or little as the learners' competencies permit. Equally important, this degree appears to exploit many findings from modern learning sciences to increase the depth and generalizability of learning outcomes by increasing the authenticity of the earning processes.
Read the blog, but one of the many attractive features of this degree is the fact that it reflects a serious effort to eliminate content bloat by moving toward object-oriented content development and management. The degree also embeds horizontal learning in the activities (I assume the assessments as well). Such learning processes are generally the most significant source of leverage in both compression and outside gains in outcomes.
Indeed, for some markets, I would think it possible that this degree might be compressed even further to a 2.5 year average completion time. Militating against a shorter time is the fact that the market for this degree appears to be traditional-aged students who have yet to experience the professional workplace. Most of our findings suggest that higher levels of compression, assuming the same or better learning outcomes, are more likely to be possible with working adults where authentic activities and outcomes are integrated back into their individual and collective places of work.
This degree and a few others similar to it should provide clear evidence that compression is possible, and that it is not necessary -- it is irresponsible -- to teach the way our great grand-professors taught. They had an excuse. We have 50 years of learning sciences that create a moral obligation to do better.
Given the quality of education, the outcomes focus, the retention-to-graduation, and the financial benefits, it is difficult to imagine any serious empirical challenges to Prof. Seidman's "win/win" claim. He might also have broadened the stakeholder beneficiaries list to include "wins" for taxpayers, parents, and the economy, all of which are badly in need of a win that produces the kind of leverage seen in education.