College Doesn't Need to Take Four Years

"American colleges inherited the four-year model of undergraduate education from their medieval forerunners, largely because there was no practical way the range of classical education could be completed in less time.

But by the end of the 20th century, college curriculums had added much beyond the old classics. From the 1960s through the 1990s higher education absorbed vocational training: physical therapy, accounting, marketing, hospitality management, even culinary arts. Mastery of these pursuits doesn't always require a uniform four-year program. The core of, say, a hospitality degree might require only one year of study. An accounting major might need two years in the classroom but a third outside. All the while, the costs of the mandated four-year degree continue to soar. So why are colleges and universities still stuck in the four-year groove?

The standard bachelor's degree requires the completion of 120 credit hours. But as many as 30 of those credits are earned in elective courses. Such electives often have no clear objective relevant to the students' goals, and they often function as little more than diversions from more rigorous courses in students' majors. Worse still, they can even force the four-year degree to extend to five years because of conflicting course and department schedules.

Colleges and universities should reconsider the need to collect credits beyond the major and general education requirements, particularly for vocationally focused degrees. This would eliminate approximately one year of required instruction, with all its cost in time and resources.

If colleges prefer not to reduce the minimum number of required credits, they might consider alternative ways of collecting the required elective credits. They might, for example, allow students to earn them from technical or trade colleges, which are often located within the same town as the university. Students who add a 30-credit-hour program at a technical school to their university curriculum can walk away with both the university degree and enough credits for a licensable occupation at the same time.

Similarly, undergraduate students could replace elective requirements with what are called "micro-credentials." These are training initiatives from businesses and employers that can provide enhanced skills and abilities for the working world. Micro-credentials would give students more career options and deepen preparation for their intended careers. In this way, a student working toward a bachelor's degree in hospitality management could also complete a certificate in culinary arts, and an architecture student could add a professional certificate in one of the construction trades.

The Society for Human Resource Management conducted a survey in July 2021 on the views of employers and employees about these kinds of alternative credentials. The survey found that 94% of executives, 93% of supervisors, and 91% of human resources professionals see people without a degree and holding only alternative credentials "to be about the same or better than those who only hold traditional educational backgrounds." Alternative credentials are already held by 45% of workers, while 49% are considering earning one.

Another possibility is that America's employers and workers could consider, in many fields, simply junking the four-year system. The rising price of education, and the resulting national student-debt crisis, has cost Americans $1.75 trillion, up from $481 billion in 2006. Over the last 20 years the average cost of college tuition and fees at public four-year institutions has risen 179% -- for an average annual increase of 9%, outpacing inflation by 171.5%. At the same time, 39 million Americans have dropped out of higher education, unable to go the four-year distance. Moving to a three-year plan would cut tuition-and-fees by as much as 25%, which at four-year private institutions, is as much as $30,000.

If the pull of these arguments isn't enough to bring about reform of American education, there is an economic push that might. We are now into the sixth year of a decline in undergraduate enrollments, largely due to a simple shortage in this generation of 18-to-22-year-olds. Since the spring of 2020, the college student population has shrunk by 1.3 million. In January, Pennsylvania's new governor, Josh Shapiro, signed an executive order eliminating the requirement of a college degree for 65,000 state jobs. It's a move that will probably be followed by governors in more states facing tight labor markets. Dropping back to a three-year degree would be a recruitment attraction for students concerned about the costs of tuition, especially if four-year degrees increasingly cease to guarantee middle-class employment.

Even while it has kept the medieval costumes and Latin diplomas at graduation, higher education has always responded to new situations and new environments. The time has come for new ways of thinking about the four-year straitjacket. There will always be a place for university education in the classical mode -- a place for Latin, history and the liberal arts. But there should also be a practical shape to education within the university, one that will meet the diversifying needs of a rapidly changing nation.

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Mr. Wyatt is senior executive director for statewide online education in the Utah System of Higher Education. Mr. Guelzo is director of the initiative on politics and statesmanship in Princeton University's James Madison Program." [1]

1. College Doesn't Need to Take Four Years
Wyatt, Scott L; Guelzo, Allen C.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 03 Feb 2023: A.15.