{"id":98036,"date":"2026-03-18T16:59:56","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T20:59:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/?p=98036"},"modified":"2026-03-18T17:01:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T21:01:31","slug":"faster-thinner-colleges-are-swiftly-trimming-a-b-a-degree-to-three-years-marcus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/2026\/03\/18\/faster-thinner-colleges-are-swiftly-trimming-a-b-a-degree-to-three-years-marcus\/","title":{"rendered":"Faster, thinner: Colleges are swiftly trimming a B.A. degree to three years [Marcus]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/hechingerreport.org\/faster-thinner-colleges-bachelors-degree-three-years\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Faster, thinner: Colleges are swiftly trimming a B.A. degree to three years<\/strong> <\/a>&#8212; from hechingerreport.org by Jon Marcus<br \/>\n<em>Needing to fill seats and facing demands for faster routes to jobs, more colleges are shortening degree programs<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">That\u2019s an option being made available by colleges and universities with astonishing speed \u2014 especially in the notoriously slow-moving world of higher education: an entirely new kind of bachelor\u2019s degree muscling into the space between the traditional four-year version and the two-year associate degree.\u00a0Three-year degrees have existed, but they simply jammed those 120 credits into fewer semesters.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">At least one school, Ensign College in Utah, will convert all of its bachelor\u2019s degrees\u00a0into the new, reduced-credit, three-year kind, it announced in February.\u00a0Nearly 60 other universities and colleges\u00a0are planning, considering or have already launched them in some disciplines. States including Indiana have required or are considering requiring their public universities to add reduced-credit bachelor\u2019s degrees. Even graduate and professional schools are being pressed to shorten the duration of degrees.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\"><strong>Even more than employers, consumers have lost patience with the time and expense it takes to get a four-year bachelor\u2019s degree, according to the advocates and politicians pushing schools to offer them. More than half of students who start down the conventional four-year path today take\u00a0even longer than four years, according to the Department of Education.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><em>Also from Jon Marcus, see:<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/hechingerreport.org\/behind-ideological-attacks-on-higher-ed-surprising-bipartisan-reforms-are-happening\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Behind ideological attacks on higher ed, surprising bipartisan reforms are happening<\/strong><\/a>&#8212; from hechingerreport.org by Jon Marcus<br \/>\n<em>Long sought by both the right and left, some changes could protect consumers and lower costs<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Faster, thinner: Colleges are swiftly trimming a B.A. degree to three years &#8212; from hechingerreport.org by Jon Marcus Needing to fill seats and facing demands for faster routes to jobs, more colleges are shortening degree programs That\u2019s an option being made available by colleges and universities with astonishing speed \u2014 especially in the notoriously slow-moving [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[113,86,209,115,57,3,7,560,436,310,212,321,214],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21st-century","category-change","category-changing-business-models","category-colleges","category-cost-of-getting-a-degree","category-higher-education","category-learning-ecosystem","category-parents-guardians","category-reinvent","category-staying-relevant","category-surviving","category-united-states","category-universities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98036"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98040,"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98036\/revisions\/98040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}