Last week, Bob Jones University president Steve Pettit announced his resignation. He will leave office at the end of the academic year in May. His resignation came only a few months after the board re-elected him.

He left amid a conflict over Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. He has sent a letter to the board chair, John Lewis. In the letter, Pettit said Lewis allegedly kept information away from Pettit and obstructed a Title IX investigation.

Now Pettit has announced that Lewis will leave the board. The Greenville News reported that a press release said, “Late this afternoon, I was notified that Bob Jones University Board of Trustees Chairman Dr. John Lewis has resigned effective immediately.”

It is unclear if Pettit will rescind his decision to leave the university.

Hannah Nunez’s job at Northern Arizona University requires her to be a few different things at once: an advocate, a compassionate ear, a repository of information about campus resources. As a behavioral health coordinator, part of her role includes screening potential counseling patients. During a roughly 20-minute appointment—either in person or virtually, depending on client preference—students describe the problem they’re facing, and she helps them decide the best course of action, which, she says, isn’t always counseling.

“They might mention they’re struggling academically, and that might be a flag for: we’re going to talk to them about tutoring,” she said.

Some students seem to be looking for someone to talk to, and those are the students Nunez typically refers to counseling. But before she does, she tries to figure out if they have a problem that can be solved instead by accessing any of the other extensive on-campus resources at NAU.

“It can feel really validating for folks to come in with what might be an overwhelming, scary, daunting feel, like there’s not really any hope … and then to walk away with very tangible steps—‘I can join this club, I have an intake appointment,’” she said.

Triaging Students

The principle behind such screening processes is much the same as triage in a hospital emergency room, where medical professionals assess the nature and urgency of a patient’s needs.

Though different institutions have different names for the process—triage, screening or “Path to Care,” as Northern Arizona calls it—they all work in a similar manner. Rather than sit through a traditional hourlong intake appointment, each new client who approaches the counseling center is scheduled for a short appointment, which varies in length according to the institution but is typically less than half an hour. (Some universities precede these appointments by asking students to fill out online questionnaires such as a depression screening, for example.)

During the appointment, which is often held over the phone, students provide the triage counselor with the same kind of information they might provide during a full-length intake appointment: demographic details, their reasons for seeking help, their history of mental health treatment, risk factors and more.

The counselors then use that information to determine whether, when and from whom the student should receive counseling, as well as whether they should be directed to any other campus resources—say, a tutoring center if their main source of stress is an upcoming organic chemistry exam. The appointment can also be used to give students additional details about what counseling will entail; at Northern Arizona, that includes information about the cost of an appointment ($25 for an individual session) and how many sessions they are allowed per semester.

Colleges and universities that utilize triage say the goal is to assess students thoroughly, but in less time. One of the challenges of implementing these systems is training counseling center staff in how to complete short, fast-paced evaluations.

“It took a little bit of comfort-building for our staff to realize they could gather all of that information in that short amount of time,” said Natalie Hernandez DePalma, the senior director of counseling and psychological services at Pennsylvania State University, which has included some version of triage in its counseling services since 2009.

Nunez said it can also be challenging to teach new employees about all the campus’s resources, which she mainly knows from working at NAU for about 10 years.

Eliminating Waits

But some institutions that have implemented such triage systems have greatly improved the quality and reach of their mental health care. The counseling center at NAU, a large university with more than 20,000 students on its main campus, introduced a triage process about two years ago and is currently operating with no wait list for the first time in at least 10 years, according to Carl Dindo, director of NAU’s counseling services.

As requests for mental health services have skyrocketed on campuses, triage systems have become a popular tool for managing demand. In 2020, the Center for Collegiate Mental Health’s annual report, which included data from 567 counseling centers, showed that 42 percent utilized some sort of brief screening appointment as their first clinical contact with patients.

Requiring students to undergo a quick assessment before they can sit down with a counselor allows more students to get care—and the right kind of care—more quickly. Additionally, triage appointments sometimes direct students toward resources that the counselors believe will help more than therapy, meaning that students who won’t necessarily benefit from counseling don’t need multiple hourlong sessions to figure that out.

Some college mental health experts say college counseling centers have long promoted themselves as a catch-all resource, overburdening their staffs by drawing students who might be better served elsewhere on campus.

Similarly, Nunez said, students have historically been funneled into counseling because it didn’t occur to staff to direct them elsewhere.

Now screenings make that a fundamental part of the process.

However, centers that use screenings are quick to note that the goal is not to push students away from counseling.

“Most of the students who come that request counseling and want counseling, we connect them just by virtue of the fact that they want it,” said Dindo. “When you have somebody who just got to school and maybe they’re not familiar with what resources exist … I think you have a lot of people sort of telling them maybe what they need or what they think they should access. I think we’ve had a lot of experiences of students coming in saying, ‘My professor told me I should come talk to somebody’ or ‘My mom is concerned about me and she told me I should check out counseling.’ In those instances—both at the Path to Care screening appointment, but also even in counseling—we’ll have really intentional, meaningful conversations around, ‘Well, what do you think you need?’”

Some experts also express concerns about the additional burden that triaging duty places on often-overworked counseling center employees. At both Northern Arizona and Penn State, screening appointments are spread among many staff members; each employee at NAU is required to do about five hours a week of triaging, while each Penn State employee does about two and a half hours. (Triaging at Penn State is completed by counselors, while at NAU it is performed by both counseling services staff and behavioral health team members, who primarily work on the health side of the university's integrated health and mental health system.)

Additional Benefits

Advocates for mental health triage systems say they also help counselors figure out which patients to prioritize: who would benefit from having a counseling appointment tomorrow and who can wait until next week.

“I’m a student and I call up and I say, ‘I need an appointment,’ and they say, ‘OK, the first available intake or the first time is two weeks down the road.’ Well, if I’m suicidal, if I’m having homicidal thoughts, waiting two weeks is not a good idea at all,” said Marcus Hotaling, director of Union College’s counseling center and president of the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors. “So that’s why a lot of centers now, including our own, have moved to a same-day appointment or same-day triage, so that we can at least get eyes on you.”

Nunez said there are unintended benefits of a shorter screening, as well. Students who are new to therapy often struggle or feel awkward talking about themselves for an hour at a time. Shorter screenings let those nervous students “test the waters a little bit,” hopefully making for a better counseling experience all around.

As a higher ed leader, requests to attend conferences can be incessant and overwhelming, but they often warrant serious consideration, writes Maggy Ralbovsky.

While this academic year saw the largest one-year increase in full-time faculty members’ average salaries in over three decades, that still wasn’t enough to stop their real wages from falling due to inflation, the American Association of University Professors noted Thursday alongside its latest salary survey data.

They are preliminary data for the 2022–23 academic year; AAUP plans to release the final data in July. You can see trend data at this link.

According to the preliminary data, the 6.5 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers was enough to turn the 4.1 percent average salary increase into a 2.4 percent drop in real wages—the third consecutive year of real-wage declines for all full-time faculty.

The decline last year was worse, when a 7 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index—the fastest inflation since 1981—dropped real wages 5 percent, per the AAUP. The organization said that was the largest real-wage decrease on record since it began tracking in 1972.

For this year’s survey, nearly 900 U.S. colleges and universities provided data for about 370,000 full-time and 90,000 part-time faculty members, the AAUP said. Over 500 institutions also provided data on senior administrators, it said.

Glenn Colby, the organization’s senior researcher, said the regular changes between the preliminary and final data amount to “nothing that moves the overall findings.”

He said, “Typically, maybe 20 or so institutions submit data late to us and we add those, and then maybe another 20 make some corrections because some of the data is estimates that people come up with” and later find the actual values.

According to the AAUP data, the average full-time full professor makes $149,600 (these averages include all kinds of institutions except associate’s degree–focused institutions that lack standard faculty ranks).

The average for these full-time full professors at public colleges and universities was $140,400, while it was $188,400 at private, nonprofit, non–religiously affiliated institutions.

The average full-time assistant professor makes about $88,600. The average for the public variety was $87,300, while the average for the private, nonprofit, non–religiously affiliated kind was $100,600.

Salaries averaged much lower for full-time, generally non-tenure-track faculty members: $73,000 for lecturers and $66,300 for instructors. Colby cautioned that sometimes institutions offer tenure to lecturers or use the term “instructor” nontraditionally. He also noted visiting faculty are counted as instructors in the data.

The data also show significant gender disparities: male full-time faculty averaged $117,800 compared to $96,900 for female full-time faculty.

Looking again just at full-time full professors, men averaged $156,800 while women averaged $136,500. There were far more male full professors than female.

The male-female gap persisted, but was much narrower, among the lower faculty ranks.

For example, male assistant professors averaged $93,000, compared to $84,800 for female assistant professors. Closest to gender parity were instructors: $68,800 for men, $64,500 for women.

The data aren’t broken down by race.

Beyond full-timers, AAUP says its annual “Faculty Compensation Survey is the largest source of data on part-time adjunct faculty members and draws attention to the appallingly low rates of pay and benefits offered to them at many institutions.”

These part-time data are reported from a smaller set of institutions, 352, and they are from last academic year instead of this one, “to enable institutions to report data for an entire academic year,” the AAUP says. They show part-timers only averaged $3,900 for each standard course section (generally three credit hours) they taught.

Colby said 48 percent of faculty nationwide are part-timers.

“It’s hard to eke out a living doing that,” he said.

The College and University Professional Association for Human Resources has reached broadly similar conclusions about the pay trend this academic year.

“Median pay for employees across the higher education workforce increased substantially from 2021–22,” the association said on its website. “Raises were the largest seen in the past seven years, and all position types experienced an increase of at least 1.11 percentage points compared to the previous year.”

But, it said, “Tenure-track and non-tenure-track teaching faculty continued to receive the smallest pay increases,” and “This year, pay increases for all employee categories again fell markedly short of the persistently high inflation rate, even though these are the largest increases seen in the past seven years.”

“Across higher ed, employees are still being paid less than they were in 2019–20 in inflation-adjusted dollars,” the association said. “Tenure-track faculty salary increases have not kept pace with inflation for any year depicted (i.e., from 2016–17 through 2022–23), and non-tenure-track salary increases last met or exceeded inflation in 2016–17, so full-time faculty in general continue to be paid less every year in inflation-adjusted dollars. High inflation has only exacerbated the gaps in pay increases faculty experience in relation to other higher ed employees.”

The Biden administration would prohibit blanket bans that “categorically” bar transgender students from participating in the sport consistent with their gender identity under a proposed amendment to federal civil rights law.

The amendment to the regulations for Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 would require schools, colleges and universities to set sport-specific criteria that take into account “important educational objectives” as well as the level of competition and education level of those involved if the institution is applying sex-related rules that would limit or deny a transgender student’s ability to participate on a team consistent with their gender identity.

“Some objectives, such as the disapproval of transgender students or desire to harm a particular student, would not qualify as important educational objectives,” a senior department official whom the department asked not to be identified said in a call with reporters.

The proposed rule comes as transgender rights have become a lightning rod in American politics; a wave of states has banned transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports at the K-12 and postsecondary level. The Associated Press reports that 20 states have adopted restrictions on transgender athletes. Lawmakers also have passed bills that would govern which bathrooms transgender people can use and their access to gender-affirming care. The Supreme Court ruled Thursday to leave in place an injunction against West Virginia that blocks the state from enforcing its ban on transgender student athletes at the college level as well as in middle and high schools.

The Biden administration’s rule means that colleges and universities will risk their federal funding if they follow state laws that ban participation in athletics by transgender students. Lawsuits challenging the rule are likely.

“Federal civil rights law is the law of the land, and we would be eager to ensure its full satisfaction in every school community around the country,” the senior department official said, adding that she’s confident in the department’s legal position.

The institutions’ adopted criteria also need to minimize harm to transgender students who are not able to participate. Institutions could lose their access to federal funds if they don’t comply with the proposed regulation, which is not yet final. The department will take public comments on the amendment before finalizing the rule.

The Biden administration’s latest proposal builds off its proposed Title IX regulations that expanded protections for transgender students. The administration said last summer it would issue a separate rule governing transgender students’ participation in school sports.

“Every student should be able to have the full experience of attending school in America, including participating in athletics, free from discrimination,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement. “Being on a sports team is an important part of the school experience for students of all ages.”

Conservatives, Republican lawmakers and Republican attorneys general have criticized the provisions for transgender students in public comments, arguing the regulations could deny female athletes an equal athletic opportunity. House Republicans, led by North Carolina representative Virginia Foxx, who chairs the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, have introduced a bill that would make allowing a transgender woman to participate in an athletic program for women or girls a violation of Title IX.

LGBTQ+ advocacy groups praised the administration’s announcement Thursday.

“Transgender youth are an integral part of every school across this country,” said Imani Rupert-Gordon, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. “We applaud the Department of Education for recognizing that the law requires that transgender students must be treated fairly and equally and as respected members of their school communities.”

The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal organization, said the proposed rules “are a slap in the face to female athletes who deserve equal opportunity to compete in their sports.”

“The Department of Education’s rewriting of Title IX degrades women and tells them that their athletic goals and placements do not matter,” ADF senior counsel Christiana Kiefer said in a statement. “When society and the law try to ignore reality, people get hurt. In sports, it’s women and girls who pay the price. Thankfully, a growing number of states are stepping up to protect women’s athletics.”

The proposed regulation would allow schools and colleges to limit the participation of transgender students if they set the required criteria.

“This requirement is consistent with our regulations’ long-standing recognition that schools may deny students opportunities to participate on particular male or female teams based on sex in certain circumstances,” the official said.

Nothing in the proposed rule changes Title IX’s requirements that women and girls be afforded equal athletic opportunity, according to a department fact sheet.

The department said it expected elementary school students to generally be able to participate in the school sports team consistent with their gender identity because it would be difficult for a school to meet the requirements in the proposed amendment.

“Participating in school athletics is an important component of education and provides valuable physical, social, academic, and mental health benefits to students,” the fact sheet states. “Younger students, in particular, benefit from the chance to join a team and learn about teamwork, leadership, and physical fitness.”

However, the department expects that sex-related criteria could limit the participate of some transgender students at the high school and college level, “when [the criteria] enable the school to achieve an important educational objective, such as fairness in competition,” per the fact sheet.

The senior department official said other educational objectives could include protecting safety in the sport. The official stressed that the school or institution would have to look at the needs of a sport and the needs for the grade or education level of students.

“I would caution any school about taking something off the shelf without offering that particularized consideration,” the official said.

Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, said in a statement that the organization was grateful for the department’s actions to protect transgender students.

“NWLC has been fighting for over 50 years to see Title IX fulfill its promise to ensure all students are given equal opportunities and protected from sex discrimination,” Graves said in a statement. “Extremist politicians continue to manufacture panic over trans girls’ inclusion in school and school athletics instead of addressing the real changes and protections girls need in sports, including equal time and resources in school sports or addressing the rampant sexual abuse of student athletes. LGBTQI students deserve to learn and thrive—not be targets for state-sponsored bullying and violence.”

Lawmakers across the country tried to enact 563 measures to restrict the teaching of “critical race theory” from 2021 to 2022, according to a new report from the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law.

Of those measures aimed at limiting instructors’ ability to teach about America’s fraught racial history, 241 were adopted, and nearly half borrowed language from Donald Trump’s 2020 executive order against the teaching of “divisive concepts” in public schools.

The report also found that 91 percent of proposed anti-CRT measures, and 94 percent of enacted measures, targeted K-12 schools. Only 20 percent of proposed measures and 12 percent of those enacted targeted institutions of higher education during the same time period; those that were enacted affected just 29 institutions of higher education, compared to 226 K-12 schools.

Still, the report’s authors wrote, “while individual measures aimed at systems of higher education are less numerous than those targeting local school districts, such measures impact hundreds of thousands of college and graduate students.”

The report, part of a larger project tracking attacks on critical race theory, was undertaken by the law school’s Critical Race Studies Department, also highlights more recent data, which suggest that the barrage of anti-CRT proposals from state and local government officials is not slowing down.

“Government officials at all levels are introducing an equal or greater number of measures in 2023 as they did in 2021 or 2022,” the authors wrote.

Following months of closure talks related to ongoing financial issues, the Board of Trustees at Birmingham-Southern College voted unanimously Wednesday to remain open, AL.com reported.

The private Alabama college has made appeals to state and local authorities in recent months, requesting a $37.5 million lifeline, which lawmakers have not delivered, despite concerns of closure. Birmingham-Southern has also launched an effort to raise $200 million by May 2026.

The meeting on Birmingham-Southern’s fate lasted more than eight hours, according to AL.com.

Though lawmakers have suggested a public bailout for the private college is unlikely, a statement from BSC Board of Trustees chairman Reverend Keith D. Thompson indicated otherwise. He noted in a news release after the vote that the board had “made the informed and thoughtful decision to keep Birmingham-Southern open” and that the college has “been working closely with our allies in state and local government to secure bridge funding.”

BSC’s financial crisis dates back more than a decade. In 2010 it was discovered that errors in administering financial aid cost the college millions of dollars, which then prompted layoffs. The college has also struggled in other areas in the past, including significant leadership turnover. Birmingham-Southern has also struggled with falling enrollment in recent years.

The Biden administration is best known for one thing: vastly overreaching its authority and then acting surprised when it gets pushback. On Feb. 15, the U.S. Department of Education issued a sweeping policy change through informal guidance that expands the definition of third-party servicers and would subject the institutions that contract with these third-party servicers to additional reporting, while the new third-party servicers would be obligated to turn over their contracts to the Department of Education, be held jointly and severally liable for any errors, and be required to undergo annual compliance audits.

The Higher Education Act recognizes organizations that contract with a college or university to help administer or participate in the Title IV financial aid programs as third-party servicers, subject to federal monitoring and compliance requirements. However, the new, broadened definition seems to incorporate a vast majority of activities that occur at a college, not just activities related to student financial aid, such as companies providing courseware or those contractors assisting with student retention. Students reading this might recognize the names of potential third-party servicers like Blackboard or Canvas that could get swept up under the new definition and compliance regime. As a result, nearly every college and university in the country was asking why the department would regulate the private contracts of institutions with companies providing critical education services to students.

The Education Department seemingly sought to target companies that help colleges manage their online programs, but its reach was much broader. The department’s sudden, baffling and contradictory change in guidance confused the entire education and technology community so badly that top education officials were forced to pull back almost immediately, announcing they would postpone implementation for six months while receiving public comment on the guidance for an additional 30 days. The department received more than 1,000 comments, with many higher education associations, colleges and universities asking officials to rescind the guidance (the comment period closed last week).

This bungled rollout of half-baked solutions does little to reduce debt or serve students. The dreadful irony of this action is that increased compliance costs often lead to increased tuition for students. Universities large and small leverage outside providers to improve their overhead efficiency. But as written, the new guidance will increase regulatory burdens, stifle innovation, balloon administrative compliance costs and reduce access to education, particularly for nontraditional learners.

This is yet another move by an administration that misunderstands the operational dynamics on college campuses and the valuable role that technology plays in postsecondary education today. Congress and the department should be focused on how to lower the cost of college while increasing access for students, not pushing the policies of fringe advocacy groups at the expense of students and taxpayers.

The private sector has an important role to play in driving innovation, access, affordability and a higher rate of completion in postsecondary education. Until the Biden administration recognizes this fact, it will continue to offer “solutions” in search of a problem. I urge the administration to listen intently to all those working to fulfill the promise of postsecondary education and work with Congress to ensure our university system is not prevented from supporting students. Our future depends on it.

Virginia Foxx is the chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee and represents the Fifth Congressional District of North Carolina.

Huddled around a table in the Georgetown University Alumni House, roughly two dozen academics convened last week to address two of the most persistent challenges in higher education: improving student outcomes and lowering the cost of a bachelor’s degree. Their proposed solution is an unconventional one—to create a three-year bachelor’s program equivalent to a four-year college degree.

Unlike the other three-year options that exist on the market, their proposal isn’t focused on accelerating bachelor’s degree programs but rather redesigning them to fit within three years. That means cutting off chunks of credits and building a tightly packaged curriculum with all the essentials. While the standard bachelor’s program is 120 credit hours, their proposals require 90 to 100 credits.

“The four-year degree isn’t working for a lot of people,” Lori Carrell, the chancellor of the University of Minnesota at Rochester, told her colleagues around the table, noting higher education’s high cost and low degree attainment, which has “squandered human potential at times.”

Carrell was flanked by Robert Zemsky, an elder statesman of higher education, author and longtime professor at the University of Pennsylvania, which has named a medal for innovation in his honor. Zemsky, who has long pursued the idea of a three-year degree, held court at Georgetown alongside Carrell with representatives from a dozen colleges in attendance.

“There is plenty of time in three years to do almost anything you want to do,” Zemsky told the group’s members, all of whom are working on three-year-degree pilot programs at their institutions.

For Zemsky, the idea has been in motion for well over a decade. In 2009, Newsweek featured him in a cover story that explored the idea of a three-year bachelor’s degree. Zemsky argued at the time that a college degree could be “compressed” and simplified. But the idea never took off, Zemsky believes, because accreditors were resistant to a three-year degree.

Now, nearly 15 years later, the idea has fresh momentum. A dozen colleges are pursuing pilot programs, and accreditors are increasingly willing to consider them.

The Idea

Leveraging their combined connections, Zemsky and Carrell found partners willing to explore the three-year bachelor’s degree and commit to building pilot programs to that end.

The institutions with pilot programs are the American Public University system, Brigham Young University Idaho, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, Merrimack College, New England College, Northwood University, Portland State University, the University of Minnesota at Morris, the University of Minnesota at Rochester, the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh and Utica University. Together they represent a diverse mix of public and private colleges ranging in geography, demographics and program ambitions.

All 12 pilot programs are in different stages of progress. Some institutions, like Georgetown, are only beginning to explore the idea. Others, like Merrimack College and BYU Idaho, have developed ready-to-launch proposals that they hope their respective accreditors will approve. And other institutions have dropped out along the way, shrinking the pilot pool from 14 to 12.

Zemsky and Carrell did not provide a template for a three-year degree, tasking the participants involved with developing their own programs. Zemsky compared it to a box of Lego bricks, noting that colleges can build what they want, “but you have to put it together in a way that makes sense.”

The colleges involved are exploring different pathways to the idea. Officials at Merrimack College note that the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic prompted faculty members to consider new approaches, which opened the door to pursuing a three-year degree program.

“What attracted us to this was an invitation to try to build something new. And this came in the summer of 2021, so we had gone through a very challenging year where a lot of faculty had been forced to do things that they never would have imagined doing if it hadn’t been for the pandemic,” said Sean Condon, provost and senior vice president of academic affairs at Merrimack College.

Indiana University of Pennsylvania decided to explore three-year degrees for an entirely different reason: the loss of faculty members to retrenchments and retirements, said Lori Lombard, a professor and chair of the Department of Communication Disorders, Special Education and Disability Services. Those losses led her to rethink the program’s curriculum.

“We slimmed down our curriculum to what we thought were essentials,” Lombard said, noting that the proposal for her department includes “courses in our curriculum from social sciences and theater” to provide a holistic, multidisciplinary experience packaged in a three-year format. “We took credits away from ourselves and added credits from other disciplines,” Lombard said.

Some institutions suggest cutting electives. The American Public University system, which enrolls a large population of adult learners, is proposing a 90-credit-hour bachelor’s of science in cybersecurity that would eliminate 30 hours of electives while retaining general education courses.

At BYU Idaho, which also enrolls a high number of adult learners, the focus is on building a “nested certificate structure,” according to a summary of the plan, which would offer three certificates plus general education courses that would add up to a total of 90 credit hours for a bachelor’s degree. As with APU, electives would be axed to shorten the degree program.

Neither institution has made a formal proposal to its respective accreditor yet.

But some colleges have taken their plans for a three-year degree to their accrediting body. In March, New England College proposed a 100-credit bachelor’s degree in criminal justice to the New England Commission of Higher Education, which requires 120 credit hours for a bachelor’s degree but may consider exceptions as part of its Policy on Innovation. Ultimately, however, NECHE denied New England College’s request on the grounds that “graduates of 100-credit baccalaureate programs would not receive equivalent benefit” to those pursuing a 120-credit degree, according to a summary of the proposal shared with Inside Higher Ed.

New England College may bring a revised proposal to NECHE in the future, the summary notes.

The Obstacles

Though NECHE dealt a blow to the three-year bachelor’s degree—and has yet to approve a single such program—the commission remains open to the idea.

“The requests before the Commission under its Policy on Innovation to award a baccalaureate degree with fewer than 120 hours has been and will continue to be given extensive and serious attention by the Commission. We applaud all our institutions for their innovative thinking and practices in service to their students,” NECHE president Larry Schall said by email.

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges has a similar 120-credit hour requirement, though none of the institutions in the pilot programs are accredited through SACSCOC. But if a college were to pursue such an idea, SACSCOC would consider it.

President Belle Whelan said by email that SACSCOC “would consider approving a three-year degree” depending “on the justification provided” and what might be excluded from the program.

The Higher Learning Commission also told Inside Higher Ed that it would be willing to consider a three-year degree, though colleges would need to provide a justification.

Some accreditors, such as the WASC Senior College and University Commission and the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, do not have minimum credit policies, meaning there are fewer obstacles for a three-year, 90-credit degree.

“When I’ve spoken to Robert Zemsky and Lori Carrell about this initiative, I have emphasized that the exciting opportunity is not to essentially repack the same pieces into a smaller suitcase, but to fundamentally rethink the capacities and coherence we expect of the bachelor’s degree,” Jamienne Studley, president of WSCUC, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “As an accreditor WSCUC would consider it our responsibility, even privilege, to work with institutions to evaluate whether their reconceived program met our standards for quality and student success.”

Sonny Ramaswamy, president of NWCCU, said that while his organization has not received a proposal from BYU Idaho yet, he expects it will soon. In considering a three-year bachelor’s degree, he said it’s vital that students “demonstrate the same learning outcomes as a student getting a four-year degree.” He added that the conversations he’s had around the possibility of launching a three-year degree have been “exciting” and that NWCCU looks forward to receiving the proposal.

But even if accreditors are willing to sign off on a three-year degree, state lawmakers also have to be convinced. Some states, including California and Pennsylvania, have laws requiring a minimum of 120 credit hours for a bachelor’s degree, which would require changes to open the door to a three-year degree and a reduced load culminating in a baccalaureate.

Beyond accreditation and state law, there’s also the matter of how tradition has shaped the bachelor’s degree in a sector that is notoriously slow to change, even as employers and students demand more from colleges.

“The 120-hour degree is codified by tradition. That’s all it is. It’s really not even based on strong learning science—it’s just been adopted, like many things in this country, and codified. And it’s now created a wonderful amount of chaos,” said Merrimack College president Chris Hopey.

He also compared conversations around three-year bachelor’s degrees to discussions about online education 20 years ago. And just as those who were slow to adapt to online programs are playing catch up, so too will those who resist three-year degree programs, he said, suggesting a lack of imagination for the higher education community even as the status quo remains mired in degree-completion challenges and ever-climbing costs. Though he said it may take 10 to 15 years for the three-year-degree idea to become popular, many colleges will not survive over that timeline.

Zemsky, however, stressed that “weak institutions cannot do this,” noting that the pilot colleges leading the charge are spending their own money without funding from major national sponsors. He discouraged colleges from looking at the three-year degree as their financial salvation, arguing instead that it is simply another option that colleges can offer to consumers to reduce costs. The idea also comes with financial questions, given the loss of a fourth year of tuition, though Zemsky suggests a dip in tuition revenue may be countered by increased enrollment in such programs.

So far, Zemsky and Carrell have been unable to attract major foundation support, which he said is needed for coordinating functions, not program development, since colleges have been spending their own money to advance pilot programs.

“Lori and I have carried this as far as we can,” Zemsky said. “What we need for this to work is a paid-for infrastructure. And the only game in town to do that, I fear, is a foundation.”

Another potential obstacle to the three-year bachelor’s degree is perception. While participants note student feedback has been enthusiastic, questions linger about transfer pathways given the tight focus of the programs as well as how three-year degrees might be viewed by graduate programs. Though those questions are yet to be answered, Boyd Baggett, director of institutional effectiveness and accreditation at BYU Idaho, said he’s had promising conversations with officials in a dozen graduate programs who said they would recognize a three-year degree.

Lynn Pasquerella, president of the Association of American Colleges & Universities, expressed cautious optimism about the idea, noting the importance of innovation and exploring new models amid national concerns about the value of higher education while also raising concerns about what might be lost as institutions trim credits, particularly electives.

“The first thing that comes to mind is if it’s a proposal to reduce, does that mean a reduction in general education or the liberal arts and sciences at a time when that type of education is more critical than ever for addressing the wicked problems and grand challenges of which COVID-19 was emblematic?” Pasquerella said. “I also think about our employer surveys, where employers consistently make clear their desire that students have more than narrow disciplinary training, and broad training in the liberal arts and sciences that allows them to integrate what they’ve learned in different disciplines to address the unscripted problems of the future.”

The Path Forward

As the Georgetown sessions—sponsored by Strada Education Foundation—drew to a close, Zemsky laid out the needs and ambitions for the three-year bachelor’s degree proposal. Though a dozen institutions are already pursuing the idea, he hopes that 500 will be on board within the next five years. Carrell has also discussed the idea with lawmakers to garner support and said she is hearing bipartisan interest. A book promoting the idea of the three-year bachelor’s degree is also in the works, likely to be published next year.

Now Zemsky and Carrell are trying not to lose the momentum around the idea, which they see not as replacing the four-year degree but rather providing consumers with another option.

Though the proposal had excitement in 2009 that faded away, Zemsky remains undeterred.

In 2020, before the three-year bachelor’s degree advanced to the stage of pilot programs, Zemsky told this reporter he was just “throwing pebbles into the pond. And there are some ripples.” Now, with 12 institutions pursuing pilot programs and accreditors willing to consider a three-year bachelor’s degree, it seems the idea is making waves.

AI has been getting mixed press lately, but can it help us become healthier? In today’s Academic Minute, Johns Hopkins University’s Kimia Ghobadi considers algorithms and diets. Ghobadi is a John C. Malone Assistant Professor in the department of civil and systems engineering at Hopkins’s Whiting School of Engineering and associate director of its Center for Systems Science and Engineering. A transcript of this podcast can be found here.