By President Steven M. Corey, Ph.D.
This essay responds to a recent Wall Street Journal opinion column that argued American colleges should replace the traditional 120-credit bachelor’s degree with a 90-credit degree completed in three years.
Key Takeaway: A shorter path to a bachelor’s degree can reduce cost and expand opportunity. It should not diminish what higher education is meant to accomplish.
College costs too much. On that point, there is broad agreement. That’s why proposals for three-year bachelor’s degrees deserve serious consideration. But reducing the time required to earn a degree should not mean reducing what a college education is intended to accomplish.
In his July 17 Wall Street Journal essay, “Less Is More in Higher Education”, Zachary Marschall advocates replacing the traditional 120-credit bachelor’s degree with a 90-credit program that can be completed in three years. He connects that proposal to reducing electives, requiring students to select majors earlier, excluding students who need remedial support, limiting DEI-related requirements, and placing greater emphasis on academic and workforce preparation. He is right about one important thing: American higher education should take the three-year bachelor’s degree seriously.
He is considerably less persuasive about most of what he attaches to it.
College has become too expensive for too many families. Students and institutions both bear the costs when degree requirements are unnecessarily complicated, advising is ineffective, credits do not apply toward graduation, or programs retain requirements that no longer contribute meaningfully to student learning. Colleges should be willing to examine their curricula, calendars, administrative practices and assumptions about how long a degree must take.
There is nothing inherently educational about four calendar years or 120 credit hours. They are conventions, not measures of learning. If colleges can demonstrate that students have achieved the knowledge, intellectual capacities and disciplinary competence expected of a bachelor’s graduate in less time and with fewer credits, we should welcome that innovation.
The Higher Learning Commission now provides a formal approval pathway for bachelor’s programs below its normal 120-semester-credit minimum. By April 2026, HLC-accredited institutions in a dozen states had received approval to offer reduced-credit bachelor’s degrees.
But a promising argument for curricular redesign should not become an argument for a diminished conception of higher education.
Efficiency Is Not Simply Subtraction
Mr. Marschall moves quickly from three-year degrees to propositions that have little to do with them: fewer electives, earlier declaration of majors, excluding students who need academic support, eliminating courses he regards as ideological, and reconsidering the broader college experience.
He points to his own path through New York University, where Advanced Placement and internship credits helped him complete two majors in 3½ years. That demonstrates something useful but modest: a well-prepared student who arrives with advanced credit and understands how to navigate college can accelerate through it. It does not establish a philosophy of whom college should serve or what college is for.
The better case for a three-year degree begins with a different question. Not, “Which 30 credits can we eliminate?” but, “What should an educated person know and be able to do, and how can we design the most coherent, rigorous and affordable path to those outcomes?”
Reducing a degree from 120 credits to 90 does not establish that the other 30 were waste. It creates an obligation to demonstrate that their educational purposes have been achieved more efficiently.
That is the philosophy behind the national College-in-3 Exchange. Its work encourages institutions to begin with learning outcomes, eliminate unnecessary duplication, strengthen curricular coherence, and incorporate internships, research and active learning. The objective is not simply fewer courses. It is the same or better student learning at lower cost.
Institutions Are Exploring More Than One Model
The emerging three-year movement is not producing a single standardized answer. Institutions are testing different approaches according to their missions, students and academic programs.
Here in Michigan, Davenport University has introduced a 90-credit Bachelor of Applied Science in Applied Marketing designed for completion in three years. The program focuses on applied learning and career preparation while reducing the time and financial investment required for the degree.
Manchester University in Indiana offers several 90-credit applied bachelor’s degrees in fields including accounting, business management, criminal justice and marketing communication. Importantly, Manchester also retains traditional 120-credit pathways for students seeking more room for minors, additional majors, interdisciplinary exploration or study-away experiences. That recognizes a central truth: the best pathway may not be the same for every student.
The University of Minnesota Rochester’s NXT GEN MED program uses a different model. Its accelerated Bachelor of Science in Health Sciences is structured around year-round, cohort-based study and can be completed in approximately 2.5 years, while incorporating research, paid internships and Mayo Clinic mentorship. This model shortens elapsed time without treating experiential learning as an expendable luxury.
At The University of Olivet, we are pursuing another form of curricular efficiency. Our Bachelor’s Accelerated Master’s pathways allow qualified undergraduates to begin graduate-level study before completing their bachelor’s degrees, with selected courses applying toward both credentials. These pathways can reduce the combined time and cost required to earn a bachelor’s and master’s degree. Current examples include accelerated pathways into our Master of Business Administration and Master of Arts in Leadership.
These approaches are not interchangeable, and they need not be. Some students with clear academic and professional goals may thrive in a tightly structured three-year program. Others may benefit from four years that include broader exploration, athletics, leadership, study abroad, multiple internships or a second field of study. Still others may use four or five years to progress from the bachelor’s degree into graduate education.
The goal should not be to force every student through the same calendar. It should be to offer purposeful pathways without compromising the meaning of the credentials awarded.
What a Bachelor’s Degree Is For
Mr. Marschall writes that students need writing, history, mathematics, science, economics, literature and civic knowledge. Quite so. But that is an argument for serious general education, not against it.
A bachelor’s education at its best develops more than occupational competence. It teaches people to communicate precisely, reason quantitatively, distinguish evidence from assertion, understand scientific inquiry, interpret history, engage literature and the arts, wrestle with ethical questions, encounter ideas different from their own, and exercise judgment when the answer is not obvious.
It should also prepare people for productive work. These are complementary purposes.
Employers themselves recognize this. The National Association of Colleges and Employers identifies communication, teamwork, professionalism and critical thinking among the abilities employers value most in new graduates. Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce reports that prime-age workers with bachelor’s degrees earn about 70% more at the median than those with only a high-school diploma and experience substantially lower unemployment. Broad education is part of what enables people to adapt across a working lifetime rather than merely perform their first occupational assignment.
Its value extends beyond employment. The College Board’s Education Pays 2026 reports that among Americans ages 25 to 44, 76% of those with at least a bachelor’s degree voted in the 2024 presidential election, compared with 42% of high-school graduates. Higher educational attainment is also associated with greater civic participation, healthier behaviors and lower reliance on public assistance.
Not every difference is caused by education alone, but the pattern matters. An educated citizenry is part of the infrastructure of a capable society.
Standards Should Not Become Barriers
That is why the suggestion that colleges should not admit students who arrive needing academic support is so troubling.
Standards matter. Colleges should not lower what graduates must know or be able to do. But maintaining standards and denying opportunity are not synonymous. Students do not arrive at the college gate with equal access to excellent high schools, Advanced Placement courses, tutoring, college counseling or family experience with higher education.
Well-designed academic support can work. A randomized study summarized by the U.S. Department of Education found that placing students directly into college-level English with corequisite support increased their likelihood of passing the course within one academic year by 24.2 percentage points compared with traditional prerequisite remediation.
A nation does not strengthen itself by becoming more efficient at deciding whom not to educate.
Nor does a three-year degree settle debates about diversity, equity and inclusion or the content of particular courses. A 90-credit curriculum can be intellectually serious or shallow; so can a 120-credit one. Credit count is a poor instrument for resolving cultural and political disputes. Curricular choices should instead be judged by academic rigor, evidence, intellectual pluralism and demonstrated learning outcomes.
Shorten the Path, Not the Purpose
The United States needs excellent apprenticeships, technical programs and nondegree pathways. It also needs more citizens with excellent college educations.
We need skilled professionals, certainly. We also need citizens who can evaluate evidence, understand institutions, adapt to technological change, work across differences and exercise sound judgment when no manual exists. We need people prepared not only for employment, but for leadership, citizenship, service and continual learning.
A well-designed three-year bachelor’s degree can reduce cost, lower debt, move graduates into careers or advanced study sooner, and expand options for students ready to progress more quickly. Accelerated bachelor’s-to-master’s pathways can similarly create more educational value from time well used.
But the promise of these innovations lies in making excellent higher education more accessible, purposeful and efficient, not in narrowing whom we educate or what we believe educated people should become.
We should shorten the path. We should not shrink the purpose.
About the Author
Steven M. Corey, Ph.D., has served as president of The University of Olivet since 2010.
With more than three decades of experience in higher education leadership, he writes about college access, student success and the evolving role of universities in preparing graduates for meaningful lives and careers.