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Want to cut college costs by 25 percent? That is not a fantasy. Right now, we can reduce the cost of higher education by 25 percent by cutting the amount of time it takes to get a degree. If we are serious about improving the impact and cost of higher education, this is the place to start.
Let’s start with fundamentals. Right now, the cost of higher education is astronomical. The average cost of attendance for full-time undergraduate students living on campus at four-year private institutions is roughly $60,000 per year. The cost at public institutions is roughly $28,000 per year. That means families who want to educate their kids face an average cost of $100,000 to $250,000 per child, just for undergraduate degrees.
In higher education, we live with these numbers every day, and we have grown numb to what they mean to ordinary people. Make no mistake: These numbers are shocking. It is virtually impossible for middle- and working-class families to rustle up those kinds of assets, which is why college debt has skyrocketed. Concerns about cost and value have fueled massive public distrust of the higher education system, and that, as we are learning day by day, has massive implications for our research funding and regulatory environment.
So how do we fix this? How do we lower costs? There is no way to nickel-and-dime our way to real savings. You can cut all the overhead you want, or replace tenured faculty with poorly paid adjuncts, and you still won’t move the needle. The only way to radically cut costs is to shorten the time to degree. If students only pay for three years, not four, the savings will be immediate and real. Students will graduate with less debt, and that will be a beautiful thing.
The benefits of three-year college are not just financial: This is the right move pedagogically and developmentally as well. College students should not do the same thing for four years. The risk of stagnation, of wasted time, is just too great. Four-year college also comes with immense opportunity costs. Students will experience more and grow more, personally and intellectually, if they finish college more quickly and move on to new challenges and opportunities. What would be better for a student, three years of college and a year of work or four years of college? I think the former. If the finish line is closer, more students will earn their degrees, too, rather than falling short. Those students who truly desire additional education will clearly benefit, too, because they will progress more rapidly to a relevant and more rigorous graduate or professional degree.
Will students learn less? Perhaps a bit. But a shorter time frame would give everyone, students and faculty, a greater sense of urgency during a student’s time on campus. And let’s be honest: The four-year time frame is arbitrary, a historical artifact. Do we honestly think graduates from three-year degree programs in the United Kingdom are less well-educated than their American peers because they spent three years, not four, at the undergraduate level? I’ve hired hundreds of people in my career, and I can tell you, the answer is no. I would never prefer a Yale grad over an Oxford grad or a Berkeley grad over an Edinburgh grad just because the Yale education took longer.
Moving to three-year bachelor’s degrees would increase the capacity at our best institutions without requiring additional investment in infrastructure. Harvard, Michigan and their peers could increase their throughput, providing more quality educations to more students. Finally, moving students more quickly to the workforce, with lower debt, will be a massive boost to the American economy.
We can do this now. Accreditors can adjust standards, universities can alter degree programs and we can move forward. This is not “cheapening” a college degree. It is reforming higher education to meet the needs of the time. The learning process has changed radically and become more efficient since the 19th century, when the four-year degree became the norm. It is time for change.
