Colleges Consider Option of Earning 3-Year Degrees

BOSTON — As the cost of a college diploma soars, some American universities are considering reducing the amount of time it takes to get one.

The idea, cutting the length of an undergraduate education from four years to three, is about to be tested by the nation’s largest public university system, and one school is ready to advertise it as an option.

“It’s very simple,” said S. Frederick Starr, president of Oberlin College. “If I apply to Oberlin at $23,000 or Harvard at $25,000 a year, I’m applying for a $100,000 bachelor’s degree. If I get through in three years, I have reduced my cost by 25%.

“If my fourth year is spent working, my salary will equal the price of admission. Now we’re up to 50% off.”

Proponents say advances in technology mean students can learn at their own pace. For some, that can mean meeting degree requirements more quickly.

“We have so automatically assumed that all students should spend the same amount of time in college,” Stanford President Gerhard Casper said. “Where is that set down in natural law?”

Advocates talk of encouraging high school students to take more college-level courses, streamlining educational requirements and lengthening the academic year.

The State University of New York is planning to implement what Chancellor D. Bruce Johnstone prefers to call “the enhanced productivity of learning.”

Johnstone said he will tell all 64 SUNY campus presidents to begin testing various means to speed the time it takes to get a bachelor’s degree.

“Taxpayers and, increasingly, parents and students themselves are becoming less and less willing to pay for what learning can cost,” he said.

He has called for a conference of school chancellors and presidents on the issue this summer.

Oberlin will advertise the three-year option to entering students in its catalogue next fall.

At Stanford, Casper will address it in his state-of-the-university speech to faculty at the end of this month.

Actually, the time needed to get a bachelor’s degree has been getting longer.

Spiraling tuition forces many students to take fewer than the full load of credits, or hold part-time jobs that interfere with classes. And budget cuts at public universities make it harder to get into crowded required courses in time to finish in four years.

Nearly half of all students who complete undergraduate degrees take more than four years, 1990 U.S. Census figures show. Only 8% take less.

“We’ve put a number of impediments in front of them when they do this: residency requirements, prohibiting students to take more than a certain number of courses, making it hard to test out of certain subjects,” said Richard Rosser, president of the National Assn. of Independent Colleges and Universities.