The basic structure of American undergraduate degrees has remained roughly constant for decades. A bachelor’s degree requires about 120 semester credits and four years of study, while an associate degree requires about 60 semester credits and two years of study. The rising popularity of 90-credit degrees creates a third category of undergraduate degrees requiring about three years of full-time study.
My institution, the Missouri University of Science and Technology, currently does not offer any 90-credit degrees. But we are considering whether to offer them in the future, and our discussions about these new programs have focused my thinking on what we should call them. Leaders have a responsibility to establish a distinct name for the emerging 90-credit degree rather than treating it as a qualified or diminished version of the bachelor’s degree. If it is to offer a true alternative to what already exists, the new degree needs a single, straightforward label that clearly distinguishes it.
I am in favor of 90-credit degrees for multiple reasons. First, there is a compelling economic case for students and their families: Completing a degree in three years could save an entire year of tuition and related college costs and allow graduates to start earning a salary one year sooner. Second, some professions seem well suited to employ graduates of three-year, highly applied degree programs that go deeper than a typical associate degree but don’t necessarily require a full bachelor’s-level curriculum.
Three-year degrees are gaining increasing attention (from proponents and opponents alike) and many colleges have already created them: A RAND national inventory identified 119 reduced-credit bachelor’s programs announced by U.S. colleges as of May of this year. Some of these new programs bear the same titles of bachelor of arts or bachelor of science as conventional 120-credit programs. This raises issues of intelligibility for employers and graduate schools. Cutting a degree from 120 credit hours to 90 is significant, but an employer reviewing two résumés may not realize the distinction in degree requirements if both degrees share the same title. Graduate schools will face similar issues when deciding whether a 90-credit and a 120-credit B.S. both satisfy their admissions requirements. Students are the most at risk as they decide between 90-credit and 120-credit programs with the same name.
To its credit, the Commission on Colleges and Universities, formerly known as the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, requires universities to use a modifier to distinguish the 90-credit degree from a traditional 120-credit bachelor’s degree. A number of universities throughout the country add a modifier to the name of the bachelor’s degree such as “accelerated,” “applied,” “abridged” or “reduced-hour.” But this does not solve the problem. Qualifiers can easily disappear as credentials move from catalogs to résumés and job applications. Furthermore, some of these modifiers already have established meanings. For example, an accelerated bachelor’s degree traditionally refers to completing a traditional 120-credit bachelor’s degree in less than four years, through heavy semester course loads and summer classes. A 90-credit degree is a different model, and using the same label for both blurs the distinction between them.
I suggest the adoption of the term “practitioner degree” for the 90-credit degree. “Practitioner” is a simple English word that is already used in some professional hierarchies. For example, the Federation for Informatics Professionals uses levels progressing from associate practitioner to practitioner, followed by senior, advanced and leading practitioner. The practitioner-degree label can serve as a starting point for discussion—another name may prove more suitable across the full range of undergraduate disciplines. The specific name matters less than establishing a separate third category of degree.
A simple framework might look like this:
- 60-plus credits: associate degree, approximately two years
- 90-plus credits: practitioner degree, approximately three years
- 120-plus credits: bachelor’s degree, approximately four years
This overall framework would give students and employers clearer and more meaningful choices. A student seeking rapid entry into the workforce might conclude that a 90-credit degree offers the right combination of education, cost and time to employment. A student planning to attend graduate or professional school might choose the traditional 120-credit bachelor’s degree. Students may change their minds and switch between degrees as they progress. An employer might find a 90-credit graduate ideally prepared for one position while another position may be a better match for a 120-credit graduate. Students, families, employers and graduate programs should make these determinations. Our responsibility in higher education should be to make the distinctions clear enough for them to make informed decisions.
The new degrees should not be seen as lesser versions of existing degrees. They have their own purpose and are formed differently from bachelor’s degrees. If we call a 90-credit program a bachelor’s degree, the natural tendency will be to begin with an existing 120-credit bachelor’s and determine which 30 credits to eliminate. General education courses and electives then become obvious targets for reduction. That approach risks turning the new degrees into watered-down versions of existing four-year programs. The Commission on Colleges and Universities has explicitly, and wisely, recommended that institutions “design an intentional curriculum framework rather than simply removing electives” from 120-credit degrees.
We should also look at the opportunity from the other direction. Instead of reducing existing bachelor’s degrees, institutions could build upward from strong two-year associate degrees. A 60-credit associate degree could serve as the foundation for an additional year of advanced coursework, producing a distinct three-year degree. This approach creates something new rather than simply removing pieces from something old. It also gives both four-year universities and two-year community colleges more freedom to rethink what a three-year undergraduate education should accomplish and how it meets the needs of the student populations they serve.
Many universities will resist giving up the term “bachelor’s degree” because they fear a newly named degree will be less attractive to prospective students. But this concern proves the point. If students see a 90-credit degree differently because it has a different name, keeping the bachelor’s label would obscure the differences in academic requirements. Institutions should compete for students by demonstrating the value of their programs, not by falsely using a familiar degree name to conceal distinctions.
A second objection is that many job ads explicitly require a bachelor’s degree, and graduates with a practitioner degree would not appear to qualify. However, if employers conclude that a 90-credit degree meets their needs, they will say so in their job postings. Universities should not make that decision for them.
A third, related objection is that a new name will take time to be accepted and students could face uncertainty during the transition, especially on the job market. That concern is real, but it is not a reason to avoid clarity and transparency. We already have an accepted structure where roughly two years of study leads to an associate degree and roughly four years leads to a bachelor’s degree. A three-year degree lies somewhere between the two. As such degrees become more popular, students with practitioner degrees could be encouraged to apply for jobs requiring bachelor’s degrees and let employers decide.
Higher education leaders and institutional accreditors must establish a standard name for these 90-credit degrees now, before the bachelor’s label, with or without one of the many competing modifiers, becomes entrenched. We should welcome these new degrees by defining their value clearly and not relying on confusing language that could mislead students, employers and graduate schools.
