This story has been updated.

The committee of Connecticut lawmakers responsible for higher education bucked a national trend this year when it tabled a proposal that would have allowed colleges and universities in the state to offer three-year bachelor’s degrees. 

Over the last few years, an increasing number of higher education institutions across the country have begun adopting some form of the three-year degree, including several in Connecticut’s neighboring states. In March 2024, the New England Commission of Higher Education, which is responsible for accrediting colleges and universities in the Northeast, created guidelines for colleges that want to implement these programs. 

The diverging opinions that arose during a public hearing in Hartford this spring revealed a host of concerns, from cost to quality to workforce needs. At the heart of the discussion lay a deeper question around the purpose of higher education and the best way to equip young people with the skills they’ll need, professionally and personally, as they enter adulthood.

Some college administrators say a three-year degree program would lower the cost of college, decrease the likelihood of students dropping out, and help more quickly fill gaps in critical areas of the workforce.

But critics of offering the shorter course of study say traditional four-year programs expose students to a broader range of educational experiences, which helps foster their critical thinking skills and produces graduates who are more adaptable to the ever-changing professional world. 

State Sen. Derek Slap, a West Hartford Democrat who co-chairs the legislature’s Higher Education and Employment Advancement Committee, expressed concern that three-year programs might lessen the value and rigor of a bachelor’s degree. And he said it remained unclear whether the degrees would be accepted by graduate schools and certain employers. 

“Are students and society better off if things like electives, study abroad, capstone projects, other enrichment opportunities are all scuttled to join the workforce a little faster?” Slap said in an interview with the Connecticut Mirror.

Rep. Seth Bronko, R-Naugatuck, disagreed that the reduced credits would jeopardize the integrity of the degree, citing the fact that other schools are piloting these programs. 

“ We talk about trying to find ways to make college more affordable and streamline the pipeline into in-demand jobs. And in my opinion, this is one way to do it,” Bronko said. “Just pumping students through a traditional four year college program, sending them into debt, for kids who don’t even know what they want to do — I think is not the wisest decision.”

While the legislation failed to advance this year, the debate didn’t end there.

Why are bachelor’s degrees four years?

The 120-degree standard for a bachelor’s degree became popularized in the early 1900s. In the late 1860s, then-Harvard president Charles Eliot introduced the idea of elective courses to an educational system that had, until then, a uniform curriculum for everyone. With elective classes came the need to establish criteria for an educational degree that could include multiple different subjects. 

In the first decade of the 20th century, industrialist Andrew Carnegie established the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which funded a pension program for professors. In order to be eligible, however, the college or university had to adopt the Carnegie Unit as a standard educational measurement. One credit hour became equal to an hour of classwork per week for 15 weeks, or the length of a semester. A Bachelor’s Degree became equal to 120 credit hours. The Carnegie Unit also became the standard for high school education, equating to 120 hours of class or study time per year. 

In the hundred years since, higher education institutions have added a range of shorter degree and non-degree programs from associate’s degrees to certificates, microcredentials, apprenticeships and more. But for many college and university educators, the completion of a bachelor’s degree implies a breadth of knowledge and a depth of understanding that it takes time to achieve. 

Kristen Morgan, a professor of communication, film and media at Eastern Connecticut State University, said she worried the 90-credit bachelor’s degree would create a “two-tiered system” where people with more money could pursue traditional bachelor’s degrees while lower-income students might opt for the shorter — more economical — program.

Morgan told lawmakers the addition of these options could force institutional changes, like larger class sizes or faculty being expected to take on more work. She also said it might incentivize more part-time faculty positions and fewer high-level elective offerings, like the kind of workshops and seminars where students build their professional portfolios. 

“That’s something that I would worry about, especially in the arts and the humanities,” she said. 

Leah Glaser, a history professor at Central Connecticut State University, said she felt elective courses were important because they give students the opportunity to explore things in depth that they’re unfamiliar with, in a way they may not have access to at any other time in their lives.

“I can see limiting [electives] to an extent. But not for an entire year,” Glaser said. “You need some flexibility for somebody to change their mind, because an 18-year-old won’t necessarily come in knowing what they want to do.” 

Beyond providing opportunities to explore a range of fields, a liberal arts education also helps students learn to think critically, Glaser said. “If you train somebody to do [only] one thing … you’re not going to have a resilient worker,” she said.

Glaser and others said there should be other ways to make four years of college education more affordable for students who want to pursue it, such as expanded financial aid or cutting down on “top-heavy” administrative costs.

Sen. Slap pointed to programs already available to students such as dual enrollment classes, which allow high-schoolers to take college courses, and debt-free community college, which provides scholarship funding for students who graduate from high school in Connecticut and enroll in one of the public community colleges. 

Tackling two challenges: time and cost

Proponents of the three-year bachelor’s degree say they would solve several problems. They cost less, and the shorter timeframe can be an effective way to keep students on track to completing a degree — particularly for students who already know what they want to do after they graduate. 

Quinnipiac University Provost Debra Liebowitz noted during the public hearing that college enrollment had been dropping since 2011 — a reflection, she said, of “a growing skepticism about the value” of a four-year degree.

She said 90-credit bachelor’s degrees were designed to “complement, not to devalue” traditional four-year degree programs. She and other university administrators said adopting these degrees would be necessary for institutions to remain competitive in the higher education market.

Drew McWeeney, an assistant professor and program chairperson of early childhood education at CT State Community College of Norwalk, said he felt a 90-credit degree could maintain academic quality and standards while eliminating courses that are irrelevant to a given field of study.  

McWeeney said students in early childhood education don’t need to take classes in calculus or read Victorian literature. They need classes that help them teach elementary math and write things like developmental evaluations and progress reports. “It’s not … the amount of courses that determine student success, in my opinion. It’s about the content of what is actually being taught,” McWeeney said.

McWeeney also argued that a bachelor’s degree was no guarantee that someone might find employment — particularly in the humanities. “Look at how many students have liberal arts degrees and music, theater, English, and they can’t find jobs,” McWeeney said. “And they not only have 120 credits, but they might have more. They might even have a master’s degree and they still don’t have jobs. So if that’s the case, then 120 credits is not doing the job.” 

Bob Zemsky, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, co-founded College-in-3, a network of schools interested in exploring a three-year-bachelor’s degree. It now has 82 members. 

Zemsky sees three-year degrees as a way to combat a persistent problem in higher education: the number of students that drop out after their freshman year. “The idea is, you don’t make students waste a year of their time because your faculty wants to teach things that the students don’t want to learn,” he said.

Opening a ‘whole new market’

Last July, the University of Maine’s Board of Trustees approved five new 90-credit bachelor’s degree programs in areas like Public Administration, Business Management and Psychology. The degrees will be offered beginning this fall. 

Brenda McAleer, dean of the College of Professional Studies at the University of Maine at Augusta — which is preparing to offer a bachelor’s of applied public administration — said the degrees were designed for adults who already have some work experience or have taken some college courses. The public administration program will also respond to an acute need in the local workforce, where town governments are seeing a wave of retirements, she said.

For adult students, who often earn their degrees more slowly than traditional students, having an additional credential that falls in between an associate’s and a bachelor’s degree could be a “great motivator,” McAleer said. These students already have a sense of their career direction. 

By contrast, the traditional, four-year public administration degree allows students who aren’t quite as sure about their career plans to explore other areas, she said. “I’m a firm believer in a liberal arts based education. You learn critical thinking. You learn problem-solving. You learn teamwork. And that will stay with you no matter what’s going on in your field,” she said.

Last year, Johnson and Wales University in Rhode Island became the first higher education institution in New England to roll out three-year bachelor’s degrees when it approved four 90-credit programs beginning in fall 2025: graphic design, criminal justice, computer science and hospitality. 

Provost Richard Wiscott told CT Mirror that 94 students had enrolled in the four programs this year, a higher number than the university had expected. He said they’d decided which programs to offer by listening to the workforce needs in local industries and matching that with the curriculum they already offered. 

Wiscott said each degree provides an equivalent experience in general education and in the specialized major requirements that a traditional degree would, but in less time and at a lower cost. He said this brought an entirely new group of people to the university classrooms. 

“We opened up a whole new market — people who might not have looked at a private education or Johnson and Wales when they saw the sticker price, and they might have immediately moved on,” Wiscott said. “Because we had the three-year option, they dug a little bit deeper. And so our combined enrollments were higher for this year compared to the previous years.” 

One of those students is Ary Llerandi Sanabria, a 30-year-old graphic design major from Venezuela. After high school, she moved to the U.S. where she worked odd jobs and eventually stumbled into digital design, eventually opening a business making invitations and signs.

Interested in improving her skills, Sanabria found the program at Johnson and Wales, where she has taken classes in drawing, image editing, typography and web design — all directly relevant to her work. 

“I feel that I came to school at the right time, and when I found what I knew that I wanted to do. Because at my age, I already lived a little bit. I know who I am,” she said.  

After graduating, Sanabria said she wants to continue running her own business, and also help other businesses with their branding and website design. The only downside, she said, is not graduating alongside her friends in the four-year program. 

The conversation continues

Critics of this year’s proposed legislation conceded that they might reconsider the idea if certain parameters were established around the degree programs. 

One route: Crafting a bill that reflects the regulations stipulated by the New England Commission of Higher Education, the accrediting body for higher education in New England.  

Laura Gambino, the commission’s vice president, explained during the March public hearing that NECHE had created four requirements for three-year degree programs: They must have a name that sets them apart from a traditional bachelor’s degree. Colleges must inform students that graduate programs and professional schools might not accept the degree as equivalent to a traditional degree. Schools have establish ways to measure student achievement, retention and post-graduate success. And the degree requirements must include a mix of both general education and elective classes.

Jennifer Widness, president of the Connecticut Conference of Independent Colleges, said NECHE had also recently limited the number of three-year degree programs any one college could offer to no more than five. 

Slap said guardrails and transparency would be critical. We want to make sure that students, the families, know exactly what they’re investing in,” Slap said. “If some schools, [a] handful of schools want to create something new … I don’t think anyone’s saying we should slam the door.”

Slap and Bronko both said they expect the bill to resurface in 2027.

Correction

Drew McWeeney is an assistant professor and program chairperson of early childhood education at CT State Community College of Norwalk. An earlier version of this story misstated his current title.