Colleges Consider 3-Year Degrees To Save Undergrads Time, Money (Wash. Post)

College Search & Selection
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<p>‘‘College is for obtaining a skill to make money so a person can contribute to society and live, not for a social club. Social activities are at college, but that is just the by-product of the mission of the college.’’</p>

<p>Here’s the thing: If you have the same load of work in 3 years, students have less time for extracurriculars, leadership activities which often are essential for grad school applications or post-bachelor jobs. I agree that 3 years might be an option for very gifted students with majors they can finish in 3 years, but some will not be hired because they not only did not go to grad school, but also lack valuable EC’s.</p>

<p>‘‘Give me a damn break. Who in their right minds, unless they are rich, drops thousands of dollars to make friends and take “weird” classes?’’</p>

<p>People who, besides classes, like to network for future business relations, while in college ? People who join Greek Life ? It can be worth it…</p>

<p>‘‘At 32 years old and after 12 years in the Marines, I have explored my interests, made my friends, ect, but yet according to you, I still need those skills, as if three combat tours, living in four countries, and traveling to 47 others have not done that for me already.’’</p>

<p>You are misinterpreting my point. I have not said that people should be forced to learn how to make friends or forced to learn weird subjects, I have said that a 4 years curriculum is more beneficial, because it provides more time and opportunity for extracurriculars, and taking classes that might be very useful in a later career.</p>

<p>‘‘Stop with the BS, three years is plenty of time, many have done it just as many have done it in six years.’’</p>

<p>In the Netherlands, where a bachelor takes 3 years, record numbers of people drop out or flunk out of college. 35 % of undergrad students drop out. I know it’s hard to compare European and American higher education, but the fact is that many students can’t handle the pressure. </p>

<p>Oh, and please quit the ad hominem.</p>

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<p>Brilliantly put. </p>

<p>I also don’t understand what social skills a kid picks up in the fourth year of college he or she would not have picked up in the first three. That said, obviously it gets down to the individual kid and his or her situation. For some, just getting things down in four years is a struggle. </p>

<p>I asked my son to consider whether he might want to graduate in three years. He knows that he has a discrete pool of money to use for college and grad school. His viewpoint was that there were some 500 level (graduate level) courses he really wants to take as well as giving some quality time/effort for the honors theses he needs to do for his two majors. As he is considering possibly going down the academic route, I can’t really disagree with his logic.</p>

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<p>I think that in addition to thinking about 3-year degrees, we should be analyzing why college costs $50,000/year. I know that colleges are large institutions, but where does all the money go? Are utilities prices that high? Or dorm expenses? Or are professors making inordinate amounts of money?</p>

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<p>“where does all the money go? Are utilities prices that high? Or dorm expenses? Or are professors making inordinate amounts of money?”</p>

<p>Professors are paid well, but there is a lot more to it.</p>

<p>In a recent opinion piece by Thomas Sowell he said that when he became an econ professor many decades ago a full workload consisted of teaching 12 semester units, and that now a full workload for most professors is only 6 units. They aren’t spending the time difference playing golf, it is spent on research and writing for scholarly publications. In this way a resource once used mainly for instruction is now being used for instruction and research in roughly equal measure. That is a subsidy in anybody’s book, and it’s a big part of the 50K per year.</p>

<p>Oh, and that’s just one of the big subsidies. The other one, particularly at liberal arts colleges that don’t have a research mission, is an elaborate system of price discrimination wherein needy students receive financial aid at the expense of those who can pay full fare.</p>

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<p>Interesting. Thanks for the info StephenR.</p>

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<p>Every student is subsidized by the college’s endowment. No student pays the ‘true’ cost of education (apx. 80K per year).</p>

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<p>A few articles attempting to explain why college costs so much:
[The</a> real reasons college costs so much - MSN Money](<a href=“http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/CollegeandFamily/P74829.asp]The”>http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/CollegeandFamily/P74829.asp)
Tuition Rising: Why College Costs So Much, With a new preface (Paperback)
by Ronald G. Ehrenberg (Author) "Unlike businesses, which strive to keep costs at a minimum, universities must spend to make themselves as attractive as possible to their constituents. Ehrenberg, a senior administrator and professor of economics at Cornell University, examines the factors influencing the spiraling tuition costs of the past decade: the need to spend money to have the best facilities, faculties, and learning tools in order to attract the best and brightest students, the need to spend for athletics and other programs to keep alumni support strong, the self-governing nature of university faculty, and the increasing pressure to spend in order to increase ratings in external publications. Observes Ehrenberg, “As long as lengthy lines of highly qualified applicants keep knocking at its door no institution has a strong incentive to unilaterally end the spending race.”
[Marketplace:</a> No-frills colleges don’t have big costs](<a href=“http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/05/05/pm_no_frills_u/]Marketplace:”>http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/05/05/pm_no_frills_u/) -
[Why</a> do third-tier schools cost as much as Harvard? - Apr. 10, 2009](<a href=“Why do third-tier schools cost as much as Harvard? - Apr. 10, 2009”>Why do third-tier schools cost as much as Harvard? - Apr. 10, 2009) - The mystery of college costs
Why do second- and third-tier colleges cost as much as Harvard? “One answer is that they do it because they can.”</p>

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<p>May I ask how you reached this figure?</p>

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<p>The cost varies from college to college. I’ve heard this information primarily from ‘elite’ liberal arts college financial aid and admissions officials. There is actually a thread on CC about this issue with some supporting documents. Now to find it …</p>

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The teaching load varies enormously by field and institution. In the sciences, research is not subsidized by the college – quite the contrary. Outside research grants from agencies like NSF actually subsidize the university. Close to 50% of a research grant goes to directly to the university in the form of “overhead.” This is over and above the dollars used to actually fund the research. These funds can go towards faculty salary or anything else the institution needs, including upkeep of buildings, or even the salary of humanities faculty who may not bring in this kind of money. There is a very real economic reason why faculty research is promoted – it is an enormous source of revenue for universities. So an increase in faculty research is certainly not the reason for the increase in college costs. If anything, research dollars should help decrease tuition.</p>

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<p>For those of you who are complaining about the cost being 50,000/year:
There are hundreds, if not a couple thousand, universities that cost much less than that, more like 20,000. Just stay in state if cost is a major factor.</p>

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<p>While this might apply for some fields/institutions, don’t most profs get outside grants for research funding? At D’s school (Univ. @ Buffalo), the profs, and many students, are very involved in research - for most faculty, I believe it’s actually required by the school. This was described as a major source of revenue to the school. The added benefits to the students from all of this research include using labs with state of the art equipment and, of course, attracting faculty with particular expertise. Our tours of other schools with less research activity seemed to bear this out.</p>

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<p>Here’s a piece, poorly remembered by me, but very interesting with respect to the high cost of university education.</p>

<p>[Thomas</a> Sowell](<a href=“http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell042408.php3]Thomas”>http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell042408.php3)</p>

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Yes. Research grants are a major source of revenue for universities. NSF grants include close to 50% “overhead” funds that go directly to the school.</p>

<p>Research does NOT increase the cost of college. I’m not sure why Sowell even mentions research in an article about the high cost of college, since he himself states that research grants bring in outside money to the university:

I’m also not sure about his claim that teaching loads in general have been cut – I’ve never seen any data about this. I do know that most professors in science fields at research universities teach fewer classes than humanities professors due to research. Research is encouraged because, even though it takes time away from teaching, the grants provide a large revenue stream for the university. The same outside research funding is generally not available in the humanities fields and therefore the course loads are larger for those professors.</p>

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<p>I had a friend who completed her degree in three years for cost reasons. She went to a pricey LAC and her parents told her midway through that they could no longer afford her school. She chose to graduate early rather than transfer, risk losing credits, get a degree from a less prestigious school, and have to leave her friends early. She was able to do it by taking extra credits while she was attending and transferring in AP credits. The three-year diploma didn’t seem to give her any advantage or disadvantage in the job market.</p>

<p>While I don’t think a 3-year degree is right for everyone, it does work out for some people.</p>

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<p>My sister entered Dartmouth in fall, 2004, with no AP credit whatsoever. I"m not sure, but I think Dartmouth does not give AP credit but will give students advanced courses from AP results. I could be wrong about that. </p>

<p>She took the typical number of courses each quarter (Dartmouth is on the quarter system), but spent one term studying at Colgate taking more classes than she would have been able to at Dartmouth during the same (fall) term. Because of this, she finished Dartmouth requirements one term early but stayed in Hanover during that spring term before her graduation (spring of '08) when she took no classes. She had to pay for her housing but nothing for tuition and fees that quarter.</p>

<p>One thing that helped was that she entered Dartmouth and graduated with the same major, mathematics, so she didn’t have to catch up on requirements that might have changed if she’d changed her major.</p>

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<p>Ranger21,</p>

<p>-Extracurriculars are not important in grad school admissions. They don’t care. They are only slightly more important in professional school admissions, and only if they are related to the school. But honestly, when you apply to med school, you could’ve done a million ECs but you can easily be beaten out by someone with a near-perfect GPA and MCATs who just did one summer at a pre-medical program. It’s not high school. They don’t care about ECs.</p>

<p>Jobs don’t care about ECs either, beyond displaying actual leadership skills (and by that I mean no one cares if you were on the freshman cheerleading team; if you did Model UN or were the president of the business club they might care) and internships that you can do over the summer. </p>

<p>Greek life is one of the least important ECs you could possibly be involved in and can be seen as a liability on some school applications, especially if you spent a lot of time with it. If you happen to get lucky and one of the people in the job you want is Greek, maybe it’ll help a smidgen, but honestly most people don’t go Greek.</p>

<p>And to be really honest about it? A year’s time in EC-land is not a whole lot of time. My senior year of college I did NO ECs. I was spending too much time writing my thesis, applying to graduate school and jobs, and trying to graduate to worry about extra-curricular activities.</p>

<p>Thinker88, in proportion to their degrees and experience professors are not paid all that well – a beginning professor makes anywhere from maybe $40,000-60,000 depending on where he or she works. Some professors get paid a lot more than that. And the majority of teaching work is being done by graduate students (who at BEST make $30,000, and that’s really high for graduate students) and adjunct professors (who make $3,000 per class - if they’re lucky). Also, at some schools, they are “soft money” which means a professor gets a small salary from the school and the rest has to be covered by research grants. Really, who gets paid the most are those administrators.</p>

<p>Anneroku, some research is indeed subsidized by the university. There are numerous amounts of research grants that come from my university – the pilot that we’re doing now is funded by the university. And the grants actually take more than 50%. My university (Columbia) takes 63% off the top of the grant, and that’s before the researcher even pays himself.</p>

<p>I agree with those who say that you should be able to finish a college degree in 3 years, if you choose. Honestly, many schools require the fluffiest general education requirements possible to make you take 120 credits. When I was in college, we had to take one class out of each of four divisional requirements – so I had to take a fine arts class. I chose acting. It was a fun class, but honestly, what the hell does a psychology major need with an acting class? I’m not using it. I also had to take two PE classes. Why do I need to take PE in college? Not gonna lie, some of the required classes I had to take were really useful and I wouldn’t have taken them were I not required (like linear algebra, making of the modern world, or biology of women) but I really could’ve done without Principles of Acting, Women in Japanese Society, Orientation to Education, a random first year language class I took, and some other classes I can think of.</p>

<p>And honestly, I probably could’ve done without Making of the Modern World, too. It was just interesting.</p>

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<p>“In almost every way, the idea of an academic or getting a broad-based education is a throwback to the elitism and out-of-touch nobles of humanity’s darker days.”</p>

<p>I think that this statement is absolutely ludicrous, but maybe we shouldn’t go into it since it isn’t the point of this thread.</p>

<p>I think that if a school wants to offer a Pre-Professional degree in three years, then that is fine. The kids will most likely be re-taught the same things when they get into the job (i.e business). However, BA and BS degrees benefit from broad educations. Anyone who thinks that their high school AP class is equivalent to the same requirement at a college should switch schools quickly.</p>

<p>Also, I noticed that someone mentioned Harvard’s three year degree program. Also no one decides to graduate in three years. Those that do usually are in majors like statistics, and know that with a M.S in Statistics they can get a higher paying job on wallstreet.</p>

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<p>I think the question ultimately boils down to: “What kind of college education do you want?” If you prefer the “life-enriching” experience or the “liberal arts”, then a 3 year curriculum may well be detrimental to those goals; however, if you prefer a “pre-professional” or see college as a means towards the end of making money, then a 3 year curriculum is very beneficial. </p>

<p>There are very legitimate reasons in favor of the first approach. College takes 4 years for a reason: to enrich one’s human experience; however, the question of whether an year of college is beneficial is ultimately up to the student. I think colleges should offer 3 year undergrad degrees to those who prefer that course. People have offered arguments that almost no one uses these 3 year degrees; however, as long as it doesn’t harm either party (the student and the college), then why not leave it as an option?</p>

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<p>Juillet, thank you for the statistic. I knew that professors were not rich but I had no idea that salaries were that low. Also, when I mentioned before the $100,000 I was only putting it forth as an exaggerated reason for high tuition prices. I do not actually believe that they are paid so well.</p>