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Michigan colleges debut 3-year degrees in bid to cut costs, attract students
Kim Kozlowski
| Bridge Michigan
Is a college degree worth the cost? New research says yes.
As college costs and student debt skyrocket, new research looks at whether a degree is still worth the investment.
This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan (bridgemi.com), a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from Bridge Michigan, sign up for a free Bridge Michigan newsletter here.
Do all bachelor’s degrees need four years to complete and the heftycost that comes with it?
Maybe not, thought officials at Davenport University.
The private, Grand Rapids-based college began revamping its bachelor’s of marketing degree a year ago by including relevant courses in the first year, slimming down required courses then securing accreditation for a degree that takes one year less to complete.
This fall, Davenport University is offering a bachelor’s degree that requires 90 credits versus the traditional 120 and three years to earn as opposed to four. It joins Michigan’s Adrian College, Northwood University and the College for Creative Studies along with dozens of colleges nationwide in debuting reduced-credit bachelor’s degrees aimed at cutting time and cost for students and responding to employers’ needs.
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It comes as college tuition costs have soared: between $12,000 and $45,000 annually, depending on the school. Some have questioned higher education’s value. Enrollment has declined at many colleges, prompting them to find ways to attract a broader range of students amid a “demographic cliff,” which is the shrunken population of traditional 18-year-old college students because of a sharp decline in birth rates.
There’s a lot of interest in getting students through college quicker at a lower cost, said Robert Kelchen, a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, professor who’s an expert on higher education issues. Employers are also pushing to get accreditors to allow colleges to offer the reduced-credit bachelor’s degree.
“But part of it is there are colleges that see an opportunity to recruit students from elsewhere, from other institutions that are not offering these programs,” Kelchen said. “If this is a program that can reach an audience that is not being reached, that’s a good thing for the college’s bottom line but also for the public good if these programs end up producing value.”
It’s still too early to determine outcomes, Kelchen said.
Davenport designed its 90-credit Bachelor of Applied Science in Applied Marketing for working adults, people looking to change careers and also for traditional college students who want a faster and more affordable route to a bachelor’s degree.Tuition at Davenport costs $31,770 for a student taking 30 credits over two semesters, less after financial aid and scholarships, officials said. So a student opting for the three-year bachelor’s in marketing would save more than $30,000 without a fourth year, less if they have aid.
“We believed we could deliver the academic quality and practical experience and the skills employers are expecting in a more focused pathway,” said Davenport University President Anthony Anderson.
“Students are increasingly asking very reasonable questions: How long will this degree take me to get? How much is it going to cost? What will I be able to do with it once I am finished?” Anderson said. “Higher ed really needs to have good answers to those questions. This is one way to answer those questions.”
Davenport has grappled with an enrollment drop from 8,715 students to 4,815 students between 2014 and 2024, a nearly 45% decline, according to the latest enrollment data from the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. That’s nearly double Michigan’s overall postsecondary enrollment decline of roughly 23% during the same period and 15 times the overall national enrollment decline of 2.9%.
“We are not creating this by just taking an existing degree and cutting credits to try and generate enrollment,” Anderson said. “If we design bachelor’s degrees around what the students need and what the workforce is expecting and then you can demonstrate learning outcomes, what does that look like? If it works here, we would want to do that to address the wider issues with higher education right now, which is the cost and the time it takes to see results.
“This is our first step into that world and we are hoping we see success so we can build upon it,” Anderson added.
Not everyone is on board.
Critics, including the presidents of the unions representing public school teachers and university professors, say that offering three-year bachelor’s degrees “threatens academic integrity by substituting for a comprehensive education a stripped-down curriculum that prioritizes speed over essential intellectual development.”
It also does not address the root cause of increasing tuition, American Association of University Professors President Todd Wolfson and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in a recent joint statement issued in June regarding three-year bachelor’s degrees in Massachusetts.
“A bachelor’s degree should both prepare students for the workforce and provide them with deep learning, broad intellectual development, and sustained engagement with faculty and peers — not simply the fastest possible route to the labor market,” Wolfson and Weingarten said.
“Compressing or reducing the curriculum threatens to narrow students’ education at precisely the moment when society needs graduates with stronger critical thinking, communication skills, scientific literacy, and civic understanding.”
Some students see it differently.
Gwendolyn Spigarelli, a Davenport junior, is halfway through the traditional marketing program. While she said every course has aligned with what she wants to do in her career, Spigarelli said it might have been nice to get out in the field a year earlier.
“I would have loved that opportunity, but I’m also OK with taking it slow,” Spigarelli said. “But I do think that it’s a great opportunity for students, a great opportunity for anybody looking to take a year off (their bachelor’s degree) and get into their field right away.”
‘The same rigor and quality’
The Higher Learning Commission — which accredits degree-granting colleges and universities — issued guidelines for review of reduced-credit bachelor’s degrees in September 2024, spokesperson Laura Janota said.
Institutions that seek to offer students such degrees must seek a review and approval from the Higher Learning Commission, Janota said.
“Reduced-credit degrees must have the same rigor and quality as traditional degrees (typically 120 hours),” she said. “Institutions also must be able to show that reduced-credit degrees meet students’ needs and (Higher Learning Commission) accreditation standards.”
Since the guidelines were issued two years ago, the Higher Learning Commission has approved 77 reduced-credit bachelor’s degrees at 33 institutions.
“We launched the initiative in order to: give our institutions greater flexibility in achieving their mission and goals; help our students’ meet their needs through affordable, flexible schedules; and further higher education innovation, including through new learning models,” Janota said.
Other Michigan colleges where the Higher Learning Commission approved a three-year bachelor’s degree include a cybersecurity degree at Northwood University, a private college in Midland.
Northwood has offered the degree since last fall after it got involved in the College-in-3 Exchange, a national consortium of institutions working to innovate bachelor’s degrees. College officials declined to comment on the number of students enrolled in the new degree program or tuition costs. But federal data shows that tuition costs $17,650 a semester for 12 to 17 credit hours, meaning that students opting for a three-year bachelor’s degrees could save $35,300, less with aid and scholarships.
David Sanford, Northwood University division chair and associate professor of information systems, said faculty led the building of the degree after “rethinking bachelor’s-level education in ways that preserve academic quality while improving affordability, efficiency, and workforce alignment.”
“The timing of the program is significant because cybersecurity is a rapidly evolving field with a persistent need for qualified professionals,” said Ann-Marie Horcher, Northwood University associate professor of cybersecurity. “The c
