What’s the point of college? Is the goal to obtain a degree and enter the workforce as quickly as possible? A budding initiative at the UNC System seems to say so, and it could soon offer a chance to do that 25% faster.
UNC System Vice President for Academic Affairs Dan Harrison announced the system is exploring the feasibility of offering select undergraduate degree programs consisting of just 90 credit hours designed to be completed in three years, a deviation from the standard 120, four-year pathway.
The memo requests proposals for potential 90-credit-hour programs that outline the academic concept, target student population, workforce or market rationale and any anticipated regulatory or accreditation considerations.
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“There have been long-running debates in American higher education about the appropriate credit-hour requirements for undergraduate degrees, along with persistent challenges in guiding students to on-time completion of traditional programs,” the memo states.
“In keeping with our mission of serving students and meeting the evolving needs of North Carolina, the UNC System seeks to examine whether more streamlined undergraduate degree models could accelerate time to degree, reduce student debt, align with critical employment needs, and expand access for working adults and other populations.
“Any accelerated model must also preserve the intellectual depth, coherence, and educational integrity that define a UNC undergraduate education.”
According to the UNC System’s response to a public records request filed by Carolina Public Press, the system had not yet received any proposals as of March 31. Harrison asks for proposals by April 17, the day after the next UNC System Board of Governors meeting is set to take place.
Expanding the pie
The memo says programs with a high workforce need will be prioritized — such as business, computer sciences, health professions and various arts and humanities majors, fields in which a new report shows a significant gap in degree completion compared to job demand in the state — but Harrison said they will explore proposals from all fields.
As the system reviews the proposals and explores its options, it will be critical that any selected proposals are additive to the UNC System community, Harrison told CPP. The goal isn’t to redirect incoming students from a 120-credit-hour degree toward a 90-credit-hour one but rather to attract a new or different kind of student in order to “expand the pie” of total students.
“We want these programs to attract students (who) might otherwise not choose to come to a UNC System institution at all for any kind of degree,” he said.
“We don’t want it, necessarily, to be a sort of situation where we’re taking away from our existing student pool who are in the traditional 120-credit-hour undergraduate degrees to launch these.”
North Carolina would be far from the first state to offer the slimmed programs. In 2026 alone, Massachusetts’ State Board of Higher Education voted to allow proposals for three-year degrees and North Dakota gave the greenlight for the development of three-year degree pilot programs. The governor of Oklahoma mandated the state to study the feasibility of 90-credit-hour degrees in February.
Private colleges across the country have also jumped in head first. As of this spring, Ensign College, a Utah school affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, offers all three of its degrees in a three-year format. Johnson & Wales University, a private university with campuses in Charlotte and Providence, R.I., is offering four of its degrees in the accelerated path, including the Hospitality Management program based in Charlotte.
But North Carolina is taking a unique approach compared to others, Harrison said. Through the Request for Proposals process, the UNC System is asking for its institutions to take the first step in helping decide what these programs might be.
“As far as I know, we’re the only folks who are pushing this out through an RFP to our institutions to get their expertise on the front end and say, ‘Hey, what ideas do you have?’ rather than being top-down and prescriptive about it,” he said.
“So I think the national trend is extraordinarily important, but I think our approach is a little bit more bottom-up than what you see in some of the other states that are exploring this.”
The accreditation agency that oversees the UNC System schools, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, also approved a policy in March that establishes a framework for reduced-credit-hour bachelor’s degree programs. Institutions will be required to get approval from the agency before implementation, a feat already accomplished by University of Lynchburg, a private Virginia university, in December.
The UNC System is in the process of leaving SACSCOC to form its own agency with five other Southern state university systems, the Commission for Public Higher Education, which will seek recognition from the U.S. Department of Education in 2027, but its website says universities will likely remain with their current accreditor until the agency is formally recognized.
But that transition could come sooner for some, as the memo states proposals may receive grants of up to $20,000 to support academic planning, market research and regulatory activities, including “transitioning to a different programmatic or institutional accreditor, and similar exploration.”
A shifting landscape
Madeleine Green is executive director of the College-in-3 Exchange, a nonprofit working to make three-year degrees more widespread. When College-in-3’s cofounder Robert Zemsky first proposed the idea of degrees with fewer credits in 2009, people weren’t quite ready for it, Green said.
But a lot has changed since 2009. The rising cost of college and the subsequent increased strain of student debt, which the UNC System notes in its call for proposals, has led more people to seek alternative options when getting their degree, Green said.
“We are now at 81 member institutions from all over the country, public and private and small and large institutions that think that it is a good idea to give students choices,” she said.
“We’re not saying that everyone should have a three-year degree, but that this can be a pathway that makes college much more affordable, 25% off your tuition, and puts you in the workforce a year sooner.”
No one knows yet whether the new phenomenon is a fleeting trend or will truly change higher education long-term, Harrison said. But he sees enough merit to it now that he says it’s better to take action so as to not be behind the curve down the line.
“There’s enough momentum that it is possible that market forces will force us in this direction at some point over the next several years,” Harrison said.
“I would rather the UNC System be on the front end of the conversation, shaping it, making sure that what we offer is well thought out and of high quality, than face the risk of being wholly reactive after we’re kind of forced into this position in a few years.”
Richard Garrett, chief research officer at Eduventures, a higher education consulting firm, said generally more interest in the accelerated programs has come from private universities that are struggling with low enrollment and high tuition.
But if the UNC System is to move forward, he suspects it might act as an agent of change for other university systems of a similar size and prestige.
“The idea that a big, public, well-respected system has decided to invest in this potentially, or at least expressions of interest, I think that would make similar systems say, ‘Well, they’re doing it,’” he said.
“Often, if we don’t see our peers doing it, they say, ‘We’re going to wait and see.’ Someone has to go first, and once somebody goes first, then everyone else starts to relax.”
Potential pitfalls
Christopher Kline is a professor for several online-based universities across the country and the dissertation chair at Liberty University’s School of Education. He thinks 90-credit-hour degrees could be particularly useful for adult students who entered the workforce without a degree but now find they could benefit from having the credential.
But Kline does worry about whether opting for a 90-credit-hour degree could cause issues for those wanting to apply to a graduate program later, a common reservation held by skeptics, in addition to concerns about employers’ willingness to hire those with 90-credit-hour degrees.
A College-in-3 study found that while graduate school administrators “didn’t stand up and cheer” at the idea, in Green’s words, most already have processes for international students who received three-year degrees in other countries, so it is not entirely unfamiliar to them. Employers also seem receptive in her experience, as most don’t tend to analyze the specifics of a degree, she said.
The UNC System’s memo says it will prioritize proposals that provide evidence of available professional school or graduate school opportunities for the proposed program’s graduates. The last thing they want is for a student to invest in a degree and not be able to benefit from it fully, Harrison said.
Green prefers to think of 90-credit-hour degrees not as “trimmed” diplomas but as redesigned ones. The new programs tend to omit mostly elective courses to take the degree from 120 credits to 90 and often keep the general education requirements more-or-less the same. Universities might make slight changes to the major courses if they see an opportunity to get rid of redundancy.
“This is really an opportunity to look at the major and say, ‘Is this as well constructed as it could be? Are courses overlapping? Do students have a clear knowledge base?’” she said.
“Many institutions have seen this as an opportunity to rethink how they’re crafting the major or to create a new major.”
But this is also why Green says this new path is not for everyone. Young students who don’t know exactly what they want to do could benefit from the exploration a standard 120-credit-hour pathway allows for. Student athletes have also expressed that this wouldn’t be the best choice for their athletic career, Green said.
“There may be 18-year-olds who arrive on campus (who) really have no idea what they want to do, and so they need that time to figure things out,” she said.
“… So I think we always have to say, this is an option. Students need options. Colleges and universities need to give students good advice. They need to give them off-ramps, but it’s not for everyone.”
In the proposals, Harrison wants institutions to consider what the nonnegotiable aspects of the undergraduate experience are, which are sure to vary by field, and design the potential programs accordingly.
Harrison expects to receive many strong proposals as the deadline nears. As they move forward, it will be important to evaluate them along the way to ensure the UNC System is meeting its initial goals and, eventually, measuring student outcomes from the programs over time. The system could see these new programs as early as 2027, Harrison said.
There’s a lot of distrust in higher education right now, Kline said, whether that be because of its headbutting with the federal government or growing concerns over college’s ROI. Regardless, a traditional pathway isn’t necessarily for everyone all of the time. Options like accelerated degrees could be the happy medium the country is searching for.
“We have to have that balance between the need for higher education, the need to understand everybody has the ability to learn and develop skills, but also the understanding that it might not be a four-year-degree program for them,” Kline said.
“Right now, what we’re seeing is the pendulum shifting from ‘everybody needs a four-year degree’ to ‘nobody needs a higher education.’ And it needs to come back a little bit to the middle.”
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