Wesleyan bucks trend, lets students graduate in 3 years

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/04/05/wesleyan-rare-step-among-elite-colleges-promotes-earning-degree-years-save-tuition/Qu4gn7U2PAvZt6RTfMBgSP/story.html?p1=Well_BG_Links

by ilamont • 12 years ago

35 49 12 years ago

bostonglobe.com

grifpete• 12 years ago

"...some educators worry that three years isn’t enough time for young people to find themselves intellectually or emotionally."

Almost all degrees in England are three years degrees.

KC8ZKF• 12 years ago

Q.E.D.

ollysb• 12 years ago

Given that a large part of most degrees is pretty irrelevant to the student's future career 3 years seems plenty. If you're going to be an academic you can just do a masters or get on with your PHD.

dfc9• 12 years ago

I am always amazed with HN's fascination with college degrees. What is the large part of most degrees that is pretty irrelevant to a student's future career?

{The downvote is a great example of this fascination. Merely asking a question was troublesome enough for someone that instead of responding to the question they clicked the down arrow. My question was polite and genuine, at least that was my intention. What is so threatening/offensive about my question?}

stephen_g• 12 years ago

Same with most in Australia.

Engineering is one exception, generally being four years. But often that includes honours built-in (if you get a good enough GPA), whereas with most other degrees you have to do an extra year after finishing the bachelors degree to get that.

Wohui• 12 years ago

The problem is, existing 3 year degrees in America are compressed 4 year degrees. America should ditch gen-ed at the same time (as switching to 3-year).

ZanyProgrammer4• 12 years ago

Yeah, and a lot of that is based on baby boomer (and older) nostalgia that sees college as a place to acquire a broad education and to 'find yourself.' In other words, its completely unsuitable to a world of student loan debt that is spiraling out of control.

cliveowen• 12 years ago

Same in Italy.

rm445• 12 years ago

Except, most UK undergraduates in mathematics, engineering and the sciences now do a 4-year first degree, albeit a taught masters.

If you meet someone styled MEng, MMath, MSci or MChem, that's generally what they've got. Note they generally do not have e.g. BEng MEng or BSc MEng: the fourth year has an extended project/thesis element but is not a separate degree.

It's all very nice to have a masters as your first degree, but you can't really escape the fact that university expansion and the eroding standards of A-levels, together with the technological demands of the modern world, mean it's very hard for three years of higher education in the sciences to be enough.

danpalmer• 12 years ago

The 3 years we do in the UK generally contains the same amount of the chosen subject as the 4 year degrees in America do as far as I can see. The main difference is that we only do our subject, whereas students in America often do lots of extra and quite different modules. I think there is some merit to that system.

Also, I wouldn't say that most undergrads in STEM do 4 year masters degrees in the UK. I think a fair few do, but going on what I've seen from friends, and what I saw when I was applying for my CS degree 4 years ago, which I'm coming to the end of now, it can often be difficult to find places that do the 4 year masters. For CS, there were probably fewer than 10 places in the country that did MEng. This is just my experience though, it might be changing, and I'm a few years out of date.

cafard• 12 years ago

I don't see college's mission as helping one find oneself emotionally. As for intellectually, a fair number of those getting degrees have limited interest in that.

rayiner2• 12 years ago

I think reducing the mandatory time in residence is going to be a key way of reducing the burden of higher education. My wife graduated from U of Iowa in 5 semesters between AP credits and testing out of classes, which allowed her to pay her way by nannying and graduate with no debt. But this strategy is often not possible at private schools, where there are residency requirements.

Reducing residency requirements has a particular advantage, which is saving cost of living. My law school alma mater recently started a program to allow people to get a JD in two years. Even though the total tuition is the same, students save $25-30k in loans and interest by not having to pay cost of living the extra year. Cutting out tuition for the third year would be another step forward, but as a first step simply cutting the extra year can reduce costs while remaining revenue neutral for schools. It would also be a good idea to move classes to later in the day, to allow students to have part-time jobs to help pay their expenses.

dfc9• 12 years ago

The biggest hurdle for improving the law school tuition is the ABA accreditation standards. Namely:

  Standard 304. COURSE OF STUDY AND ACADEMIC CALENDAR
  
  (a) A law school shall have an academic year of not fewer than 130 days
      on which classes are regularly scheduled in the law school,
      extending into not fewer than eight calendar months. The law school
      shall provide adequate time for reading periods, examinations, and
      breaks, but such time does not count toward the 130-day academic
      year requirement.
  
  (b) A law school shall require, as a condition for graduation,
      successful completion of a course of study in residence of not fewer
      than 58,000 minutes of instruction time, except as otherwise
      provided. At least 45,000 of these minutes shall be by attendance in
      regularly scheduled class sessions at the law school.
  
  (c) A law school shall require that the course of study for the J.D.
      degree be completed no earlier than 24 months and no later than 84
      months after a student has commenced law study at the law school or
      a law school from which the school has accepted transfer credit.
  
  (d) A law school shall require regular and punctual class attendance.
  
  (e) A law school shall not permit a student to be enrolled at any time
      in coursework that, if successfully completed, would exceed 20
      percent of the total coursework required by that school for
      graduation (or a proportionate number for schools on other academic
      schedules, such as a quarter system).
  
  (f) A student may not be employed more than 20 hours per week in any
      week in which the student is enrolled in more than twelve class
      hours.

cpwright3• 12 years ago

(f) seems particularly troubling to me. How can one expect to work their way through school, if they are not allowed to work more than 20 hours a week. This seems like a really bogus restriction for a school to place on you.

rayiner2• 12 years ago

The ABA needs to be a part of these reforms, for sure.

ZanyProgrammer4• 12 years ago

I think the perspective of faculty who teach general ed classes is obviously going to be biased-more students graduating in 3 years means less students taking their general ed classes.

With the way that college tuition is increasing, I think its highly immoral to not want to push 3 year degrees. Granted I'm biased, since I've never thought very highly of the general ed classes I had to take in college (being a voracious reader myself).

cpwright3• 12 years ago

Just because you do it in 3 years doesn't mean you take any less gen ed, the degree requirements are exactly the same; you just have to work at a higher intensity for 3 years instead of 4.

cmhamill• 12 years ago

Wesleyan has no hard-and-fast gen ed requirements, which makes this easier to pull off for students.

Some majors do require them for Honors, though.

ZanyProgrammer4• 12 years ago

Well, one way of graduating earlier is to do what you did-another tack would be to do what some people are suggesting, and mimic places like Britain (correct me if I'm wrong here) where people mostly take courses in their field of study, with much less gen ed.

cpwright3• 12 years ago

I went to SUNY Stony Brook and graduated with a BS double majoring in Computer Science and Applied Math in 3 years. My wife and her roommate also graduated with CS degrees in 3 years. All it takes is focus, and scheduling things properly so that the long prerequisite chains are taken care of.

To do the double major, I did need to apply for overload (more than 19 credits, up to 24) for 3 of the semesters that I was there; but I could still have probably done 2.5 years if I did not want to do a CS honors project.

A public university has no incentive to keep you there longer than necessary; and once you were a full time student, it was the same cost to take 24 credits as to take 12.

jgrahamc• 12 years ago

I got my undergraduate degree in three years (because that was the way it worked), I then did my doctorate in three years.

For the undergraduate since three years was how things worked there wasn't really any choice, but the important thing was that in the first year everything I did at school I was assumed to have mastered plus the reading in the summer before. We went fast onto new stuff from day 1.

For my doctorate I did pure research in computer science and I had a grant that covered my expenses for three years. I damn well got the thing done in three years rather than run out of money.

herge2• 12 years ago

In Quebec, between secondary school and university, you usually do a two year preparatory college called CÉGEP. For sciences, for example, you do all your general science classes (Chem 101, Math 101, etc) with professors with master degrees in CÉGEP at a cost of ~200$ a semester, and then spend three years in university specialized in your major.

That way you can faf about for two (or more) years in CÉGEP at a lower cost (to you and society) and then go into university a lot more focused. A lot of people complain of the completion rate of students in CÉGEPs but I wonder how the completion rate of people once they get into university compared to the rest of the world.

dfc9• 12 years ago

What is the societal cost of faffing about in CEGEP and how is it different than faffing about in college?

keypusher• 12 years ago

It costs $200 a semester and not $10,000+

acchow• 12 years ago

The way I understand it, CEGEP is not held on the same campuses as universities and the teachers are not professors (usually not PhD graduates either). Think of it as doing college 100-level courses in a high school setting with high school teachers. I believe we can agree that faffing about in high school has a lower cost than faffing about in college?

mistermcgruff• 12 years ago

I entered college exempted from one year of classes. Rather than graduate in 3, I used those credits to graduate leisurely in 4 with a pure math degree. Math majors had the lowest gpas on campus and by far the hardest workload. Abstract algebra is tough! I don't regret my pace... It allowed me to play bar trivia every once in a while.

mvarner• 12 years ago

Was also exempted from one year of classes--currently doing something similar but with Art + CS. Definitely would recommend to anyone--more time to do research and such outside of your classes!

blahedo• 12 years ago

The university I currently teach at has per-credit tuition and fees, unlike the other two places I've taught or my ugrad and grad institutions. At first, it struck me as gougy and a way to nickel-and-dime the students; but I've since come around and realised that it's actually a lot more equitable in many ways, and it certainly grants students the flexibility to plan the path that works best for them. If you decide to spread out your classes and take a ninth (or tenth) semester to finish, the only added cost is room and board (which you'll be paying anyway, in some sense) and the opportunity cost of lost work. If it's important to you to finish in three years, that's doable, but all you save is room and board (and you get to start working earlier), but you're not going to feel the huge pressure of $60K pushing you to rush through and overload.

Interestingly, when they made the change about ten years ago, they didn't foresee the rise of students who would intentionally average 12 instead of 15 credits per term (which puts them at a 5 year graduation instead of 4), so there was some alarm that students are taking "too long". But, I think that's a good rational choice for at least some of them, and as I said, it gives them the flexibility to make college work for them.

bennyg2• 12 years ago

12/13 credit hour semesters are the only way I was able to enjoy myself and do well in classes at college. My best grades actually came from the summer classes where it was a couple hours every day for 4 weeks. I think there's a lot to be said for letting people finish in what ways work for them. I think the arbitrary 4 year "goal" adds unnecessary stress.

noname1233• 12 years ago

Cool so many people posting here how they finished school early in 3 years and also proceeded to finish grad school early. Let me toss my name in the hat, too! So many fond memories,

I finished my undergraduate CS degree in 3.5 years at Wesleyan, I did it by dropping my honors thesis project because I got bored. For the next "semester," I squatted on campus to play Dota for the entire semester (I played main support characters like Crystal Maiden and Omniknight). During the downtime, I wrote an application to YC, back when it was relatively easy to apply and got a free trip out to Mountain View to only to shake hands with PG (PG and one of his buddy judged correctly that my only one true motivation in life was personal leisure, not making money for him).

Obama came on campus and spoke for graduation and made a brouhaha about smart and selfless he was as he turned down a corporate law job to become a community organizer on the "south side of Chicago." None of which mattered to me as an unemployed college student in the summer of 2008 with student loans.

Eventually, I applied to the most overlooked open source project on Google Summer of Code and got accepted (which I lied to say that I was a "enrolled" student) and some cash. With that "Google" cache, I got an interview at Lehman Brothers prop trading group that summer, two months prior to their collapse. The manager told me back then, "I believe the worst is behind is behind us and that's why we're in the full swing of hiring!" Pretty good education IMO in place of one more semester.

Any Wes peeps on HN?

zem• 12 years ago

sounds like something out of a jeffrey archer novel (:

necubi• 12 years ago

Wes peep, reporting in. It's always bizarre to see our little liberal arts school pop up on HN.

I also finished my Wesleyan CS degree in 3 years, and it was totally doable (although that was by taking 1.5-2x normal credits most semesters and some careful planning). I considered leaving early, but decided to stay for my senior year so that I could write a thesis and explore some academic areas I'd overlooked in my first three years.

noname1233• 12 years ago

Thanks for reporting in! Yea I'm surprised too. Our school is not known for CS and instead known for <insidejoke>Norman Danner's cats</insidejoke>.

acmiller• 12 years ago

I went to Wesleyan, and I graduated with only five semesters on campus in part to keep costs down. So, I appreciate the purpose behind this policy.

However, it doesn't change the fact that tuition is almost $47k/year, which is just a staggering amount of money for most families. And that's before room and board, etc. Forcing someone to cram four years of college into three to save 20% on $240k+ isn't especially helpful.

noname1233• 12 years ago

Wow impressive! I agree, Wesleyan is really expensive which I understand it to be a function of "communism in action," in which the school's bulk of annual funds is funded by tuition and re-funneled to financial aid. So you as a full-pay student were really subsidizing a financial aid student like me, so thank you for your help, sir.

lotsofpulp• 12 years ago

I messed around in high school and didn't apply to the right schools and scholarships, so I ended up having to pick a reputed private school. In order to make up for it, I did my BS in math in 5 semesters by taking 23 to 27 credits per semester. The extra credits were free since I maintained a very high GPA.

I saved a ton of money on tuition, but if you factor in the opportunity cost of also earning money and experience, shaving a year off of college is easily worth $100k+ if you have to pay anywhere close to sticker price at a private college.

If you have the ability to do it, I highly suggesting graduating as soon as possible. I think England has a better system than America, with the 3 year degree in relevant course material. If I had to do it again, I would get the scholarship, do my Bachelors and do a Masters or maybe even a PhD. With the rising costs, I don't see how 4 year makes sense anymore.

Wesleyan bucks trend, lets students graduate in 3 years

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