The debate that followed cuts to the heart of one of the most vexing questions in American higher education: In the race to make college more accessible, is the nation in danger of dismantling the very thing it is trying to sell?
The board approved two reduced-credit degree programs at Suffolk University in Boston and Merrimack College in North Andover — the first of their kind in the state. The approvals triggered an immediate and sharp response from the nation's two most influential faculty organizations.
Dr. Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors, and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, issued a joint statement condemning the move as a threat to academic integrity — one that, in their view, mistakes symptoms for causes.
"This move may initially create the illusion of reducing costs, but it ignores the root causes of skyrocketing higher education tuition," Wolfson and Weingarten said. "We should reduce the cost of earning a bachelor's degree, not cut corners and devalue what a bachelor's degree means."
The two schools aren't simply compressing four years of coursework into a shorter timeline. Instead, the new bachelor's degrees require fewer credits to graduate — closer to 90 instead of the typical 120. That distinction matters enormously to educators who argue the reduction isn't just a scheduling change, it's a philosophical one.
Merrimack College will roll out a 96-credit "applied bachelor's degree" in four existing majors: psychology, communication, criminal justice and business administration. Suffolk University will launch a 94-credit degree in health administration, an entirely new major at the Boston school. Both programs launch in fall 2027.
Leaders at both colleges say the fields of study were chosen to address regional workforce needs, and that students who opt into the compressed pathway will maintain the same quality of education. The tradeoff, they acknowledge, will be less flexibility to take electives, to double major, and to study abroad.
But critics counter that clarity of career purpose at 18 or 19 should not be the price of admission to an affordable education and that framing the programs as a matter of student choice obscures a deeper structural problem.
Perhaps the sharpest challenge to the programs came not from union leaders in Washington but from faculty on the ground in Massachusetts.
C. Heike Schotten, a professor of political science at UMass Boston, asked board members directly whether they would want their own children enrolled in a reduced-credit program. If not, "why would you be OK with having other, poorer members of the Commonwealth enroll their kids in them?"
Max Page, a professor of architecture at UMass Amherst and president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, said it was "disturbing" that the board was rushing through proposals that essentially telegraph to working-class students seeking affordability that "if they want to go to college, they should get a three-quarters bachelor's degree."
Those critiques land squarely within a broader national conversation about who higher education is really designed for. The AAUP and AFT, in their joint statement, framed the issue in similarly stark terms, arguing that a degree stripped of electives, interdisciplinary exploration, and sustained faculty engagement is not a reform but a retreat.
"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 wrote. "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."
None of that dissent slowed the approval process in Massachusetts. Governor Maura Healey was quick to congratulate the two schools after a difficult spring that saw the back-to-back collapses of Hampshire and Anna Maria colleges, saying "three-year degrees will make it more affordable for students to graduate and get the skills they need to succeed in today's workforce."
The political appeal is easy to understand. With public confidence in higher education eroding and student debt becoming a generational albatross, elected officials are under growing pressure to demonstrate that college is still worth the investment. A faster, cheaper degree — at least on paper — offers an answer.
Massachusetts joins a national movement calling for faster college degrees at a more affordable price. Dozens of schools now offer reduced-credit bachelor's degree programs around the country, from the University of Maine system to Hawai'i Pacific University. The College-in-3 Exchange, a nonprofit networking collective, keeps a running list.
The pilot programs are required to be called "applied bachelor's degrees," to distinguish them from traditional bachelor's degrees. Students must also opt in by signing disclosure forms acknowledging possible risks related to federal financial aid eligibility, graduate school, and perceptions by employers.
That last point — employer perception — is one that hangs over the entire enterprise. Critics worry that signing up for a three-year degree is a risky experiment when it is not yet clear how graduate schools or employers will view them. For students already navigating thin margins, that uncertainty carries real consequences.
The AAUP and AFT have a different prescription altogether. Rather than reducing the content of a degree, they argue, policymakers should invest in making the full degree more accessible.
"Higher education should be affordable for all," Wolfson and Weingarten said in their statement. "This will require expanding and strengthening Pell, TRIO and other federal and state-level programs — not asking students to accept less education for the same credential."
