The Rise of the 90 Credit Bachelor Degree

[Jonathan Whatley]

Besides DEAC,have any other accreditation agencies voiced an opinion as yet?

Yes.

The movement has come a long way since April 2024, when the College-in-3 Exchange, a new organization dedicated to promoting interest in the three-year degree, held a meeting in Massachusetts to discuss its progress. Though advocates celebrated the success of the truncated degree programs granted to BYU-Idaho and Ensign in summer 2023, no in-person three-year programs had yet been approved, and most accreditors still seemed skeptical of the concept.

Since then, every [regional] accreditor in the U.S. has done an about-face, implementing or clarifying their policies to allow colleges to propose degrees with fewer than 120 credits. Many accreditors have already approved programs, including the country’s first in-person reduced-credit degrees: computer science, criminal justice, graphic design and hospitality management at Johnson & Wales University, which were approved by the New England Commission of Higher Education and will launch this fall. Some state higher education leaders are enthusiastically backing the movement, in some cases adjusting regulations or releasing guidance to make it easier to create these programs.

Is the 3-Year Degree Dream Becoming a Reality? (Johanna Alonso, Inside Higher Ed, July 28 2025)