It will be a hard sell and if it ever happens it will be over time. Wesleyan has a 3 year program which almost nobody takes advantage of. Roth has mentioned it in the past. If it does happen I would not be surprised if ‘elite’ schools hold out and a 4 year program becomes yet another symbol of ‘having resources’.
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Yes, and in other countries’ A-Level-type systems as well, IB systems, and so on. There is a sort of university-prep layer beyond the general secondary education that everyone is supposed to get, and that layer in some sense replaces that extra year in US undergrad programs.
And I do think this would be a fundamental problem with the US going to a 3-year undergrad system. Of course some US high school students are doing something similar with APs, sometimes IB, sometimes DEs, or sometimes bespoke college-level classes. But not every kid has access to all that. Indeed, sometimes undergrad programs need to do some work just to get some of their students up to where they need to be to do a 4-year program.
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It requires the same amount of course work through overloading, summer courses, and pre-matriculation credit, so not the same concept as the 90 instead of 120 credit three year programs.
My daughter could have graduated early because of all her AP and DE credits but she would have been sacrificing a concentration, her research, and much more depth in her major (graduate level classes). We told her to stay and finish but we were in a position to cover all her costs. I agree with you that this could become another symbol of wealth.
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Yes, but don’t UK students just take 3 A-levels of their choosing? So the specialization is already happening in the last years of high school and there are presumably even fewer general ed requirements.
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Yeah, among the many quirks of the US system is if you enter with lots of stuff like that covered, then at some (not all) colleges you might have the option to graduate earlier, but you might also have the option to just do more in undergrad, either more broadly or more deeply or both. And in fact if you are either getting enough aid or just have enough family resources, that can be a “good deal”.
True. With the passage of time, it has become pretty obvious that four years of “going away to college” is something that Americans are willing to pay for, if they can afford it. There’s more to it than just what can be stuffed into a curriculum. The middle-class has adopted it as a rite of passage and there are many socialization advantages to having young people participate in some sort of universal, generational experience.
The problem is that most parents can’t afford to send their kids away from home for any length of time and never have. Elite colleges will allocate lottery tickets to enough families - the highly incentivized ones - in order to make themselves appear accessible to everybody, but of course, that leaves many more students who will have to spend some years as commuters living at home.
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So the universal part of the English (or similar) secondary system takes you through Grade 11, roughly age 16, and the GSCEs. At that point if you go on the university-prep track, you actually have two years left in what is often called Sixth Form, or in fact perhaps “college”. Note the Scottish system can be a little different, and Wales and Northern Ireland also treat the first year, the “AS” level, differently from England does these days.
Anyway you are correct that in that system, your general education as we would understand it is basically over at Year 11 with the GSCEs, and part of what we would have to change to adopt this system would be precisely that, moving up the targets for general education to be complete by the end of what we call 10th Grade. Some feel like this is not enough time and that this is actually a weakness of the English-style system. But at least they know that is the goal.
Then those two-year programs in their specialty areas again usually take them farther than the standard (non-AP/IB/etc.) tracks get to in the US secondary school system. So not only do they not need gen eds outside their “major” (aka course) when they get to university, they are usually also starting their university course already having the equivalent of many of the foundational classes that “majors” in the US might be taking their first year in college.
Like, say, an Engineering major in the US might only have taken HS Physics, not AP Physics. In the English system, it would be very unusual for someone admitted to an Engineering course not to have taken A-Level Physics (it can happen, it just isn’t very common).
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The college accreditors have to approve any move to a 90 credit hour degree.
Some schools offering three year degrees have been mentioned on this thread, here’s a good summary:
That summary doesn’t include a college called New U in DC, which offers only three year degrees, in limited majors. There are currently several dozen students enrolled. New U is in the pre-accreditation phase with MSCHE.
A few additional recent developments:
-SACSCOC, a college accreditation agency, has approved 90 credit hour bachelor’s degrees (with some constraints.) So, colleges accredited by SACSCOC can design and offer three year bachelor’s degrees. SACSCOC Opens Pathway for Reduced-Hour Bachelor’s Degrees - SACSCOC
-The Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents created a new policy allowing their institutions to offer 90 hour degrees, the press release names some states that already have this policy in place. Most of these states have declining enrollment numbers either in total, or outside of their flagship university. Three-Year (90-Credit) Bachelor’s Degrees at UW – CROWE – UW–Madison
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Wesleyan’s program is just a 4 year degree taken over six semesters and two to three summers rather than a 3 year degree composed of 3 traditional academic years.
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Reducing the duration of a bachelor’s degree from four to three years is not the right solution to address the financial burden of college. I think that four years is appropriate for gaining the foundational knowledge, learning to communicate, making connections, and maturing to face “real life.” Perhaps the schools can first address their staffing bloat and overly ambitious capital projects, instead of constantly increasing the price tag every year.
But it saves almost a full year of cost which is theoretically one of the main drivers of a shorter undergraduate program. And, is it really that much of an overload compared to what many kids did during HS?
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I note a lot of the “extra” cost of providing a US-style residential college experience, versus a typical per-year cost for undergraduate degrees in other countries, comes from the residential part of that, and all the expectations parents and students have for what will come along with that residential experience in terms of activities, services, and so on. Even residential programs in other countries don’t typically offer nearly as much in those areas.
And the US does have cost-saving alternatives. You can get four-year degrees as a commuter. You can also spend a couple years at a community college before transferring to a residential college to finish your degree. You won’t get the “full” four-year residential college experience that way, but you can get the education and degree you need for your career.
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I think that part of the mismatch between our system and European systems is that our higher ed landscape is more democratic – it’s designed (at least as of the mid-20th century, not before) to provide access to a wide range of students, with entry points for students with different educational backgrounds, talents, and interests, and that includes students who arrive at college with inadequate preparation in some academic areas. Our four-year system, with all of its variations, is designed in part to give students a chance to find their way and discover the right paths, which might include filling the gaps where there are academic deficits, or sampling a wide variety of fields or at least achieving competency across the board before specializing. In the meantime, students and families expect the “college experience,” which is distinctively American and offers more reasons to stick around for four years.
In Europe (and maybe Asia and Latin America? I know even less about their systems), far fewer students pursue a traditional university pathway; those who don’t have been tracked on alternative paths much earlier in their primary/secondary school years, and those who do have more years of secondary education, with higher competencies across academic fields, so it’s more appropriate for them to start out university in a specialized track. But with the way our system works (including k-12 for the vast majority of students), eliminating a general studies requirement (or an exploratory period for colleges with open curricula) would make little sense, and would leave our students far less educated than they should be with a BA/BS. We can’t match the European system without also replicating their K-12 systems, and I’m not sure we want to do that, because the kind of tracking it requires contradicts our democratic ethos of education.
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Absolutely.
I would just add that when you really think about what transforming our K-12 system would take in terms of standardization of curriculums, that is another thing I think would be a very, very hard sell in the US. And that would also turn into a funding issue, and so on.
Just seems very hard to get there from here to me.
By the way, reflecting on your points about access and opportunity, it occurred to me that Common App should have released their March 1 update on application trends, and in fact they have:
The basic headline is:
Through March 1, 2026, 1,429,747 first-year applicants had submitted 9,423,621 applications—a 2% increase in applicants and a 5% rise in total applications compared to the same point last year.
This was despite a decrease in this period of International applicants–domestic applicants were actually up 3%. Fueling this domestic increase were above-average increases in URM applicants (+5%), first-gen (+6%), fee-waiver eligible (+6%), and below-median-income zips (+8%).
I guess my point is it doesn’t appear yet that these particular kids/families are on net losing faith in the ability of the sorts of colleges that use the Common App to provide them with upward mobility opportunities. OTHER sorts of people might be thinking or saying such things, but not these kids/families, at least not on net.
Of course how that intersects with the funding issues and such discussed in the OP article is complicated. But that sort of “market demand” for the current system of US higher education, if you will, continues to grow.
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If you take 20 instead of 15-16 credits per semester, and/or start with lots of useful AP or similar credit, that can be true. But if you need summer sessions, that reduces the savings.
15-16 credits is supposed to mean 45-48 hours of work per week, while 20 credits is supposed to mean 60 hours of work per week.
Haven’t a number of state universities switched to The Common Application, or started accepting it in addition to their own applications in recent years?
If the state university applications are driving the increase, then increases in categories of applicants usually seem as less advantaged would not be surprising.
I believe there were some who added it in some recent years. I am not aware of many big systems which added it just since the 2024-25 cycle. Of course if a state like California ever switched over, it would cause quite the discontinuity in the statistics.
Anyway, I also note the overall increase at publics and privates was about the same.
With a little digging:
New members for the 2025-26 application season*
Common App is also welcoming 45 new members to the platform this year. Notably, after adding its first cohort of four community colleges in 2024-25, six additional community colleges join for this application season.
Mid-Atlantic
Fei Tian College - Northern Campus(NY)Mid-West
Alverno College (WI)
Andrews University (MI)
Cottey College (MO)
Grand View University (IA)
Lincoln Land Community College (IL)
Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (WI)
Missouri Western State University (MO)
Northwest Missouri State University (MO)
Oakton College (IL)
Triton College (IL)
Upper Iowa University (IA)
Zane State College (OH)New England
York County Community College (ME)South
Alabama State University (AL)
Allen University (SC)
Brescia University (KY)
Fayetteville State University (NC)
Kentucky College of Art + Design (KY)
Lander University (SC)
Southern University and A&M College (LA)
University of South Carolina Aiken (SC)
University of South Carolina Upstate (SC)
Valdosta State University (GA)
Wake Technical Community College (NC)South-West
East Texas Baptist University (TX)
Lamar University (TX)
Lubbock Christian University (TX)
New Mexico State University (NM)
Northeastern State University (OK)
Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi (TX)
Texas A&M University at Galveston (TX)
Texas A&M University - San Antonio (TX)
Texas College (TX)
Texas Woman’s University (TX)
The University of North Texas at Dallas (TX)
The University of Texas at Tyler (TX)
University of Texas Permian Basin (TX)
West Texas A&M University (TX)West
Arizona Christian University (AZ)
Northern Arizona University (AZ)International
Leeds Beckett University (GBR)
London Metropolitan University (GBR)
Mondragon University (ESP)
Salzburg University (AUT)
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Notable schools with a large amount of apps who have started using common app in the last couple years are TAMU and UT Austin, with 2023-24 cycle and U Washington 2022-23.
It’s important to note that Common App deadline updates show data only for those who have been members for 5 years (so these numbers won’t include TAMU, Texas, or UDub for example.) That’s 911 colleges as of the March report (there are currently over 1,100 common app member schools.) From the first page of the March report:
Notes: As Common App membership has grown over time, we focus deadline updates on institutions that have maintained Common App membership for the five most recent years (“returning members”), or 911 institutions. That said, trends observed here may still partially result from new members bringing new applicants onto the platform each year
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