Online programs, three-year bachelor's degrees, and community colleges offer options in higher ed.
Unemployment has changed many a kitchen-table conversation about college. One of the best ways to ensure a job is to have a bachelor's degree. But a college education is now more difficult for many families to afford.
That means many students are on the prowl for bargain bachelor's degrees—and some are finding them in nontraditional programs such as three-year bachelor's degree programs, online education, and work colleges.
A degree in three. Over time, Americans have relaxed expectations that students will complete a bachelor's degree in four years. Because of the amount of remedial preparation many incoming college students need and the obstacles most families face in financing four consecutive years of college, many college students now take six years to graduate.
"We in higher education have been so focused on that fraction of students not fully prepared to do college work that it seems natural for students to stay on longer than four years," says Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education.
Parents, too, have encouraged students to relish their college years and take maximum advantage of campus opportunities. But "the recession has brought us face to face with a new reality," Broad says.
Broad says she expects dozens of colleges to begin offering some bachelor's degrees in three years. She anticipates that trend to be strongest among private schools, where tuition is highest—more than $25,000 a year, on average.
For three-year degrees to measure up, students must be willing to study year-round and faculties must be prepared to give fast-track students clear and regular counsel. The time is right to offer them this option, Broad says. "There are students who are ready now."
Community colleges
Even before President Barack Obama this summer announced a federal initiative to invest $12 billion to produce 5 million more community college graduates by 2020, two-year colleges were on the rise. For many students, community colleges are the most practical path to a diploma.
Hundreds of community colleges have added campus housing to their attractions as well. And many of these schools have been improving their partnerships with four-year universities to ease transfers for students.
Itasca Community College in Grand Rapids, Minn., revamped its engineering program in 2005, adding dorms to create a learning community that gave students 24-hour access to computer labs and other engineering classrooms, says Ron Ulseth, one of the program's founders. The program (which costs students $13,000 a year for tuition, fees, room, and board) already is so well regarded that it has drawn interest from one of the state's four-year colleges.
"The feedback we were getting from practicing engineers was: Why can't engineering be [taught] in the last two years like Itasca has done it in the first two years?" Ulseth says. Starting this year, in partnership with Minnesota State University, Mankato, Itasca will offer the four-year Iron Range engineering program. As in Itasca's associate degree program, students will live in the same dorm. But they will be working toward bachelor's degrees in engineering from Minnesota State Mankato.
"It's an experiment, but there's lots of evidence to show that it works," Ulseth says. "Once we prove it, there will be followers. People will be watching around the country."
When the transfers to four-year universities for upper-division classes work seamlessly, community colleges make bachelor's degrees affordable for millions of families. Since 2000, their enrollments have risen 30 percent. "All the evidence is that these students do just as well," says Broad, the American Council on Education president. "I think this is a great way to complete a first-rate baccalaureate degree."
For the complete U.S. News story, go to http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-colleges/2009/08/19/different-paths-to-a-college-degree.html?PageNr=1
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