4 Ways Colleges Are Rethinking Degree Completion

Colleges are reconsidering the policies, academic structures and support systems that can make earning a degree unnecessarily difficult, particularly for transfer students, returning adults and those balancing school with other responsibilities.

From expanding bachelor’s degree avenues at two-year colleges to helping stopped-out students return, institutions are exploring new ways to support students through graduation.

Here are four approaches colleges are taking to make degree completion more accessible.

1. Exploring new transfer pathways between community colleges.

Today, roughly 200 community colleges across 24 states offer bachelor’s degree programs, challenging the notion that community colleges are exclusively two-year institutions.

As such programs expand, they are thrusting community colleges into a new role. While they have traditionally been viewed as starting points for students who transfer to four-year bachelor’s degree–granting institutions, now some community colleges are becoming transfer destinations themselves.

New cross-state partnerships at Yavapai College offer one example. The public community college in Arizona partnered with Moraine Park Technical College in Wisconsin and Central Community College in Nebraska this past spring, creating new avenues for graduates of both institutions to enroll in Yavapai’s bachelor’s degree programs.

Beyond the individual articulation agreements, the model raises broader questions about whether networks of community colleges could share academic capacity, expanding bachelor’s degree opportunities for students without requiring every institution to develop its own four-year programs.

Doug Berry, acting president of Yavapai College, said students can transfer their entire associate degree toward one of Yavapai’s 92-credit bachelor’s degrees, leaving them with roughly 30 to 32 credits to complete. A full-time student could therefore finish a bachelor’s degree with about one additional year of study.

“As a community college, we’re used to having our students complete and then move on to a university,” Berry said. “So when we entered this space, we got a chance to almost reverse-engineer that.”

2. Allowing students to pursue bachelor’s degrees where they started.

This fall, Generations College, a private, nonprofit two-year institution in Chicago, announced it would offer bachelor’s degrees for the first time in its 122-year history.

Generations’ decision comes as a growing number of two-year colleges nationwide are expanding into four-year degrees, often with the goal of creating more affordable and accessible avenues to a bachelor’s degree.

Grace Alexis, chancellor of Generations College, said the institution will offer four bachelor’s programs: business administration, business administration with an AI focus, entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship with an AI focus. She said the decision to add the degrees was driven in part by students who wanted to continue their education at Generations rather than transfer elsewhere after earning an associate degree.

The bachelor’s programs will require 120 credits, compared with 60 for an associate degree. Students will also have access to the supports Generations already provides, including flexible scheduling, hybrid and online courses, and financial assistance, such as the college’s scholarship program for single parents.

“A lot of them go kicking and screaming. They don’t want to leave because they know that they’re not going to find the experience that they have at Generations at other schools,” Alexis said. “So, because of their many requests to continue their education with us, we felt that we had to remove the barrier.”

3. Providing more support for students returning to finish their degrees.

Colleges nationwide go to great lengths to re-enroll the millions of Americans who have left higher education with credits but no credential. But bringing students back doesn’t necessarily address the financial, academic and personal challenges that led them to leave in the first place.

A new two-year initiative at the University of Houston–Downtown is testing a more comprehensive approach: It combines personalized advising with emergency financial assistance, community-based basic needs support and efforts to change institutional policies that can make returning to college difficult for working adults.

Backed by $975,000 in philanthropic support, Bridge to Completion aims to create a centralized re-engagement hub for former students who have stopped out since 2018. There, students can receive individualized outreach, degree mapping, academic advising, assistance with readmission and financial aid, career guidance, and personalized plans for returning to college.

Jonathan Davis, interim senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, said the university developed the initiative with the understanding that the stopped-out student population can face an array of challenges as they restart their academic careers. Those can include unpaid institutional balances, transportation and childcare costs, and unexpected expenses.

“Every student’s story is their own, and everyone is a little different, but they kind of rhyme in ways that you notice over time,” Davis said. “By having a coherent effort around these specific populations of high need and high opportunity, then we know we can deploy those resources.”

4. Pairing academic flexibility with structured support.

Competency-based education offers students an alternative to traditional college courses, allowing them to advance by demonstrating mastery of specific skills and knowledge rather than spending a set amount of time in a classroom. The model is particularly appealing to adult learners, who can progress at a flexible pace and receive credit for knowledge they already possess.

But while flexibility has long been central to competency-based education, new research suggests adult learners don’t necessarily want to be left entirely to their own devices. A national survey of 600 prospective undergraduate and graduate students ages 20 to 59 who planned to enroll or return to school within the next two years found that many want flexibility paired with deadlines, instructor interaction and other structures. The survey was conducted in March and April by MGT and commissioned by DeVry University.

Among prospective graduate students, 86 percent said they could manage their time without strict deadlines, yet 49 percent also said they need deadlines to stay on track and 58 percent preferred structured, instructor-led weekly classes.

The findings also suggest that the availability of CBE could influence some prospective students’ decisions about whether to enroll at all. Some 31 percent of undergraduate prospects and 40 percent of graduate prospects said they would enroll only if a competency-based option were available.

Elise Awwad, president of DeVry University, said the findings highlight a tension between the flexibility prospective students value and the structure they believe they need to succeed.

“The research was eye-opening on the support side, but not eye-opening on the flexibility side,” Awwad said. “It’s not an or, it’s an and. Flexibility matters, but so does having someone there to catch me if I need them.”

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