Massachusetts Will Allow 3-Year Degree Proposals

Massachusetts colleges and universities may soon be allowed to offer three-year bachelor’s degrees, after the state Board of Higher Education voted Tuesday to consider proposals from public institutions seeking to establish degree programs that require fewer than the standard 120 credits, Statehouse News reported.

While the regulation doesn’t specify the criteria for new programs, it says proposals should be “responsive to significant changes in society, demographics, technology, educational research, or expectations regarding post-secondary education.”

“Our general stance as a board is we ought to be a pro-innovation body,” higher ed board chair Chris Gabrieli told The Boston Globe. “This is not innovation we have fostered but one colleges in Massachusetts want to pursue.”

The move makes Massachusetts the latest state to embrace the three-year degree option, designed to make college more affordable and launch graduates into the workforce sooner. Just last week Ensign College in Utah announced it would make all its degrees three-year.

The Massachusetts Board of Higher Education has been working toward a regulation to allow abbreviated, 90-credit degrees—which typically eliminate electives—for well over a year. Merrimack College, located north of Boston, won approval from its accreditor, the New England Commission of Higher Education, in 2024 to offer shortened degrees in such fields as business, health science, physics and liberal arts.

Massachusetts governor Maura Healey lauded the new regulation.

“We’re creating a pathway for colleges to allow some students to graduate in three years, which will help make us more competitive with other states, lower costs, and support students and our workforce,” she said in a statement.

Others were less enthusiastic. Max Page, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association and an architecture professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, suggested that three-year degrees would deprive students of valuable learning.

“Let’s not use the front of affordability to pursue a weakening of this degree,” he told Statehouse News.