Even compressing a "four year" degree into four years would make a substantial difference. At American state universities, only 31% of students graduate in four years.
Actually, the US numbers are already filtered to 4-year institutions.
"The overall 6-year graduation rate for first-time, full-time undergraduate students who began seeking a bachelor’s degree at 4-year degree-granting institutions in fall 2012 was 62 percent. That is, by 2018 some 62 percent of students had completed a bachelor’s degree at the same institution where they started in 2012."
(There is some amount of skew based on this definition for students who transferred to a different institution and then completed on time, but it's hard to find numbers on students who transferred from one four-year institution to another, as opposed to all transfers who predominantly come from 2-year community colleges.)
It isn't as though 4 year degrees teach purely useful information. If you stripped my computer engineering degree to courses that I use for software engineering, it would fit in two semesters. If you tossed out all the non interview required theory, it could fit in one.
I agree. I feel like there should be a credentialing system where you can 'test into' knowledge for specific course loads and however the person (at their own pace) arrives at that knowledge is considered secondary to whether they pass the test.
It's sensible to require one or two years of in-person study but requiring the whole 4 years seems like a potential waste of time due to the differences in maturity, social development, and focus among college aged students.
I think that would be very useful for a lot of older tech types, like myself, who never bothered with a Bachelor's degree in the first place. I'm in the East Bay and there are a number of master-level programs that seem very interesting, but the idea of doing a 4-year undergrad degree at this point makes me want to stab my eyes out - I'm pushing 40, have kids, and doing fine in my career.
Yeah, I was thinking about the time restrictions.
A degree is 5 years in my country. I can see this being useful to students in the 3rd or 4th year, so one year is not enough.
And being a student, I doubt they would start paying for those things. They need their money for books, food and partying :)
i would say make it 2yrs degree instead of 3yrs and in those 2 years you need to train them exactly what is required in the market place / industry (the same way as Zoho university) ... there is no need to waste one more year of a student, the precious time that he/she could devote in getting employment and experience
OR
it would be best if you have 2 years of training followed by 2 years of employment and that makes 4 years of degree.
I think the 4 year degree requirement is more of a proxy for ability to learn and adapt
It's hard to shake off the bias that a post-secondary graduate would be more likely to be a quick learner than a high school graduate even if in reality they're effectively the same
Right now it is 1 year, plus another 3 years of filler. We could make it 5 with another year of filler, but I don't think that would help. Suppose we mandate another year worth of classes: Ancient Mesopotamian Art, Intersectionality in Sports, Flute Performance, Zoology, Sexual Development in the Infant, Ballroom Dance, French Existentialism, Phlebotomy, Astronomy, History of Jazz. Does this help? We already have 3 years of it.
Chains of prerequisites are long enough that we might need 2 years by the calendar, but there is only 1 year worth of material. Going half-time for 2 years would provide the same benefit as the modern American 4-year degree.
Ok, let's not inconvenience the students anymore with studying then since they're so busy. We should just award them a degree after 4 years of being in the unversity's register.
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