Sam Drysdale
State House News Service

The Massachusetts Board of Higher Education is on track to vote in early 2026 on whether to allow public and private colleges and universities in the state to offer three-year bachelor's degrees, reducing the typical 120-credit requirement. 

The board voted Tuesday to solicit a second round of public comment on the regulations, which have been in the works for about a year. This final opportunity for comments — after the previous round led to some changes in the regulations — ends on December 12, putting the board on pace to take a final vote on whether to approve the measure about four to six weeks later, a department official said. 

The proposal aims to provide students with a faster, more affordable path to a degree. 

To earn a traditional four-year bachelor's degree, students are required to take and pay for 120 credits. An associate's degree, or a two-year degree, is 60 credits. The three-year bachelor's programs, which some universities around the country are beginning to offer, are sub-120 credits. Students will graduate with the same degree as those who attend school for four years, but they'll have completed fewer credit hours to do so.

Some higher education institutions in Massachusetts have expressed interest in creating these pathways. 

The New England Commission of Higher Education, an institutional accreditor for most of the private and public colleges in New England, gave a green light last year to Merrimack College in North Andover to pilot a three-year program focused on non-licensure majors, like business, health science, physics, and liberal arts degrees. 

The regulations — should the board vote to approve them — would not automatically allow the programs, just enable colleges and universities to submit proposals for potential approval to the board, board chairman Chris Gabrieli has previously said.

Among the changes the department made following the first round of public comment, the regulations now "ensure financially struggling institutions are not using the proposal for inappropriate reasons, such as to achieve financial stability," said state Department of Higher Education chief legal counsel Dena Papanikolaou. 

State officials also added language to ensure students have "informed consent" about the program they are signing up for, and require schools to be transparent about what they will call the degrees students receive.

State Department of Higher Education lawyers also added a clause to make clear that there is nothing in the regulations to preclude the board from enforcing its existing authority to revoke or suspend an institution's degree-granting authority if the board determines that "something inappropriate might be happening, or if there's non-compliance with the way that the institution is proceeding," Papanikolaou said. 

Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island became the first university in the country to launch an in-person three-year bachelor’s degree this fall.  

Students are only required to complete 90 to 96 credit hours, and take a regular semester load of courses during the academic year. The university is only offering the accelerated degree program in computer science, criminal justice, graphic design, and hospitality management.

It's not just in New England that interest in quicker and more affordable higher degrees is growing. 

Last year, the Utah Board of Higher Education created a new Bachelor of Applied Studies degree that only requires 90 credits. Several universities have expressed interest in the accelerated programs, though none are under way yet in the state. 

In Indiana, former governor Eric Holcomb signed a law last spring requiring every state college and university to review their bachelor's degree programs to determine if they could be completed in three years by a full-time student.