Devouring public media daily to discover the best
Random header image... Refresh for more!

Should students finish college in three years?

by Todd Mundt

Listen live at 10am ET/7am PT

Going to college is mostly about education, but it’s also about exploring some of the possibilities of life. It’s a chance to choose a major and discover, two semesters in, that it’s not going to work. It’s about becoming an adult.

mpr1Can that four year (or longer) process be compressed into three years? Senator Lamar Alexander and some education advocates are arguing for a three year undergraduate education. It would save everyone involved a lot of money. But does it turn college into a factory with no room for mistakes or exploration?

Today on MPR’s Midmorning, Kerri Miller talks to Margaret Drugovich, the President of Hartwick College. Hartwick has launched a three year bachelor’s program. Also on the guest list is Neil Weissman, Provost and Dean of Dickinson College.

We expect this to be an interesting conversation.

Listen live or on-demand.

  • Twitter might not be the appropriate venue for a comment on this...In middle school, students are now exploring what we learned in 10th and 11th grades! Shortening the undergrad experience will ask students to do the exploration in HS, moving other curriculum down again. We already ask them to do developmentally inappropriate things as it is.

    As a parent paying for two college-age students, the money savings appeals to me, though. Maybe the solution is to wait a year between HS and a three year college career, and do the exploring in the gap?
blog comments powered by Disqus