The accreditation agency that oversees local public higher education institutions will consider reduced credit hour bachelor degrees in certain fields to make more graduates available sooner for high demand jobs such as health care and education.
A standard bachelor’s degree is 120 credit hours. The new plans would be 90-100 credit hours.
Stephen L. Pruitt, president of SACSCOC, or the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, said another goal of this new concept is to streamline the process for students to make it more affordable without sacrificing academic rigor.
The association’s executive council announced its decision in early March after conversations with elected officials and leaders in industry as well as its 780 member institutions in 11 southern states from the East Coast to Texas as well as Latin America.
Pruitt said that the concept has generated excitement and skepticism, but that each new degree plan would need to follow association guidelines.
“It won’t be something that somebody can just simply say, ‘Oh, well, let’s submit this next week,’” Pruitt said during a telephone interview with El Paso Matters. “It’s going to take some real time and thought on the part of institutions.”
According to SACSCOC, these degrees only may be offered in specialized or applied disciplines that prepare graduates for direct entry into the workforce.
Institutions must uphold appropriate general education requirements, involve faculty in program development to maintain quality, give the degrees a different name such as an “undergraduate specialist” degree, and must be clear to students and stakeholders that these degrees may not meet admission requirements to graduate or professional programs.
El Paso universities silent
University of Texas at El Paso and Texas Tech Health El Paso officials did not respond to requests for interviews or comments about this new degree plan option. However, a few UTEP students shared their perspectives.
Mariana Garcia, a sophomore art major, does not agree with the concept because she believes the additional year would help a student be more prepared for the workforce. She also was concerned that graduate schools may not accept the new reduced-credits degree.
While not in a rush to graduate from UTEP, the 20-year-old Lower Valley resident said she tries to spend her academic time wisely to include taking some courses in general business and possibly art history to make her a more desirable job candidate.
“I’m more easy going,” said Garcia, who graduated from the Young Women’s Leadership Academy in 2024. She added that she would like to work in a museum for several years and then become a freelance artist. “I can wait. I’m not so much in a rush.”
Steffen Rocha, 22, said he agrees with shorter degree plans. The junior international business major said he spent a year in England after graduating from Franklin High School in 2021 and most baccalaureate degrees there and other countries in Europe take three years to complete.
Those European degree plans are more focused on the major skills and knowledge and not on general education requirements. Some science and engineering degrees can take four to six years to finish, but most include a year-long internship sandwiched between academic years.
Rocha said he would trim the core curriculum from the degree plans because it covers the same information that was taught in high school. He said some electives could be included, but they should not be mandatory.
“I would like a three-year degree for sure,” said Rocha, who plans to work in real estate or the travel industry. “No messing around. (The degree plan) would be more focused. You’d get into the workforce faster.”
The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board in a statement to El Paso Matters said that it was examining how the state could reduce its 42-semester-credit-hour general education core curriculum as directed by Senate Bill 37 from the 89th Legislature in 2025.
The board will accept recommendations in October. Any changes would need to be approved by the Legislature when it reconvenes in 2027. Whatever decision is made will give institutions more flexibility to evaluate three-year bachelor’s degree plans in certain majors in coordination with their accreditors.
“The agency is working with representatives from two-year and four-year institutions to identify potential approaches while maintaining the academic purpose of the core curriculum,” according to the THECB statement.
Testing the concept
Among the first institutions to participate in this new concept was the University of Lynchburg in Virginia. The private school, which opened in 1903, enrolls about 2,800 graduate and undergraduate students.
The SACSCOC Board of Trustees approved proposals for two three-year bachelor’s degrees in Applied Public Health and Applied Educational Studies. Lynchburg called them “MaxImpact degrees.”
Christy Cole, Lynchburg’s chief data, analytics and effectiveness officer, said her institution’s leaders and faculty thought the concept was innovative. A special task force came up with several ideas and the institution submitted two proposals to SACSCOC in September 2025, which were approved three months later. Both were non-licensure track options, which means neither prepared graduates for state-issued licenses.
Cole said that the degrees kept the general education portion of the program that includes core seminars and hands-on learning courses. The members saw it as more of a redesign with meaningful elective options to improve rigor. The new plans emphasized skills and knowledge to make students ready for the workforce or graduate school.
The Lynchburg official said students familiar with the new plans have had mixed reactions. They are not sure how the reduced-credit degrees could affect future jobs or graduate school applications.
SACSCOC’s Pruitt said that some administrators have shared concerns about which courses could be cut. He said the association supported rigorous general education courses, which means electives may be where reductions are made despite their role in overall student growth to include critical thinking. The focus needs to be on competency-based education where students master specific skills, he said.
“I was trained as a chemist (as an undergraduate), and I really enjoyed my ballroom dancing class, but, you know, it probably did not help me become a chemist faster,” Pruitt said.
Antoinette Flores, director of Higher Education Accountability and Quality with New America, said the three-year degree concept has gained support from accrediting agencies across the country since 2023. She said that institutions have wanted them, but that the accreditors have not.
“Since then there’s been a sea change,” said Flores, who joined New America about two years ago. New America is a nonpartisan research institute based in Washington, D.C., that generates policy and technology solutions in areas including education.
Flores said the three-year degrees often are aimed at adults already in the workforce who need more flexibility to complete their studies. She said it would take about five years to gauge the true effects.
“Given that this is a really relatively new policy, I think it’s important to question all those things as these programs progress,” Flores said.
Pruitt, the SACSCOC leader, called this new concept an evolutionary step in higher education. He said that the proposal process from development to reviews to student recruitment could take a year, possibly more.
“We want to try to do this quickly, but we also want to be responsible,” Pruitt said. “We’re not going to just open up the door and approve everything because there’s some responsibility on our end to ensure quality, but at the same time, we want to be efficient with those reviews.”
Pruitt said he hopes the public considers this as an opportunity for students and industry. He added that the association will keep an eye on what works and what needs to be tweaked.
“We’re excited,” Pruitt said. “We believe we can do a lot of good. We believe that our institutions want to do a lot of good, and we’re happy to be partners with them.”
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