U.S. colleges feel effects of Europe's 3-year degrees

By MATTHEW BOWERS, The Virginian-Pilot
© January 3, 2007

The idea of cutting a year off the standard four-year trek to a bachelor's degree appeals to Nicole Pritchett, an Old Dominion University freshman.

If she could squeeze everything she needs to learn into three years and start a career in social work, "I would," she said. "Quick."

For most American college students, it's a hypothetical question. But in a few decades, the three-year route to a bachelor's may be routine. It all depends on whether the United States goes the way of Europe, which is working toward three-year baccalaureates by 2010.
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They're dubbed "Bologna Degrees" for the Italian city where 45 countries signed an agreement in 1999. They're intended to create academic uniformity on a continent that already shares a monetary system and is working on a joint constitution.

Although some U.S. educational leaders have advocated a similar approach, no American universities are moving to implement it. For now, most regard the European change as more of a headache than anything else.

That's because graduate schools must figure out whether to accept applicants with the shorter-length degrees - or risk losing talented foreign students to other countries.

University discussions large and small have been prompted by the European move, from a national meeting of educators last month in Washington, D.C., to a committee at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. The VCU group spent time the week before Christmas debating a potential policy change: no longer automatically rejecting three-year bachelor's degrees, but judging them case by case.

Flexibility is the trend, said David Ward, president of the American Council on Education in Washington. More than three-quarters of the schools surveyed this year by the Council of Graduate Schools in Washington said they'd review the new European degrees, with only 18 percent flatly saying they wouldn't accept them.

Most "won't shoot themselves in the foot," Ward predicted. "They're going to take good European students."

Overall in Virginia, 10.4 percent of graduate students in public colleges and universities come from other countries. The ratio is 8.3 percent at Old Dominion University and 2.3 percent at Norfolk State University.

Many European countries offer five-year degrees, roughly equivalent to American master's programs. The planned move to a three-year undergraduate, two-year master's system was intended to mimic the two-tiered U.S. way.

Part of the justification is that the last year in European high schools roughly matches the first year in American colleges, which is heavy with general-education requirements.

The issue isn't entirely new to U.S. graduate schools, which for years have accepted three-year degrees from England and Australia and, in some cases, India.

For American students, the debate is largely distant. Even with Advanced Placement credits and dual-enrollment classes in high school, on-ly 5 to 8 per-cent finish undergraduate degrees in less than four years, Ward said.

"We joke around about it, about students wanting to stay around four or five football seasons," said David Ford, vice provost for academic affairs at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, where the average student spends four years and three months.

"And it doesn't seem to be a cost factor," Ford said. "They aren't in a big hurry."

Though it's too early to predict its impact, the European initiative has put American education on notice, said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers in Washington, D.C.

"It certainly puts the pressure on us," he said. "Because we can't afford to do things less efficiently than our closest competitors and friends."

# Reach Matthew Bowers at(757) 222-3893 or matthew.bowers@pilotonline.com.


Is or will the UK benefiting from a 3-year degree program?