It takes most college students at least four years to earn a bachelor’s degree. Christie Williams finished in three months.
The North Carolina human resources executive spent two months racking up credits through web tutorials after work in 2024, then raced through 11 online classes at the University of Maine at Presque Isle in four weeks. Later that year, she went back to earn her master’s — in just five weeks. The two degrees cost a total of just over $4,000.
Since then, she has coached a thousand other students on how to speed through the state college, shaving off years and thousands of dollars from the usual cost of a degree.
“Why wouldn’t you do that?” Williams asked. “It’s kind of a no-brainer if you know about it.”
Many U.S. schools have been experimenting with ways to speed up traditional college programs to reduce the burgeoning cost and help students move into the workforce faster. Some offer three-year bachelor’s programs, reducing the number of credits needed for a diploma by one quarter. Many more allow students to enroll in college classes while still in high school.
But the breakneck pace of the fastest online programs concerns some academics, who say there is a big difference in what students can learn in weeks or months compared with three or more years.
The phenomenon — sometimes referred to as degree hacking, college speed runs or hyper-accelerated degrees — has spawned a cottage industry of influencers making videos about how quickly they earned their degrees and encouraging others to follow suit.
Supporters of the approach tout it as an affordable, convenient way for people to earn credentials they need for their careers. Others, including some online students and academic officials, expressed concern about what the super-accelerated students are missing, and whether a quick path devalues degrees.
“We want diplomas that mean something,” said Marjorie Hass, president of the Council of Independent Colleges, which represents more than 600 liberal arts colleges and universities. “I would prefer to have some of these degrees called something other than a bachelor’s.”
Nationally, it’s hard to know exactly how many students are graduating so quickly. The National Center for Education Statistics estimates that 44 percent of students finish a bachelor’s degree within four years but doesn’t offer numbers for shorter time periods.
The University of Maine’s Presque Isle campus has more than 3,000 students in its online YourPace program, according to the school. The school’s president said the program is designed to help older, nontraditional students rapidly obtain an affordable degree they may need for a raise, promotion or new job — students who don’t need the traditional longer college experience on campus that many young adults crave.
“They literally just need a certificate” to help their careers, said Raymond Rice, president of the Presque Isle campus. He said the program is open only to students age 20 and older, in part to avoid competing with its traditional four-year program on campus.
Of the nearly 300 students who earned a bachelor’s in the YourPace program in fall 2024, the vast majority finished in less than a year. More than 1 in 4 finished their entire degree course load in a single eight-week session, half the length of a traditional academic semester.
Under a system known as competency-based education, students typically must finish several assignments or pass a test to prove they learned the material, regardless of how long it takes. In a philosophy class Rice oversees, students have to show they learned the online material by completing five five-page essays and one longer paper that’s up to 10 pages.
There are no class meetings. No group discussions. No weekly assignments. Nothing to slow students down.
“The students demonstrate how much they can learn as quickly as they can,” Rice said. “They take as long or as short as they need to get there.”
At some schools, students can sign up for as many classes as they want for a flat price per term.
For instance, the YourPace program in Maine charges $1,800 per eight-week session for undergraduate programs and $2,450 for graduate degrees. That gives students a powerful financial incentive to push through the programs as quickly as possible to limit the cost and avoid taking out significant student loans. And low-income undergraduate students may be eligible for Federal Pell Grants that help cover the cost.
“That’s what is so dramatic and so impactful,” Rice said.
One reason some working adults can speed through the programs is that many have taken at least some college classes in the past and have credits to transfer. More than 43 million students in the United States started college but never earned a degree, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
The online schools best known for accelerated degrees, such as Maine’s Presque Isle campus and Western Governors University, also let students transfer in as many as three-quarters of the credits from nontraditional sources. That includes giving students credit for past learning on the job, passing tests that show they already know the material, or completing tutorials from online learning platforms such as Study.com, Sophia Learning and StraighterLine, which can often take less time to complete than traditional college courses.
The head of the New England Commission of Higher Education, which oversees the accreditation of the University of Maine system, told The Washington Post that he had never heard of students completing a bachelor’s degree in only a few months — either at the Presque Isle campus or any other accredited university. He said that is something his organization may decide to investigate.
“If students are getting a baccalaureate degree in a few months, the commission could certainly inquire, ‘Is there integrity to the degree to be awarded?’” said Larry Schall, president of the commission. (Shortly after Schall got off the phone with The Post, he said, he called the campus to ask them to look into the issue.)
Serenity James of Atlanta completed 16 courses through an online learning platform in 22 days. That gave her most of the credits she needed for a bachelor’s degree at Western Governors. She finished the remaining 13 classes in two months last year and spent 2½ months earning a master’s of business administration. Altogether, she said, the degrees cost less than $9,000, which was covered by a scholarship, her employer and a Federal Pell Grant.
Western Governors — one of the largest colleges in the country, with more than 194,000 students — did not respond to requests for interviews or additional data on how fast students finish. The nonprofit school’s website says that students finish their bachelor’s degrees in an average of 2.5 years, but that many “finish significantly faster than that!”
James, who has a 6-year-old daughter and a full-time job, said she never would have been able to attend a traditional college in person. She said she had little contact with her professors or fellow students but was in touch regularly with a mentor assigned to her by the college.
The work has already paid off. After finishing the degrees, she earned a promotion to a new, higher-paying job with her employer, a national health insurance company.
“It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me, honestly,” said James, 25. She said no one has questioned how long it took her to earn her degree or the name of the school.
She said she was able to learn the material quickly and proved it by passing tests and completing papers.
“People should do what works for them,” she said. “If people think they need four years, if that’s what you think you need to understand information, then that’s wonderful. There are some people who don’t need that long.”
Some users on a Reddit forum for Western Governors have pleaded with peers to stop bragging that they earned degrees in weeks or months.
“Publicly flaunting speedruns damages WGU’s reputation and devalues every degree, including your own,” one user said. The complaints spurred Reddit moderators to create a separate forum for accelerated students to reduce the conflict.
The head of the accreditor for Western Governors said she is confident that the school complies with its standards. The school just has a different model that allows students to move at their own pace, said Selena Grace, president of the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities.
“Students are demonstrating competency,” Grace said.
Historically, the Education Department has recommended that students spend at least three hours per week per credit hour for a traditional class, including classroom meetings and homework. So a typical three-credit class might require 135 hours of work over a 15-week semester. But there’s no equivalent time recommendation for competency-based courses.
Some of the ultrafast finishers have also sparked worries about cheating.
In January, Purdue Global stopped students from taking an unlimited number of classes in a term without permission in its ExcelTrack program, citing concerns about “academic integrity and the value of a Purdue Global degree.” That led one YouTuber to claim that Purdue had just made it impossible to get a bachelor’s in six months at the school.
“ExcelTrack is an accelerated degree program, but it was never intended to be a six-month degree,” Purdue Global spokeswoman Amy Hawkinson said in an email. The school said students finish a bachelor’s degree on average in a little more than two years — half the length of a traditional bachelor’s program, mainly because the school gives credit to many students for past learning.
The growing interest in fast degrees has spawned a mini-industry of coaches offering advice on how to find a school, figure out what classes to take and speed through the programs.
College Hacked offers a 50-minute coaching session for $295. Ryan Swayt, who completed his bachelor’s degree at Western Governors in nine months, offers everything from a $5 how-to book to extensive one-on-one coaching sessions for $1,500, a program he calls Degree Hacking Academy.
Swayt also has recorded hundreds of YouTube videos with tips on how to finish college just as fast as he did or faster. He has teased interviews with other fast finishers with titles like “8 week bachelor’s degree,” “62 days” and “3 months.”
Williams, the graduate of Maine’s YourPace program who earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 2024, is also selling advice. Early last year, she started helping people create course plans for the program in her spare time. She charges $99 to $199 per student.
Like many of her clients, Williams has never been to the Presque Isle campus in northern Maine.
But that will soon change.
This year, Williams reenrolled at the school for five weeks to earn a third degree — an associate’s degree in liberal studies — mainly so she can update her knowledge of the school and walk in the school’s graduation in May.
Williams said she is looking forward to finally meeting in person with dozens of people she helped online. But she’s especially looking forward to attending graduation with her 22-year-old daughter, Makayla Quackenbush, who earned a bachelor’s degree of her own at the school this past summer.
Like her mother, Quackenbush first spent months amassing credits from online learning platforms.
And just like her mother, she finished her bachelor’s degree in a single eight-week session — summa cum laude — with highest honors.
The post Students are speeding through their online degrees in weeks, alarming educators appeared first on Washington Post.
