Linda G. Mills is the president of New York University.
Proficiency in Greek was once mandatory at many American universities. It wasn’t unusual for students to start at 15. Chapel was often compulsory. There was a time before the SAT, the Common App, majors, minors and electives.
Since America’s first university was founded nearly 400 years ago, higher education has changed with the needs of students and society. Now, universities are due for another evolution: offering 90-credit, three-year bachelor’s degrees in fields that demand immediate workforce development.
College students today face uncertain prospects fueled by the explosion of artificial intelligence, the rapidly shifting postcollege job market and high tuition costs. At New York University, we are proposing opening three-year bachelor’s degrees in nursing and hospitality. Allowing students to launch their careers a year earlier means these graduates will have lower education costs and an extra year of earning. They can also fill critical work shortages more quickly.
A handful of states and smaller colleges have already opened paths to a degree with roughly 90 credits instead of 120. State officials in Massachusetts and lawmakers in Oklahoma have taken up the issue. Accreditors, including the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, have also signaled their openness to shorter degrees.
I’ve been at NYU for 27 years and in higher education for even longer. When I taught at our Silver School of Social Work, I had ambitious students who were ready to begin their careers after three years. I understood the overwhelming demand for more practicing social workers in the field. I also had students who needed to graduate because of a challenge in their family or another constraint that weighed on their time in college. I always did what I could to help them.
The four-year bachelor’s degree is a cornerstone of American society. It will continue to be the mainstay of what NYU offers across an array of disciplines. Reducing credits needed to graduate won’t always be practical or desirable.
But four years of college is not an inviolable standard. Three-year bachelor’s degrees are common across much of the world, and many U.S. students find ways to graduate sooner.
One in seven undergraduates at NYU already complete their degree in less than four years, often the result of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes they took in high school. We offer multiple accelerated programs that allow students to earn their bachelor’s and master’s together in less time. We’ve long run a three-year bachelor of fine arts in dance degree, recognizing what it means to performers to get more time onstage during their peak physical years.
We have every indication that a roughly 90-credit program will be successful for students in certain fields. The natural starting points are professional bachelor’s programs where many undergraduates already have workplace experience and where study is heavily anchored in hands-on training.
NYU’s Rory Meyers College of Nursing is the 12th-highest-ranked undergraduate program in the nation. Hospitals want to hire our nurses faster than we can train them, and New York faces a projected deficit of 40,000 nurses by 2030.
A three-year bachelor’s would not alter any nursing-focused curriculum or any of the general-education degree components. The same holds for the required 585 hours of hospital training. But we can deliver a comprehensive 94-credit degree by fusing classes that are currently taught separately into more integrated courses that mirror clinical practices. For example, weaving chemistry, microbiology and nutrition together would better teach students the biology behind infections and treatments.
We see a similar opportunity for our events management and hospitality program. This is another fast-growing field with a shortage of trained professionals. Our program is already heavily oriented toward job training through internships, work-based learning and capstones. By reducing the number of required electives, we can accelerate students’ entry into the workforce with no impact on their readiness.
At NYU, we’ve been modeling these programs for months. We’ll measure their success and long-term outcomes to ensure they are delivering the best results for students. To make this work, NYU is seeking authorization from the New York State Education Department. We could begin soliciting student interest in our first three-year program in fall 2027.
Universities must evolve. NYU always has. And we owe it to our students to give them every possible path to success.
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