{"id":1050,"date":"2025-06-10T12:00:54","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T19:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carnegie25live.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=1050"},"modified":"2025-12-22T14:20:34","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T22:20:34","slug":"is-it-time-to-ditch-the-four-year-degree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/is-it-time-to-ditch-the-four-year-degree\/","title":{"rendered":"Is It Time to Ditch the Four-Year Degree?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"gb-container gb-container-9f092ff3\">\n<div class=\"gb-container gb-container-f749780f\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image-2.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1051\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image-2.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image-2-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/image-2-768x432.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<div aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-fsb-flexible-spacer fsb-flexible-spacer\"><div class=\"fsb-flexible-spacer__device fsb-flexible-spacer__device--lg\" style=\"height:80px\"><\/div><div class=\"fsb-flexible-spacer__device fsb-flexible-spacer__device--md\" style=\"height:80px\"><\/div><div class=\"fsb-flexible-spacer__device fsb-flexible-spacer__device--sm\" style=\"height:80px\"><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carnegie Foundation President&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/about-us\/staff-directory\/timothy-knowles\/\">Timothy Knowles<\/a>&nbsp;speaks to American Enterprise Institute\u2019s Senior Fellow and Director, Education Policy Studies Rick Hess on what K-12 educators can do to support alternative career pathways.&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.edweek.org\/teaching-learning\/opinion-is-it-time-to-ditch-the-four-year-degree\/2025\/06\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>This interview was originally published in<\/em>&nbsp;Education Week<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>The winds of educational change are blowing. Tim Knowles is the 10th president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the 120-year-old organization that birthed the Carnegie Unit and the Educational Testing Service. Knowles is intent on steering into the teeth of that gale, working to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.edweek.org\/teaching-learning\/opinion-it-may-be-time-to-retire-the-carnegie-unit-are-there-better-measures-of-learning\/2024\/05\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">retool the Carnegie Unit<\/a>&nbsp;and intent on assessing the promise of innovations like the three-year college degree or micro-credentials. These reforms, especially micro-credentials, could open the door to dramatic changes in K\u201312 education. I caught up with him to discuss what\u2019s on his mind and what it means for America\u2019s high schools and colleges. Here\u2019s what he had to say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Rick:&nbsp;<\/strong>Tim, last year you spoke about the need to rethink the Carnegie Unit, arguing it\u2019s outlived its purpose. Along the same lines, you recently critiqued the traditional four-year college model. Can you say a bit about your thinking?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Tim:<\/strong>&nbsp;I\u2019ve been thinking about achievable ways the nation can crack the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/fred.stlouisfed.org\/series\/SLOAS\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">$1.77 trillion student debt problem<\/a>. As I\u2019ve argued&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.usnews.com\/opinion\/articles\/2025-02-12\/college-student-loans-alternative-4-year-degree\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">elsewhere<\/a>, it\u2019s fair to point the finger at the soaring&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.usnews.com\/education\/best-colleges\/paying-for-college\/articles\/see-20-years-of-tuition-growth-at-national-universities\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">cost of college tuition<\/a>&nbsp;fueled by the widespread&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aecf.org\/blog\/solutions-to-the-student-debt-crisis-in-a-time-of-economic-distress\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">availability of student loans<\/a>. However, there is another culprit that has escaped scrutiny\u2014the 120-credit degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The main problem with&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/about\/faqs\/the-carnegie-unit\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the 120-credit requirement<\/a>&nbsp;is it leaves nearly&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.insidehighered.com\/news\/students\/academics\/2024\/04\/10\/study-half-students-started-never-finished-college\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">40% of students<\/a>&nbsp;who start college with some credits but no degree. That\u2019s tens of millions of students who invest time, effort, and money in college but have little to show for it other than debt. Suffice it to say, a 60% success rate is a far cry from excellence. When I was in college\u2014which was way back before grade inflation\u201460% wasn\u2019t even passing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like many things in education that have outlived their shelf life, the 120-credit degree was created with good intentions. In 1906,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.luminafoundation.org\/files\/resources\/carnegie-unit-report.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">to address the poor pay<\/a>&nbsp;of college professors, Andrew Carnegie established the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, where I now serve as president. The first trustees of the foundation established the 120 \u201cCarnegie Unit\u201d standard to quantify the amount of teaching required for college professors to earn a pension. It was a tidy, time-based metric that quickly became an attractive tool for measuring student effort toward earning a degree. To this day, it dictates how much time and money students must invest to obtain one. Fixing the college-debt problem requires acknowledging that outmoded, time-based measures of learning have shaped secondary&nbsp;<em>and<\/em>&nbsp;postsecondary schooling for far too long.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<div aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-fsb-flexible-spacer fsb-flexible-spacer\"><div class=\"fsb-flexible-spacer__device fsb-flexible-spacer__device--lg\" style=\"height:80px\"><\/div><div class=\"fsb-flexible-spacer__device fsb-flexible-spacer__device--md\" style=\"height:80px\"><\/div><div class=\"fsb-flexible-spacer__device fsb-flexible-spacer__device--sm\" style=\"height:80px\"><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<div class=\"gb-container gb-container-e3118763 alignfull\">\n\n<div aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-fsb-flexible-spacer fsb-flexible-spacer\"><div class=\"fsb-flexible-spacer__device fsb-flexible-spacer__device--lg\" style=\"height:56px\"><\/div><div class=\"fsb-flexible-spacer__device fsb-flexible-spacer__device--md\" style=\"height:56px\"><\/div><div 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more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1052,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"ghostkit_customizer_options":"","ghostkit_custom_css":"","ghostkit_custom_js_head":"","ghostkit_custom_js_foot":"","ghostkit_typography":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[39,54,16],"client_controls":[],"class_list":["post-1050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-college","tag-degree","tag-featured"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Is It Time to Ditch the Four-Year Degree? - Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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