Accelerating higher education

The question

Could students finish their higher education in much less time than is currently normal? This paper explores various scenarios, all of which are, or at least seem to be, currently permissible by responsible accreditation bodies.

 

Assumptions

Acceleration refers to the length of time it takes for a student to graduate. Acceleration is based on several assumptions:

1. In any level of education, it is possible for a lower program to contain embedded elements of the next higher program. These programs usually apply only to the academically highest-performing students.
   1. In US high schools, Advanced Placement programs allow very capable high school students to earn some college credits.
   2. Final year Bachelor students may do some master units, or may do an honors program with orientation to research.
   3. Some Master units have parallel doctoral units, especially seminar work and research methodology units.
2. Some accreditors permit students to progress directly from a bachelor degree to a doctoral degree.
   1. In the British system, an upper level second class honors degree is suitable for admission to a research position leading to the PhD.
   2. In the US, DEAC still permits it and requires a total of 90 semester hours, that is, six semesters of full-time study. (Most accreditors expect applicants to have a master degree.)
3. In a competency based system, many elements can be reconfigured to serve multiple purposes. For example, many requirements could be covered in a longer British-style dissertation.
4. It is presumed that students will probably continue studies. In one sense, high school students are given the opportunity to start heading for a doctorate. In practice, however, students can leave at many exit points, usually with elite degrees.

 

Limitations

Some acceleration features can apply to all students, such as three-semester years. Others, however, are limited to academically elite students, such as some advanced placement programs.

It would be easy to argue that professional degrees, especially any related to leadership positions, require a substantial kind of practicum or work experience. An accelerated program might be unable to accomodate sufficient practicum.

Acceleration assumes that students are adequately prepared for the next stage of their education. Of course, This might not be true of some students. It is particularly difficult when the lack of preparation only shows up when the student has been admitted and is struggling.

Acceleration assumes that students already have the maturity to do well. For some students, this is probably not so, and the shorter time frames do not allow for normal maturation processes. Academically talented students coming directly from high school might lack non-academic skills such as empathy and ability to appreciate different opinions. They might be unable to see the functional purposes of the education system, especially if they have minimal work experience. Young graduate students might find practicums as Graduate Teaching Assistants quite difficult.

Some students might not prefer an accelerated program no matter how good it is. If they want to learn new coursework, they could be disappointed if they didn't learn as much as the unit descriptions seem to promise, e.g. breadth of knowledge course work, practice writing research papers, and giving presentations before starting the dissertation.

 

Conventions

These degree definitions approximate those of DEAC, a US accreditor specializing in distance education:

1. Bachelor: 120 semester hours; four semesters full time
2. Master: 36 semester hours; two semesters full time plus a thesis or project (Some other US accreditors require only 30 semester hours.)
3. Doctor: Masters plus 60 semester hours (including a dissertation of 15 semester hours)
   or
   Bachelor plus 90 semester hours (including a dissertation of 15 semester hours)

The British degree system is quite different.

1. The bachelor degree takes six semesters of full-time study.
   1. A British-system high school graduation is arguably equivalent to one year of US college credit.
   2. Passing Bachelor students are awarded Bachelor degrees with lower second class honours, upper second class honours, or first class honors.
2. Students with upper second class or first class honors may apply to become research students as candidates for the M. Phil..
3. After one year of successful work, students may be approved to transfer to the Ph.D. program.
4. The whole Ph.D. nominally takes three years (six semesters) of full-time work.

 

How long for the doctorate?

In the US, the maximum semester hour rating for the doctoral dissertation is only 15 semester hours, but it is not a good representation of how long it actually takes. Ref.

As a working assumption for planning purposes, full-time students could finish the doctorate in three years (six semesters). This is minimal, as students in most institutions usually take considerably longer. Students vary greatly in how long they take for several reasons:

1. Students normally take varying lengths of time depending on how long it takes to set up a plan, get approvals, gather data, do the analysis, and finalize the document.
2. Some fields of study naturally take longer than othres.
3. Many dissertation proposals are not approved on the first submission.
4. How well prepared were the students? Did they do a suitable Masters first?
5. How much credit from their Master degree is relevant?
6. Was the dissertation a Thesis as a Series of Papers (TASP)?

Some British Master degrees are done by research and are sometimes called baby docs (meaning 'baby doctorates'). The procedures are much the same as a PhD by research, but theses are usually shorter (40,000-60,000) words, and the demands for originality are also less. Many programmatical aspects of doctorates also apply to baby docs.

Crashing the doctorate

In project management, crashing the project is a term referring to the rearrangement of project components to achieve project goals in less time. This section shows how writing a dissertation in stages could be used to address most requirements of a competency-based doctorate.

The advantages pro and contra are as follows:

• Pro It would be most valuable when offering the doctorate to constituencies that want a British-style program.
• Pro It would be valuable when research is the raison detre of the program. However, it would be quite easy to adapt to a professional degree.
• Contra Despite their acceptance of competency based education, accreditors might feel that it is cheating.

Here's a typical US-style doctoral program expressed as units:

• Research methods
• Focussed reading project
• Research seminar 1
• Research seminar 2
• Research seminar 3
• Comprehensive examination
• Dissertation & oral defense

The example below makes several assumptions:

1. The Research methods unit requires competence in a literature review and three different research methodologies (M1, M2, M3).
2. Students may use work from previous units in the dissertation. This is a consequence of defining the degree as competency-based.
3. The literature review and research papers all follow the same theme so that they can be united into one dissertation.
4. Students are adequately prepared. (Poorly-prepared students would presumably be unable to write acceptable major papers on their first attempt at a particualr methodology.)
5. Dissertations should meet British-style standards, which are longer and more ambitious than the minimum US requirement.

In the table below, the left column refers to the stages of writing a dissertation, and reflects the British model of one large dissertation. The right hand side column refers to a US style degree comprising many units and a smaller dissertation.

This approach is easiest to illustrate when dissertations may be Thesis as a Series of Papers (TASP), that is, students may use a series of research articles or seminar papers as parts of the dissertation. However, it is not exclusively so; the approach could be adapted for non-TASP dissertations and for professional doctorates.

Stage of writing a TASP dissertation	Units addressed
Statement of research problem Literature review	Research methods Focussed reading project
First field research paper	Research methods (M1) Research seminar 1
Second research paper	Research methods (M2) Research seminar 2
Third research paper	Research methods (M3) Research seminar 3
Comprehensive examination	Comprehensive examination
Write up articles as dissertation and oral defense	Dissertation and oral defense

 

Schemata

For purposes of comparison, each approach is presented below as a schema that progresses from undergraduate admission to doctoral graduation.

 

Schema 1: Normal US
US students normally have no Advanced Placement credit, and higher education runs only two semesters per year.

Year	Semester A	Semester B
Year 1	1	2
Year 2	3	4
Year 3	5	6
Year 4	7	8 (B. grad’n.)
Year 5	9	10 (M. grad’n.)
Year 6	11	12
Year 7	13	14
Year 8	15	16 (D. grad’n.)

 

Schema 2
Students have one semester of Advanced Placement college credit from high school.

Year	Semester A	Semester B	Semester C
Year 1	2	3	4
Year 2	5	6	7
Year 3	8 (B. grad’n.)	9	10
Year 4	11 (M. grad’n.)	12	13
Year 5	14	15	16
Year 6	17 (D. grad’n.)

 

Schema 3
These students have two semesters of Advanced Placement college credit from high school, and will gain a Master degree.

Year	Semester A	Semester B	Semester C
Year 1	3	4	5
Year 2	6	7	8 (B. grad’n.)
Year 3	9	10	11 (M. grad’n.)
Year 4	12	13	14
Year 5	15	16	17 (D. grad’n.)

 

Schema 4
These students have two semesters of Advanced Placement college credit from high school, and go from a bachelor degree directly to a doctorate. It still allows students to leave early with a Master degree.

	Semester A	Semester B	Semester C
Year 1	3	4	5
Year 2	6	7	8 (B. grad’n.)
Year 3	9	10	11
Year 4	12	13	14 (D. grad’n.)

 

Schema 5
This is a British degree system with two semesters per year.

Year	Semester A	Semester B
Year 1	1	2
Year 2	3	4
Year 3	5	6 (B. hons grad’n.)
Year 5	7	8
Year 6	9	11
Year 7	11	12 (D. grad’n.)

 

Schema 6
This is a British degree system with three semesters per year, such as is run the University of Buckinghamshire.

Year	Semester A	Semester B	Semester C
Year 1	1	2	3
Year 2	4	5	6 (B. hons grad’n.)
Year 3	7	8	9
Year 4	10	11	12 (D. grad’n.)

Benefits

Acceleration is attractive to prospective students because it reduces their costs and time commitment. It can also reduce costs to the institution.

From a career perspective, it is usually in the student’s best interests to graduate younger and then gain practical experience at a higher professional level.