Ashland University will begin offering three-year degree programs next fall in an effort to jump ahead of similar programs that will soon be introduced by Ohio’s public institutions.

Last March, Governor John Kasich mandated that Ohio’s four-year universities develop three-year programs to offer to students. For those public schools, 10 percent of their undergraduate degree programs by the fall of 2012 must have a three-year “pathway” and that must be further expanded to 60 percent of all undergraduate degree programs by 2014.

That order does not include implementation, which is why the programs that will be offered by AU will be a bit ahead of the curve.

“I think we’re going to be out ahead of [Ohio public institutions] on this one,” Provost Frank Pettigrew said. “We’re already advertising to [prospective students] that you can graduate in three years and here it is.”

As an early option, the three-year offerings will allow incoming students more flexibility, giving them an option of choosing a major that has a three-year program, instead of the standard four-year model.

“This Harvard academia model that we have been following in this country…may be past its time,” Pettigrew said.

“Higher education is changing; we need to be more concerned about being a customer-serving entity…and I think the student is pretty savvy and pretty smart. They know what they want.”

The creation of these programs has required other changes to be made as well.

The first of these was lowering the institutionally required number of credits for graduation from 128 to 120. 120 credits is the state-required minimum.

A three-year degree program will require six semesters of fall/spring courses, as well as two semesters of summer courses.

The degree program itself will be exactly the same as the four-year program, the course rotations will just be such that a degree can be completed in only three years.

Additionally, in an effort to further lighten the financial load on students, an added initiative will be offered within the three-year programs. Students will be able to use their comprehensive rate payment from the fall and spring semesters to cover two of the six credits within the summer sessions.

This means that students graduating in three years will only pay for eight of the 12 hours during the summer terms.

Incoming students with post-secondary enrollment option credits or other types of credits earned in high school can lower their course loads or even remove a summer session with the credits that they bring in.

Right now, the average number of credits that incoming freshmen carry (among students possessing credit) is 8.6 credits and ranges from two credits to 36 credits. Pettigrew said that the high-end extreme that he has seen is 83 credits (she graduated in one year).

“I suspect [our average] might get to twelve [credits],” said Pettigrew.

Because of those credits, four to 12 students already graduate in three years from each class; 10 to 20 usually graduate after only three-and-a-half.

In order to develop three-year programs, the deans of the colleges needed to identify the programs that could be completed in three years.

Most of the programs that have been or are being developed for offering at this point are in the College of Arts and Sciences.

“If there is a way that we can maintain [the rigor of a college education] by packaging it in a three-year program, then that’s a good thing,” Dawn Weber, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said.

Within the College of Arts and Sciences, there are nine programs that are being considered for a three-year cycle.

The other two considered programs are in the College of Business and Economics.

With the required summer courses, Pettigrew has also required that all summer courses be taken through an online format. This means that the summer online courses that AU offers will need to expand to satisfy the needs of three-year graduates.

“[By offering all of the online courses,] we can have a greater control over the quality of education that our students receive,” Weber said.

Even with the offering, it is not expected to be wildly popular or the norm for students to follow three-year degree plans.

While the credits needed to graduate can be condensed into a three-year plan, the college experience itself cannot be.

With the course load required to graduate in three, it would be difficult for a three-year student to remain as involved on campus as they would be in a four-year program.

“I think it’s not for everybody…and research shows that only 50 percent of the students who start a three-year program finish it,” said Pettigrew. “But 90 percent of them finish within four years…and that’s fine with us.”

Weber also noted that a three-year student would not go through the same maturing process that four-year students do.

Both Pettigrew and Weber believe that most students will still follow a traditional four-year plan, even those interested in majors with three-year offerings.

“For that group of students that is attracted to a three-year program…then [this program] is particularly attractive to them,” said Weber. “It’s simply about offering options to students so that they can meet their educational goals.”

All departments are not capable of supporting three-year majors because the individual majors require so many credits to graduate. For the College of Education, this is the case.

Dean Jim Van Keuren said that the College of Education is reviewing the four-year guarantee program. The early childhood education major might be offered in that initiative.

Pettigrew is pleasantly surprised at the progress of the three-year proposals thus far, because it is still voluntary for departments to consider their majors for the program.

“What excites me the most is that we are now being somewhat customizable to students,” said Pettigrew. “We are being able to offer students more of a varied approach to higher education than just a cookie cutter eight-semester, four-year model.”

Enrollment in the three-year degree programs will not be binding; students in the rotation will have the option of spreading out to three-and-a-half or four years if they later discover that as the best option for them.