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 hyperaccelerated 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.
If I had this in my college years - impossible since we had no Internet available yet at all - I’d’ve been laughing. Stay home, stay online, and hack all the waking day? BSc in no time.
A dear friend lived near the uni in her home town, and so lived with her mom, rent-free, and just went all-out on coursework. In 3 years she got and paid to receive a BA. She earned enough for a BSc too, but didn’t pay the fee for convocation and so doesn’t have it.
Three years. Wow, would that have been awesome.
I did my BS in person in three years. It wasn’t particularly difficult, just a bit more work.
Correspondence courses have been around for decades. You probably could have asked them for multiple courses at once and done them as fast as you like.