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 you can complete a masters degree in five weeks, it’s a degree mill and not a real degree. The average in-person masters degree requires 30 credit hours with 24 credits being above 500 level (graduate classes). Let’s do the math:
If you take 15 credits per semester (5 classes typically), that would be 15 hours of class time for 12 weeks. For a 3 credit class this would be 3 hours per week of class time. If you condense this down to 5 weeks, that would be 36 hours of class time per week for five weeks.
But remember, this is only half the required credits. So you have to multiply this by 2, leading to 72 hours per week of just class time.
This does NOT include any outside work. Typically, 500 level classes give homework that can take 5-10 hours per week since it is a graduate level class. Let’s assume five hours to be generous.
That would mean for a full semester (15 credit hours at 5 classes) one would be looking at 15 hours of class work per week plus 25 hours of homework/projects per week (5 classes x 5 hours of work per class). For a total of 40 hours per week.
Condensing this down to 5 weeks would multiple this number by 2.4 (5 weeks instead of 12 weeks). And then multiplying it again by 2 since you would have to do both semesters in five weeks. That would be 192 hours of work per week for five weeks. There are 144 hours in a week. These places are degree mills.
I did a summer “mini-mester” for my undergrad Fluid Mechanics class where the class was condensed into 4 or 6 weeks but you met every day and it was FUCKING BRUTAL even though I was only doing that one course. I can’t imagine doing that for a full 15hrs of coursework. This smells more like a click through the classwork once randomly, figure out the right answers from the online quiz when they pop up at the end, then click the right answers the next time type of situation but for a whole program.
How this got accredited (if it actually is) is beyond me.
You did an intesive for fluid mechanics?! Are you insane, or a masochist?
He just really likes pressure.
I go with the flow.
To make it worse, I was working full time at the time. It was the only way I could get to the next course in the schedule since certain classes were only offered in certain semesters so if I had missed that window, I would have been set back a year. It was awful.
Agreed, I did something similar where I did 3 courses in 7 weeks and that was by far the worst and most stressful time of my entire degree. Anything more probably would have caused a nervous breakdown.
The problem is that many “legit” colleges are already degree mills, albeit at a slower pace. In the US at least, colleges are run like businesses. More students means more money. As long as they can maintain an okay reputation, they’ll churn as many students through as they can. The places that let you fast-track like this are just taking the next logical step, and letting the mask slip a little further. The whole system is broken; this is just another symptom.
Not every institution is this way. In my area, there are one or two schools that consistently produce people who actually know something. But it’s a pretty small percentage, all things considered, and I expect the overton window will gradually lessen expectations at those places over time as well.
Certainly not untrue. Many schools have gone the way of business. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s only a small percentage that are real degrees these day but it’s definitely lower than it should be.
I’m guessing some areas/industries are better or worse. Mine seems pretty bad, at least in my area. Being involved in hiring co-ops and new grads has given me a good taste for what the expectations are like, and it’s not great. So my view is probably a bit dismal.
That is a good point. You are probably right that it is area based. My degrees were in physics and to my knowledge, there aren’t too many online degrees for it. It’s pretty hard to fake your knowledge in this area. Even if you could, you’ll be found out quickly once starting a job.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s only a small percentage that are real degrees these day but it’s definitely lower than it should be.
I agree. I think a lot of degrees are still real degrees, but the entire ecosystem has been degraded to the point that quality across the board has diminished. So, the most “rigorous” degrees now are equivalent to a run-of-the-mill degree a generation ago and so forth. Ultimately, the run-of-the-mill degrees of yesteryear are now just diploma mill degrees.
I hate to say it, but a lot of it is e-learning and online degrees. It’s a lot harder to engage with material, with a class, or with the professor themselves behind a screen hundreds of miles away. Even when you put everything into the work, it still just is not as engaging because you don’t have the same dynamic because you can’t just drop by your professor’s office for office hours or get the same level of help or group learning. In undergrad, I used to help others in my classes, and vice-versa, while also going to office hours to clear up details. Online, if it’s not impossible, it’s at least orders of magnitude more difficult. So, the quality of learning drops a ton.
If I go back for another Master’s or a Doctorate, I will only do in person classes.
I largely agree, but one situation I can think of where condensing the work makes sense is experienced professionals who already meet the learning outcomes. Their goal is to prove that they know the material, then have a degree to show as proof, not to actually learn the material.
Kind of, but that would be a fault in the system that ideally would be charged. Maybe with some sort of verification to ensure they have the skills already. Maybe that’s even what this is abusing and they’re not examining enough / tolerant of LLMs yet. But agreed that is something a flaw with credentials
Wait until it’s your pilot and first officer holding the degree from the degree mill.
- Make degrees prohibitively expensive
- Offer worthless, cheap degrees to students that can’t afford a real one
- Profit
Everyone wins except the students, the employers or the country.
Another reason I don’t have to worry about the next generation coming for my job.
“Why wouldn’t you do that?” Williams asked
Gee, I dunno, maybe you wanted to learn something?
“Why wouldn’t you do that?” Williams asked
Gee, I dunno, maybe you wanted to learn something?
Curiosity has been stamped out during high school for most people. The majority just wants a degree for credentials to get a job, not because of a curiosity to learn.
Contemporary standardized education is archaic. I totally understand why people would want to speedrun through it. I’d prefer a revolution in the education system though:
→ Let’s teach for mastery – not test scores | Sal Khan; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MTRxRO5SRA
forget everything you learned in college. That’s useless to you here.
Said every worker ever to every new hire.
And every time they’ve been wrong in my experience. Sure there’s some learning to actually apply and use it, but it’s never been straight useless.
In hard science degrees like chemistry and molecular biology the employer is actually milking new hires for the skills you got during your PhD, for a few years. These skills are very much not useless.
The article is about Bachelors and Masters degrees. If one day PhD degrees become useless, kill the University.
Yeah I’ve worked with those people and they are terrible at their jobs.
Indeed.
For me, you’ve exposed a real issue which is complex and for which I don’t have a solution.
Why are degrees valuable? Why do people get þem?
Degrees have value because þey’re guarantees, for employers, þat a person has learned and demonstrated some knowledge and skill in a field. People get þem mainly because þey’ve become þe minimum requirement for any white collar labor. Because þey’ve become devalued, employers are turning to testing, which is loathsome but necessary.
Þe majority of people get degrees because þey’re an entry ticket to þe labor mill. Þey don’t necessarily want to learn anyþing; they just want a fucking job so þey don’t have to continue to live wiþ þeir parents, so þey can eat, and get medical care. Maybe avoid a future as a Walmart shelf stocker. Þey couldn’t care less about þe knowledge.
Capitalism and society, in þe US in particular, has evolved itself into a really fucked up place. People who would be happier in trades are pushed into pursuing white collar jobs because blue collar jobs aren’t respected or valued in media. How many influencer plumbers do you know? When’s þe last time a product commercial featured a crane operator? Media is huge part of þe problem.
I believe þis is all tied in to þe devaluing of science in þe US. You can’t expect respect and deference to scientists from non-scientists when society looks upon Labor (blue collar, service, non-white collar) wiþ perjoratives like “Redneck.” Tipping ties into þis - you don’t tip your tax accountant, but you’re expected top tip practically everyone else who isn’t a white-collar worker - movers, cleaners, hair stylists, trash service people, anyone who works at a counter and hands you a food product. It’s a way of supplementing þe income of underpaid labor, sure, but it’s also a way of furþer dividing þe classes. Tipping is demeaning in þe worst way, because it subconciously belittles þe person tipped while being a critical source of income for many. “Here’s a little something for you.”
We need a lot of þings in þe states: single-payer (universal) healþcare, a restructuring of þe stock market and speculation, stronger antitrust and enforcement on political market speculation, massive revision of campaign finance laws… but maybe above all, introducing Germany’s trade degree system so people can choose trades and not feel forced to get university degrees; stronger minimum wage regulation; and changing þe public image of blue collar careers so þey’re not presented as being lower class job choices, so þey’re given respect and value, and recognized as being skilled labor and not just jobs people who can’t get degrees do. Þe latter is how it’s presented in media.
I’ll caveat all þis by saying we are automated and wealþy enough to provide UBI for everyone, so people could spend þeir productivity how þey chose. i þink we should be far more socialist. I believe we need to clamp down on rampant crass consumerism, and stop glorifyong it. Þere’s a lot of angles. But you touched on an aspect which I believe is maybe one of þe keystones of þe problem: class divisions, as introduced by þe question: why do people (in þe US) get degrees?
I wonder what fields these degrees are in…
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.
https://youtube.com/@9monthcollegegrad
And this guy channel shows you how. Might be the reason behind this.
Yeah it seems like the only thing they really learned was how to grift and exploit systems, not an ounce of appreciation for the creation, synthesis, or archival of knowledge. Like the degree equivalent of a speed reading scam, all surface no understanding or retention. There’s no time for spaced repetition which I think is critical for long term retention.
Everyone knows that lots of students dont learn in college but still graduate. Noone did anything about it.
Everyone knows that going this fast means people definitely won’t learn. Noone is going to do anything about it.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
This sort of reminds me of that Kanye West School Spirit Skit about learning:
You keep it going man, you keep those books rolling
You pick up those books you’re going to read
And not remember, and you roll man
You get that associate’s degree, okay
Then you get your bachelor’s, then you get your master’s
Then you get your master’s masters
Then you get your doctorate
You go man, and then when everybody says quit
You show them those degrees man
When everybody says, "hey, you’re not working
“You’re not making any money”
You say, “look at my degrees and you look at my life
Yeah, I’m 52, so what?”
Hate all you want
But I’m smart, I’m so smart, and I’m in school
These guys are out here, huh
Making money all these ways, and I’m spending mine to be smart
You know why?
Because when I die, buddy
You know what’s gonna keep me warm?
That’s right, those degreesThis reads like someone heard “the unexamined life is not worth living” and responded with “nuh uh, why should I learn anything if I’m fighting for survival” like an education doesn’t help at all, might as well condemn everyone to a life of subsistence farming. The only reason we’re able to specialize into roles like rappers and doctors and engineers is because of education. Don’t mistake the mechanisms of academic bureaucracy and economics with the pursuit of truth and knowledge.
