Recently, I've been thinking a lot about the tension between innovation and caution in higher education. Our sector is facing real problems, financial, demographic, and external, and institutions are responding with real solutions. But solutions and good solutions aren't always the same thing. In this week's issue, we look at two articles reflecting that distinction. First, we revisit three-year degrees before turning our attention to budgeting in uncertain times. The point they share, I think, is a question that matters: Are we solving for students or are we solving for institutions? 

After reading today’s issue, share your thoughts about three-year degrees in the comments! 

Three-Year Degrees 

From Faster, thinner: Colleges are swiftly trimming a B.A. degree to three years | The Hechinger Report 

Three-year degrees gain momentum as more accreditors approve pilot programs. 

Our Thoughts  

So, I’ve written about three-year degrees a couple of times before, and I’ve found that my thoughts about them shift each time I read more about the programs and look at the current reality of higher education. At this point, I’ve arrived at a middle ground that sees the benefits of three-year degrees while also acknowledging the new challenges they may present. When I read about Quinn McDonald saving a year of tuition and entering the workforce faster in a field he has already chosen, I do not think "that's a mistake." I think "that makes sense for him." The cost pressures on students are real, the pressure to show a return on the investment is real, and for a student who is certain about a career-oriented path, a well-designed 90-credit criminal justice degree is not obviously worse than a 120-credit one padded with electives he would resent sitting through. As institutions, we should be honest with ourselves about how much of that extra 30 credits has historically served students and how much of it has served our own scheduling and tuition revenue needs. 

However, I start to worry when I consider some of the students I advised during my career in higher education. Three-year degrees work beautifully for the student who already knows what they want. They work less well for students who don’t, and there are more of those than you may realize. Research has consistently found that around half of students change their major at least once during their undergraduate careers, with some changing more than once. A reduced-credit structure with limited elective flexibility compresses the timeline for discovery at exactly the moment when many students most need the room to explore. The student who enrolls in a three-year applied business degree and realizes in semester four that they would rather study environmental science is now in a much harder position than they would have been on a traditional track. 

There’s also a deeper tension that the article surfaces, one that is especially important in today’s AI world. Several students quoted describe the four-year degree in terms of courses they "don't even care about" or classes they want to "get over with." I understand that sentiment, and it probably reflects something that we’ve partly created and failed to address—a set of disconnected course requirements and electives treated as filler instead of foundational formation. Instead of eliminating them entirely, we should design them better and help students understand why they exist. Research from EAB found that students who never switched majors actually had a slightly lower graduation rate than those who made a change, suggesting that some degree of exploration and recalibration is associated with stronger outcomes, not weaker ones. A structure that circumvents that process is not automatically better just because it is cheaper. 

All of that said, I think institutions should be having this conversation. Public confidence in the value of a bachelor's degree is not strong, and it is not recovering naturally. If a well-designed three-year option helps bring students to campus who would otherwise have opted out entirely, and if early retention data like what Johnson & Wales is reporting holds up over time, that is meaningful. The key is designing these programs with real intentionality, being honest about who they serve and who they do not, and resisting the temptation to treat them as primarily a revenue recovery strategy dressed up as student-centered innovation. 

Strategic Budgeting 

From Why strategic budgeting is crucial in an era of uncertainty | University Business 

Robert Davies, former president of Central Michigan University, makes the case for longer-term budget cycles. 

Our Thoughts  

The list of challenges named in the opening of this piece (demographic cliff, constrained public funding, federal funding volatility, rising operating costs, etc.) reads like a summary of every higher education conference keynote from the past three years. The difference is that this article is asking institutions to do something about it rather than simply acknowledge it. Our sector has always been good at naming structural challenges but is considerably less good at translating that awareness into the kind of sustained financial governance this article is describing. 

I want to make a point that is directed less at CFOs and provosts than at the broader campus community: understanding how your institution budgets is not just a leadership concern. It is something everyone who works on a campus has a stake in. Faculty who have watched programs cut or positions eliminated without apparent logic; staff who have seen resources shift in ways that feel disconnected from stated priorities; and administrators who are asked to do more with less each year all have reasons to want to understand the financial mechanics behind those decisions. Budget literacy is not the same as budget authority, but it is a meaningful form of institutional citizenship. If your institution offers open forums, town halls, or budget briefings, attend them. Ask questions. Read the financial summaries that are publicly available. The more broadly that financial context is understood across a campus, the harder it becomes for decisions to feel arbitrary, even when they are difficult.  

Given our expertise in data and reporting, the connection between budgeting and data infrastructure is worth highlighting. Point five in this list, investing in financial analytics, dashboards, and sound data governance, is not just a finance office concern. It is an institutional data problem. Institutions that lack reliable enrollment forecasting, accurate program cost analysis, or clear visibility into financial aid packaging outcomes cannot do scenario planning well because they are working with unreliable inputs. Good strategic budgeting and good institutional data practice are the same work viewed from different angles. For institutions building or improving their analytics capacity right now, aligning that work with the needs of the budget process is one of the highest-value applications available. 

The institutions that thrive going forward will be the ones that develop real clarity about what they are for, what it costs to do that well, and what they are willing to stop doing in order to protect what matters most. That is hard governance work, and this article outlines what it looks like when it’s done right.